Athletes are not role models, parents are.
The words of Charles Barkley spoken many years ago for a Nike commercial ring just as true today as they did back then.
Many of today’s high-profile athletes are not people who we, as a society, should aspire to become. The athletic world has the same type of population as the rest of the world.
While there are good people in it, criminals, liars, cheaters, and just plain bad people are part of the sports world. Yet, children and adults alike think the professional athlete is someone who ought to be imitated.
Athletes do perform good deeds, but good deeds do not equal good character. They are certainly not signifiers of a person worthy enough to imitate. Even Bill Clinton did charity work.
Society looks up to these people because they excel at recreation. We do not admire those who excel at academics, ethics, or accounting. Instead we see the athlete and decide that is what we want to be like.
Athletes can do things in their sport that the average child or coach potato could not even dream of doing. So we try to mimick that greatness.
However, in our attempt to copy athletes’ playing ability, we also copy their personalities. With a great deal of athletes, their personalities leave much to be desired.
Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hit leader, is a pushy jerk who had problems with gambling, including betting on baseball. He was eventually banned from baseball because of his addiction.
If he was not an athlete, hardly anybody would have looked up to him. Instead, thousands of Rose fans defend his gambling practices.
They claim Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame and his banishment was completely unjust. Yet, nobody defends the burnout living on the street who lost his life savings in Las Vegas.
This is not an anomaly limited to the modern era. Athletes and fans have been this way for a long time. Ty Cobb, one of the original inductees to the Hall of Fame, beat his wife on a regular basis and even claimed to have killed somebody.
Babe Ruth, perhaps the biggest sports personality in American folklore, was an overindulgent child who brought one of his teams to financial ruin.
Still, these are the people society emulates. We are not all fat wife beaters with gambling problems, but we still idolize them.
From this, the problem repeats itself.
Even at a young age, athletes with talent are given special privileges. When I played football in high school, I noticed I did not have to work as hard as my classmates when the subject was taught by a football coach.
With athletes good enough to play on the professional level, there is no limit to what they can be given. Teenage millionaires have become less of an abnormality. LeBron James, a 16-year-old high school senior, is already negotiating a major shoe deal.
I doubt any of us can claim we had the maturity to handle all that money at such a young age. If I had several million dollars when I was 16, I would have ended up with about a hundred thousand CD’s and a car that I probably would have wrecked a few weeks later.
For the athlete with exemplary abilities, the perks go beyond money. Thousands of adoring fans gather around just for a picture or an autograph. Freebies are abundant. For male athletes, flocks of women chase after them. They are considered gods, which is an injustice in itself.
The word ‘god’ is too loosely thrown around these days. We use that term to describe anybody, especially athletes, who can do anything beyond what most humans can do.
In reality, these people are just as human as the rest of us. In some cases, they are even a little less than human. Despite this, athletes are still deified.
This deification translates into the justice system as well. News stories abound of athletes who break the law and get off with the minimum punishment. Allen Iverson faces up to 50 years in jail for, among other things, threatening two men with a gun.
Depsite such heavy consequences, Iverson seems relatively laid back about the whole ordeal. He even threw a party before he turned himself in to the police. His lawyers have “assured” the public that their client will not do any jail time.
Maybe this is why children want to be like their favorite sports stars. It is not because they are so good at what they do, but because they get away with so much.
As a child, if I noticed one group of people got away with everything while everyone else had to struggle for just the little things, I wouldn’t waste much time deciding what group I wanted to be a part of. I imagine this is the case for almost everybody.
So, the cycle continues.
Many years after the infamous Nike commercial, I applaud Barkley for his efforts to break the mold of this perpetual cycle. I do not think it did anything to change the way things are, but at least he tried.
Brad Kane is a senior in journalism and The Lantern sports editor. More than anyone else, he looks up to his dad and tries to imitate him. Kane can be reached for comment at [email protected].
