Don't Bet On Sports Heroes
By Keith Boykin, in sports
Monday, July 30 2007, 9:47AM
I just got back from Las Vegas and it seems a lot of the news from the past week has focused on sports. While I was walking past the sports betting complex at Caesar's Palace last week, America was busy talking about Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, allegedly involved in a dogfighting scandal. And while I slipped past hundreds of gamblers pulling the levers on the slot machines and rolling the dice at the crap tables, the FBI was investigating former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, accused of gambling on the very sport he officiated.
And it wasn't just football and basketball in the mix. Sitting in a sports bar at Bally's Paris Casino last week, I noticed on a TV screen that the major league baseball commissioner was trying to figure out what to do if scandal-plagued slugger Barry Bonds should hit his 756th home run anytime soon. And then from across the pond there were pictures of Tour de France biker Michael Rasmussen embroiled in a widening doping scandal that threatened the credibility of the entire race. Almost everywhere you look, professional sports were under siege this past week. Almost.
The front page of today's New York Times told a different story. A full-color picture showed the Iraqi soccer team defeating rival Saudi Arabia to win the Asia Cup Championship in Jakarta, Indonesia yesterday. And beneath that photo was an image of Iraqi citizens proudly carrying their flag and marching in the streets to celebrate the rare good news that comes from that country.
Long before the Iraqi soccer victory, any observer of the Olympic games would tell you that the power of sport to unite is as significant as its power to divide. But it seems we pay closer attention to sports when there's a major victory, a major upset or a major scandal. And over the past week we've seen plenty of major scandals.
I'm not here to pass judgment on Vick, Donaghy, Bonds or Rasmussen. I don't have enough information yet to determine their guilt or innocence, but many others have already concluded that they are guilty. Bob Barker, an animal rights activist and the legendary host of The Price Is Right, said the other day that Vick should get more than the maximum sentence for his crime. Maybe that's an argument for changing the law, but first shouldn't we determine if he's actually guilty?
The same is true for Barry Bonds. As long as he continues to wear the San Francisco Giants uniform and no one has proved that he's broken the rules, shouldn't we give him the benefit of the doubt? I know it's easy to buy into the hype of a sports scandal because we tend to think that it's all about money these days anyway. Nobody really loves sports for the sake of sports, we complain.
Well that may be true for some professional athletes, but what else would we expect from a culture that values money over all else? Should we expect athletes to play for free or reduced wages? Let's be real. We aren't likely to reign in the corporatization and commercialization of sports if we aren't willing to reign in the corporatization and commercialization of everything else in our society. From prisons to politics, everything is about money these days. Why should sports be any different? That doesn't make it right. It just makes it reality.
I've been a vocal critic of various sports figures when they've gone astray, but I have never lost faith in sport itself. Beneath all the cynicism, I still believe in the power of sport to bring us together, to inspire us, to teach us discipline and to encourage respect for rules. As a former college athlete and an active recreational athlete, I have always loved sports. For me, it all started when I was a kid watching ABC's Wide World of Sports.
I remember the words almost as well as I remember the pledge of allegiance. Constant repetition is a very effective long-term memory tool. I heard the message almost every Saturday afternoon when I was younger. "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport...The thrill of victory...And the agony of defeat...The human drama of athletic competition...This is ABC's Wide World of Sports." Back then, I loved to watch sports on television. Today I rarely do.
I think then I was a bit naive about sports and sports heroes. I idolized Muhammad Ali and O.J. Simpson. I admired boxer Sugar Ray Leonard and looked up to NFL quarterback Doug Williams. And my favorite team to watch on Monday Night Football was the Seattle Seahawks. This was before the day when Michael Jordan became Michael Jordan. This was before Tiger Woods and the Williams Sisters (Venus and Serena) would draw me to golf and tennis.
Just last year, in the wake of the New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets bench-clearing brawl that left 10 players ejected and 7 suspended, I asked whether athletes should be role models. I said then, and I still believe now, that athletes will always be role models, whether they like it or not:
"Maybe the good, decent players today get overlooked in the media because they're too busy being good, and that's not an interesting story to the press. And maybe we need to remind our kids today that they don't have to pick up a ball to be a hero, but there's nothing wrong with them picking up a ball if they want to.
Whatever the case, professional athletes will always be role models. Whether they all deserve that status is a different story. But that's no different from any other field. Not all doctors and lawyers are good people either. So yes, let's hold our athletes to a high standard, but let's not judge all of them by the mistakes of a few."
Comments conceal
Derrick from Philly
July 30 2007, 11:04AM
Well, I don't know if athletes want to be role models. It must be a difficult pressured position to be in. Everybody can't be a Jackie Robinson.
I wonder if they mind being sex symbols though--that picture of Barry Bonds is fierce. I love beef.
Mikey
July 30 2007, 1:11PM
I don't think athletes SHOULD be role models and I think it's a little silly for people to consider them as such. A lot of these athletes are thrown millions of dollars before they are really grown adults and are still learning. Like Michael Vick for example he joined the Falcons at age 21 and got millions of dollars to join that team and sure you're an adult at 21 but you're still young and learning about life. Hell you just became officially legal at 21 and then even then you still can't do certain things unless your 25.
edwin greene
July 30 2007, 2:20PM
It's unfortunate that athletes are considered "role models" especially if, like Charles Barkley, they do not want to be role models.
I thought a role model was an adult of at least middle years who had lived a life and had some accumulated wisdom/knowledge to offer - not some kid with nothing to recommend except an athletic gift and a big contract.
The athletes of today do not want to be like Jackie Robinson. But then they have no reason to be like JR because the barriers he had to overcome they do not have to face. They could not be like him even if they wanted to because the world he knew, thankfully, is gone.
Blue
July 30 2007, 4:50PM
It's not a matter of what they want. They ARE role models. I don't think it's right, but it is what it is. Never being a sports fan this was a nonissue for me - but I knew tons of boys my age who worshipped those guys. It comes with what they do. They should keep that in mind. Yes, their lives are their's to live, but people are watching them and they need to stop acting as if that does not matter. Regular folks like us are even role models to SOMEBODY. You never know who is watching you. I was stunned when word got back to me, the gay cousin in the family, that my teenage cousins look up to me and want to be like me. I had no clue whatsoever they were even paying attention to me, in fact, I kind of figured they talked shit like a lot of other folks in the family do. But their thing is, he handles his business and we want to do that. So for them to say they aren't role models/don't want to be role models is not realistic. Like I said, I don't know that that should be the case, but what can you do?
cmoney
July 30 2007, 4:57PM
They should be role models for playing their particular sport and nothing else. If you are going to be a lawyer, you model yourself after a Johhny Cochran or a Thurgood Marshall--great lawyers. If you want to be the best basketball player, you might want to consider how Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant (damn I hate giving him credit) got to where they are in basketball. Beyond that, there is nothing that these men and women need to be teaching us. Unfortuantely, their marketing people and their teams always push them outside of their areas of expertise--into fashion, movies, music, being celebrities in the "in" crowd, pushing sports drinks and paraphernalia, just looking hot in a tennis shoe commercial. They should not be role models because some of them have no damn sense and no experience in the real world. Some, like Michael Vick are stupid as hell. But damn, Michael Vick is fine as shit--I can still look at him, can't I?
saint james
July 30 2007, 5:42PM
Responsible parents make the best role models.
Blue
July 30 2007, 7:06PM
I know that's right Cmoney, LOL. He is from my hometown. He is dumb as hell, but he could get the boxer briefs, no question! Lawd!
edwin greene
July 31 2007, 7:04AM
With all the concern over the male athletes, the plight of Marion Jones is under the radar. After becoming a female sports icon, she now supposedly has only a couple thousand $ left to her name. She reportedly had to sell off several properties, including the house she bought her mother, to pay lawyers to defend her against allegations of using performance enhancing drugs. She has said these allegations are false but they're probably true.
It's interesting that Barry Bonds can carry on so well under the same allegations but poor Marian seems to have fallen apart.
mike
August 4 2007, 6:17AM
Too much money at too young an age with too many hangers-on and not enough good advice being given (would they listen anyway?). Even so, how many professional athletes do NOT get involved in messes? As for Barry Bonds, not one allegation against him has been proven. It is all innuendo and hear-say. He has never failed a drug test. Yet, the media rakes Barry over the coals, day in and day out. Michael Vick deserves the right to assumed innocence until proven guilty. But, some of us need to understand that dog-fighting is not a sport. It is extreme cruelty and the man (or woman) who would support such cruelty is a sadist and would be capable of doing the same to another human being. My suggestion is to take some of these dog-fight lovers, smear their bodies with meat juice and then throw them into the pit and let the dogs tear THEIR a**es into pieces. Guarantee they'd check out for some other sport.
elg
August 4 2007, 10:21AM
I believe in giving someone the benefit of the doubt but let's keep it real. We all know (don't we) that some performance enhancing drugs cannot be detected by any current drug test. And when a drug test is developed that can detect the performance enhancing drug in question, someone puts out a new performance enhancing drug that cannot be detected by current testing methods and on it goes.
Just because someone has never failed a drug test doesn't mean they've never used performance enhancing drugs, it just means they've never been caught. Let's keep it real.
PDQ
August 25 2007, 1:41AM
When you are a professional athlete and you sign on the dotted line of your multi-million dollar contract, you agree to be a role model. Sports teams by nature interact with the community, local schools, children's groups, etc. which is why they have behavioral standards. They don't want to be embarrassed by some thug acting up.
As an athlete you're being paid insane wages to play a children's game. Part of that bargain is that you have to be a role model. If you can't handle that, go back to college and try to pass your courses without all the "assistance" that athletes get. If you can't handle college on your own, go back to the damn 'hood.
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