![]() I challenge top management in all professional sports - from NFL Commissioner Goodell to team owners, managers and coaches everywhere - to think about ways they can help the most vulnerable of their future fans. The NFL could follow up with a companion plan for some of their most famous players to mentor these kids. Imagine what effect it could have if 100 million people heard a public announcement from the NFL that it has decided to take a bold and sensitive step toward acknowledging the plight of sexually abused children by refusing to play any version of that song any longer. It is estimated that 100 million people worldwide will tune in to the Super Bowl this year. In an era of ugly revelations about football coaches and allegations of sexual misconduct with children (think Jerry Sandusky of Penn State and Bernie Fine of Syracuse University), isn’t there anyone in professional sports who thinks it is time to find a permanent replacement song? A tune that doesn’t raise the specter of a child predator? But that doesn’t mean he should be glorified and rewarded each time an American athlete does well on the field. Yes, Gary Glitter, aka Paul Gadd (whose nickname, by the way, is Rubber Bucket) is a man who has done his time for his crimes. In the four decades since Glitter wrote it, hasn’t there been another, equally suitable foot-stomping ditty written that could take its place? It’s a 40-year-old song, for goodness’ sake. I don’t know about you, but this gives me a Super Bowl-sized headache. ![]() A rendition performed by the band Tube Tops was approved and lives on to this day as the classic musical homage after a team scores. However, it didn’t fade into obscurity as I think it should have. The Indianapolis Colts (their stadium is this year’s venue for the Super Bowl) have also embraced “The Hey Song” as part of its regularly played tunes to pump up the fans.Ī few years ago, the NFL banned Glitter’s original song because of his sordid past. As the songwriter, Glitter gets money.Īccording to the London Daily Mail, Glitter’s royalties from just this year’s Super Bowl play of “The Hey Song” “puts him in line to make hundreds of thousands of pounds.” That’s because the New England Patriots adopted the song as its trademark touchdown-celebrating anthem. It doesn’t matter if it is Glitter performing the song or if some other band is doing its version of the tune. That, in turn, puts money in a convicted pedophile’s pocket. In the past, National Hockey League and National Basketball Association teams have also found it to be a must-play at every game. It is not just the NFL that allows “The Hey Song” to punctuate the air every time an athlete scores. ![]() And it is played at American sports games countless times every year. Gary’s real name is Paul Gadd, but music fans know him as Gary Glitter, the flamboyant ‘70s rock-‘n’-roller whose anthem-like hit “Rock and Roll Part 2” (also known as “The Hey Song”) still guarantees him a windfall of royalties every time it is played. ![]() This is not a guy you’d want your children to emulate or celebrate, right? Gary was allowed to return to Britain in 2008 only after he agreed to join the United Kingdom’s sex offenders registry so police could keep track of him. Gary wound up living in Vietnam, and in 2006 he went to prison again after being convicted for molesting two girls, ages 11 and 12. In 2002, after Gary was investigated for sexual offenses against young boys, he was deported by Cambodian officials. Exactly what happened there is unclear, but trouble followed. Once he was released from prison, Gary left his home country of Britain, traveled through Spain and eventually settled in Cambodia. In 1999, Gary was sentenced to prison after a scandalous child pornography investigation during which police found that he had downloaded at least 4,000 sexually explicit images of children, some as young as 2 and 3 years old. For the entire decade of the 1980s, Gary was considered to be such a dangerous and chronic drunken driver that authorities banned him from getting behind the wheel for 10 years.
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