Diatribe on Sports Stars

Personally, I am HUGE sports fan of both individual and team sports (collegiate or professional). I've always been interested in the business of sports and honestly, I have no problem with professional athletes being paid the millions of dollars that the contracts of today command. The level of natural ability and commitment it takes to reach this level is truly deserving of top dollar pay in this country. Not only that, but the owners, TV stations, and athletic companies are all making much larger fortunes of their own and these guys deserve their fair shares.

However!! I'm still amazed at the level of irresponsibility of today's pro athlete. I've never "walked in their shoes," but it is very difficult for me to feel compassion for a guy (Plaxico Burress) who feels the need to carry an unlicensed firearm into a packed night club in NY and gets two years in prison for shooting himself in the leg (actually for carrying the unlicensed firearm). I believe this one example speaks to a much larger problem in sports. The guys are not professionals. They bring their baggage with them into their new lifestyle, and it ends up costing them the chance at a life most of us only dream of. Is it not enough to make enough money to make you wealthy playing a sport?? Do you still feel it necessary to carry a gun when you're surrounded by bodyguards? Is it worth the risk of fighting dogs, smoking weed, drinking and driving? For God's sake, the NFL has a FREE program so players and coaches just have to make one call and someone will come pick them up and drive them home if they've been drinking. How many of us can say that?

But then again, maybe I'm being too hard on them. They are people. People inherantly make aggregious errors in judgment. I've done it. You've done it. We all have. But, for us the stakes are much lower. We can wreck our personal lives and be left with basically our own misery. For the pro athlete, the entire country is watching every move. So, we judge them. We get our feelings hurt; we say we would do different if we were in their position. But perhaps that's exactly what makes them so great at their job. Maybe the wreckless, thrill-seeker makes a PERFECT linebacker. Maybe it's that mentality to risk it all for the sake of visceral reaction that delivers the high performance on the field over and over again. Maybe the rest of us who type blogs, and do accounting, and only spectate do these things for a reason also. Our lives are much more calculated, much safer. We hide in our cubicles and take limited risks and rarely reach fame and glory.

Every time you hear the story of the sports star gone off-track, the league mandated canned apology is sure to follow. But why be sorry? Forcing contrition for actions hardly makes up for the years of encouragement to live that way that we all gave them. Hey athlete, be dangerous, be virile, be aggressive. But, make sure you don't tell anybody we said that.