There is an old saying about not biting the hand that feeds you. I’m about to come dangerously close to doing just that.

Sports has been a major part of my life since the summer of 1977, when I discovered baseball. Football and basketball quickly followed and all three of them have been central to my existence ever since.

I’ve even learned to make room for golf, auto racing, soccer and the Olympic sports, especially when I started doing this for a living. If a sport is important to our readers, it’s important to me.

But sports — which has given me so much enjoyment and has paid the bills my entire adult life — has left me no alternative but to question its priorities, and my own.

Sports and I are not in a good place right now. And to be honest, this isn’t a recent development. The NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence incident was the tipping point, but this goes back a ways.

I’ve long been uncomfortable with the way sports influences our thoughts and behaviors in situations in which our reactions ought to be anything but mixed.

And let’s be clear about one thing. It’s not the games and the athletes themselves — for the most part — that have me questioning our national obsession with sports. It’s that singular obsession and how it has contributed to the erosion of common sense and human empathy.

Barring injury (or an unexpected display of humanity from leaders who seem to lack it), a convicted rapist will take the field to the cheers of thousands when Steubenville hosts Ursuline in a high school football game tonight.

I’ve written about this before. You might be tired of reading about it. But I remain amazed that in a country in which so many people are outraged by so much every day, there seems almost a quiet resignation to Ma’lik Richmond’s return to the Steubenville football program.

It’s almost as if we’re collectively shrugging our shoulder and saying, “Hey, it’s Steubenville. It’s their issue. Who are we to judge?”

That’s certainly the message from the Diocese of Youngstown, which has signed off on Ursuline’s trip to Steubenville to play a game against Big Red.

And to be fair, it’s not just the Diocese of Youngstown and the Irish. Nine other regular-season opponents will play Steubenville. When I wrote a column last month encouraging Big Red’s scheduled foes to unite and refuse to play the games, I didn’t really expect that to happen.

I’d already resigned myself to the idea that money and playoff points — and perhaps moral relativism — have jumped common sense and humanity as priorities for many people.

No, it wasn’t the NFL’s job to protect Janay Palmer from her fiancee. But after Ray Rice knocked her unconscious in an Atlantic City, N.J., elevator, and commissioner Roger Goodell initially suspended the Baltimore Ravens running back a whopping two games, it was clear Goodell and the NFL was mostly concerned about protecting the shield.

Given that the NFL had to be shamed into admitting that head injuries were a devastating, long-buried problem, should we be surprised? If the league didn’t care about its own players, why would it be concerned about its players’ significant others?

But the NFL and Steubenville have hardly cornered the market on brazen disdain for what is right.

The football culture — and worship of it — at Penn State resulted in child rapist Jerry Sandusky being permitted to operate with impunity not only in State College, but even within the walls of the Nittany Lions’ football complex.

The NCAA talked a good game in the wake of the scandal, with scholarship penalties and bowl ban, but just this week college sports’ biggest governing body decided to cut short a richly deserved punishment for the program.

I know, I know. The players and coaches currently in the program didn’t do anything wrong and it wouldn’t be fair to punish them for Sandusky’s crimes and the misdeeds of the late Joe Paterno, former Penn State president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and perhaps others. Just like it wouldn’t be fair to take a game away from innocent Ursuline in order to deliver a message to Steubenville.

But sometimes difficult decisions have to be made and harsh punishments are warranted and should be meted out. That’s how lessons are taught.

What lesson was learned when a rape investigation of Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston was effectively quashed in Tallahassee a year ago? Winston not only played all season, but won the Heisman Trophy.

Now, finally, Florida State itself has gotten around to an internal investigation. A little late, no?

Examined separately, all these sports-related cases — and then some — can be dismissed as isolated incidents. But together, the weight of them is staggering and suggests something is amiss in our culture,

Protect the shield. Protect the star running back. Protect the program. Protect the coaching legacy. Protect the Heisman candidate. All those things seem to be considered more important than victims of domestic violence and rape.

A common, underlying theme in all these cases is the notion that those who bring them to the forefront or shine a light on them are simply motivated to bring down a league, a team or a player.

Not really.

I wish the NFL really cared about women — who make up more than a third of its fan base — instead just pretending by dressing players and coaches in pink accessories every October.

I wish the Baltimore Ravens wouldn’t have waited until they had no choice but to sever ties with Rice.

I wish Paterno and Penn State really did things the right way, as was their collective reputation and legacy before Sandusky’s crimes were revealed.

I wish more people in Steubenville found the rape case involving two of its football players as revolting as almost everyone outside the city limits did.

I wish sports had maintained the excitement and wonder I thought it had when I was a boy. But it has not. And that isn’t my fault or the fault of those who report on these sad, disgusting events.

We still love sports. We just wish everyone involved was as worthy as we once believed.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.