Professional Athletes

There is an interesting article that is posted online at Time.com dated October 30, 2007.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1677608,00.html

This article got me to thinking that it seems like there has been a lot of problems lately with professional athletes. The thing that I don't understand is most of the athletes have the world by the proverbial balls. They make millions to play a game that they love, but yet they are constantly doing things to get into trouble. Unfortunately until team owners and leagues start to make these players take responsibility for their actions the athletes are going to continue to get into trouble.

I understand the argument that what a person does in their off time is not any of their employer's business, but in my opinion that argument goes right out of the window when you are a public figure. In my line of employment if you do something while you are off duty that is an embarrassment to the department you can face disciplinary action, so why then can't professional athletes be held to those same standards.

I understand that we have always had sports scandals but it seems to me that there are more of them recently. Or is it that the media picks up on these scandals a lot quicker and easier than they used to.

It is a shame that in this day and age, that there are very few professional athletes that children can look up to. I know that this will date me, but when I was growing up we had athletes like Michael Jordan, Walter Payton, and Ryne Sandburg to look up to. Yes I do know that we did have some scandals when I was a child such as the whole Pete Rose issue and Magic Johnson announcing that he was diagnosed with HIV and admitting to sleeping with numerous women, but as I mentioned earlier it seemed like those incidents were few and far between.

What really makes me mad though is there are two athletes that I looked up to as a kid that have let me down. They are Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire. When I was growing up the other kids in the neighborhood and I would trade baseball cards. Whenever I could get my hands on a Barry Bonds or Mark McGuire card I would jump at the chance. The majority of the their careers I still thought that they were great players and then both of them had to let me down with doping allegations. I know this will sound corny but to me it was almost like finding out that Santa Claus is not real.

To get back on track though, a more recent example of an athlete letting me down is Kobe Bryant. This guy was an awesome basketball player, has a smoking hot wife, and then has rape allegations. Sometimes I just want to sit back and say WTF!!

I think that there are still some professional athletes left that are suitable for kids to look up to as hero's. It just seems like it is harder to find them. I don't know what the problems that we don't hear more about the hero's and less about the problem athletes. Is it that the media feels that athletes getting in trouble makes for better news? Or is it that there really are that many problems with professional athletes? If the latter is true I find that very sad.