Unprofessional

When I was a kid I used to watch M*A*S*H re-runs, often twice a day, on Channel 5.

The hero of that shcw, you'll recall, was Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce. He was irreverent, slovenly, sophomoric, disrespectful of authority, contemptuous of military regulations and unable to refrain from wisecracking. He was also, the show insisted, a brilliant surgeon.

In opposition to Hawkeye, the show also gave us Maj. Frank Burns. Burns was a stickler for the details of military regulation and his uniform was always properly pressed and clean. But Burns was a lousy doctor.

These days, a character like Hawkeye — in fiction and in real life — is usually described with one word: "unprofessional." Maj. Burns on the other hand, and those like him, are invariably described as having a "professional attitude." This is precisely backwards.

The two characters belong to a profession. They are both doctors. That profession has certain standards, none of which is the least concerned with whether or not the professional physician in question is wearing a Hawaiian shirt or a starched collar. There is no question as to which M*A*S*H character was better at his profession, yet that same character is the one we're more likely to describe as "unprofessional."

Somehow the adjective "professional" has come off its moorings. It no longer refers to any of the standards or skills of a given profession or craft. It seems wholly cosmetic. Someone is "professional" if they are neatly dressed, polite, punctual, obsequious and, above all, complacent. Some of these attributes are commendable, some are contemptible, but none of them have very much to do with the essence of what it means to be "professional."

This corruption of the word will inevitably also corrupt our professions. And, if Aristotle is to be believed, it will corrupt our character.

I've been thinking about this lately because of the current Big Story here in Philadelphia: the suspension and dismissal of the Eagles star wide receiver Terrell Owens.

T.O. is a professional athlete. And he is very, very good at what he does.

Some athletes don't keep up with their conditioning, but Owens does. Few work harder than he does to keep his body in phenomenal condition. Some athletes are prone to mental lapses, but not Owens. The man has the Eagles' playbook memorized, indexed and cross-referenced. Some athletes will complain that they cannot perform the jobs they are paid millions of dollars to do if a teammate is saying mean things about them to the media, but Owens has never needed, or offered, that excuse.

Some wide receivers whine that they don't receive the ball enough; or they don't block aggressively on plays to other receivers; or they refuse to run patterns over the middle where they're sure to get hit hard. But none of those things are true of Terrell Owens. On and off the field, the guy works hard. And by any measure of his profession — receptions, yards, touchdowns — he is head and shoulders above his peers.

But Owens was suspended, then dismissed, by the Eagles this week because, we are endlessly told, he was "unprofessional."

Terrell Owens, you see, has said some rather mean, impolitic and spiteful things about some of his teammates in interviews with the press. And he employs as his agent a loathesome man who does not seem to bargain in good faith.

That's bad, of course. He shouldn't have said such things or allowed his agent to be such a meddlesome prick. And it's hardly the first time T.O.'s mouth has gotten him into trouble. The guy has a tendency to say explosively mean, impolitic and spiteful things. You'd be a fool to hire him as a P.R. spokesman.

But the Eagles didn't hire him for the press office. They hired him as a wide receiver — and in that professional capacity he has given them no grounds for complaint. And they didn't merely bar him from speaking to the media — they barred him from working as a wide receiver. They kicked Hawkeye out of the operating room.

The team had every right to fire Owens for his comments and his whining about his contract. They had every right to call a press conference and have head coach Andy Reid inform the world that Owens was fired for being mean, impolitic and spiteful.

But to say he was fired for being "unprofessional" is nonsense. That's not what that word means.

And misusing that word that way has consequences. It means we no longer have a word to describe a necessary and important concept. And that puts the concept itself in jeopardy.

(By the way, this all happened here in Philadelphia — the city that embraced Lenny Dykstra but chased away Dick Allen. But that's a separate can of worms which everyone will, of course, insist has nothing — nothing — to do with this.)

Addendum: I don't mean for the above to be a defense of Owens' bad behavior any more than I'd want to defend Hawkeye's drinking or his sexual harassment of the nurses. I'm reminded in comments that while the Eagles did not hire T.O. as a PR representative, they did hire respected former Eagle Hugh Douglass in that capacity. And then, well, Owens slugged the team's new goodwill ambassador in a clubhouse brawl. That, like many of his off-the-field antics, is indefensible. Bad man, good wide receiver. So fire him for being a bad man, not for being a bad wide receiver. (And then remind his teammates that sticks and stones and opposing linemen may break their bones, but they're getting paid way too much money to let somebody's mouthing off to the press affect their performance. They are, after all, professionals.)