Professional athletes the worst role models for young people
Steroids and sex scandals are rampant
Ace baseball pitcher Roger Clemens is charged with perjuring himself before the U.S. Congress on the alleged use of steroids and human growth hormone.
Clemens is innocent until proven otherwise in a court of law. Still, news that The Rocket, too, will soon be in the dock was just plain depressing. Blame it on the now-prevalent sports theatre of the vehement denial of drug abuse followed by the tearful recantation.
Professional athletes, cynical team owners who exploit their skills and adoring fans too quick to forgive and forget all share a delusion that pro sport throws up role models for troubled young people. Sport is all about building character, right?
Well, I suppose it is, if character means cheating, thieving, lying, philandering, violence, using drugs and going to prison. And so each saccharine TV commercial depicting football players smiling down on underprivileged kids or baseball stars promoting charities makes me want to smash my remote.
From boastful capering over vanquished opponents to arrogant swaggering after scoring to calculated blindside hits on the vulnerable that result in career-ending injuries, can there be a worse role model for kids than pro sport? And now we've got mixed martial arts where it's cool to knock a guy down then sit on him and smash in his face, the antithesis of sportsmanship.
In the 21st century much of pro sport has come to symbolize the worst values that anyone could imagine. To be honest, I see the athletes as victims of a system driven by corrupted values. We take young people gifted with extraordinary skills, inundate them with money and adulation, exploit them mercilessly and discard them ruthlessly if they fail to meet unrealistic expectations they are so desperate to meet that they'll do anything.
So I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that we've got muscle-bound substance abusers, high speed drug cheats, sex addicts run amok, able-bodied players competing in games for the disabled, football players getting shot more frequently than the bad guys in a spaghetti western, basketball referees calling games for gamblers, judges fixing figure skating competitions, national sports programs churning out athletic mutants, junior hockey coaches tutoring their charges in kinky sex, race drivers ordered to deliberately crash their cars to influence outcomes, football executives sexually assaulting teenage girls, hockey players trying to hire assassins, figure skaters ambushed by club-wielding opponents, soccer teams financed by drug cartels, vicious animal abusers starring in the NFL, corruption, bribes and liars -- squads of liars, more liars than the fleas you'd find on the back of a three-legged weasel.
It's so fascinating it's now become an academic subbranch for study by university professors.
Forget Tiger Woods and his astonishing bedroom workouts -- at least they involved consenting adults. What about Saskatchewan Roughriders general manager Eric Tillman sexually assaulting a 16-year-old babysitter? Not to mention the long list of sexual assault charges brought against professional athletes.
Clemens awaits his day in court but the latest charges only amplify suspicions that something is deeply rotten in the state of professional sport.
Back in 2005, Jose Canseco claimed 85 per cent of Major League Baseball players engaged in steroid use, which led to the congressional hearings that grew like a horrible ulcer to affect home run kings Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Alex Rodriguez.
Thus we had to suffer the wretched spectacle of contemporary players breaking the records of baseball icons while simultaneously under investigation and in some cases eventual indictment for perjury about their use of steroids.
In fairness, not all professional athletes are tainted in this way, but it's hard to swim in the gutter without picking up some stains.
The putrid stench that hangs over professional sport isn't likely to evaporate anytime soon. The players make too much money, the owners are too greedy and we fans seem too enthralled by the whole phoney spectacle to effect change by voting with our feet.
shume@islandnet.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
In class we talked about how athletes became role models in the beginning of the twentieth century. We discussed the characteristics that role models should posses. We also discussed the best and worst role models in sports today. In the article, the author Hume looked only at the negative role models in sports. He mentions Tiger Woods' affairs, but fails to mention the positive impact Tiger has had in the African American culture. In class, we talked about the worst role models, but for every bad role model there was a great role model to counter. Hume failed to mention athletes Pat Tillman, Lance Armstrong, and Peyton Manning, all of which are great role models for young children.
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