There’s an update to the sorry saga of Ralph Sampson: the former University of Virginia/NBA star is headed to jail for two months as part of Sampson’s plea agreement for mail fraud.
Previously, Sampson got in trouble for falling seriously behind (like $250,000 in one case) in child support to the mothers (note plural) of his children. It appears from the news story that Sampson may actually have been married to one of the three reported mothers. The other mothers appear to be unwed mothers, as we used to call them in a better day.
As a famous athlete, Sampson is somebody who once had everything going for him. I can’t help thinking that Sampson got so badly off track because he didn’t have values that made him shoulder his most elemental obligation, the one to his children. He is a poster boy for Bill Cosby’s recent remarks on bad values creating bad choices.
Updating Kipling’s “If,” Cosby recently had this to say:”You cannot be a man at all if you haven’t claimed your child. Some of you have three, four, five of them. You have more children than you have jobs.”