Darnay Scott was missing in action again Wednesday, still conspicuously absent from the Cincinnati Bengals' voluntary camp.

        Voluntary is a relative term in the NFL. It does not connote freedom of choice but freedom from fines. You can't dock a player's paycheck if the player's contract does not require him to attend a specific workout. You can only shake your head and cluck your tongue and apply whatever peer pressure can be mustered by the sheep who do show up.

        Or you can cut the guy as an example.

        Almost without exception, great teams have a great work ethic. Lousy teams, invariably, are slowed by slackers.

        When the Bengals were last a great team, circa Super Bowl XXIII, their tone was set by world-class strivers such as James Brooks and Tim Krumrie. More recently, the team has been marked by its languor and indifference, by a tendency to expend more effort in clubs than in camps, by key players too busy to get better, by sloths such as Dan Wilkinson and James Francis.

        Pro football is no different than most businesses in this respect. Every workplace has its ambition and its indifference, its workaholics and its clock-watchers. If the world weren't already round, it would have been worn that way by the guys who cut corners.

        One of the problems with pro sports, though, is that corner-cutting has become customary. Salaries have grown so grotesquely large that coaches no longer rule by intimidation but by cajolery. Athletes earn bonuses for working out in the offseason, as if staying in shape were beyond the call of duty. Voluntary workouts get skipped more frequently than Faulkner lectures on spring Fridays.

        The Me Generation's values permeate our playgrounds to such an extent that the team concept sometimes seems as quaint as a kerosene lamp.

        “Winning isn't as important as doing well individually,” outfielder Ken Landreaux once said. “You can't take teamwork up to the front office to negotiate.”

        This attitude accounts for the excessive celebration of unexceptional performances and the choreography that turns an ordinary play in a lost cause into a preening personal statement. (See Hawkins, Artrell).

        The point is that athletes are increasingly missing the point — that the fundamental object of their games ought to be victory, and that implicit in their enormous salaries should be a certain amount of sacrifice in pursuit of shared goals.

        Perhaps Barry Larkin's finest hour with the Cincinnati Reds took place between games. Late in the 1990 championship season, Larkin persuaded manager Lou Piniella to schedule a workout on a rare off day to keep the team grinding toward its goal.

        Contrast Larkin's professionalism with that of Vince Carter, who left the Toronto Raptors last Sunday to attend graduation ceremonies at North Carolina — hours before a decisive playoff game in Philadelphia.

        Whatever heat Carter absorbed for his untimely departure was diminished by the purpose of his trip. It's hard to rip a professional athlete for getting a degree. It's harder to believe jet lag didn't affect his jump shot.

        E-mail tsullivan@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/sullivan.

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