There are three sports-related stories getting a lot of play this week, all three combining to destroy our admiration of sports heroes. The message we're getting loud and clear goes something like this:
Stop admiring sports people who achieve at an extremely high level. Because the person you admire most likely achieved so much because he or she cheated or was given an unfair advantage.
Lance Armstrong: I was disappointed at how it seemed that people destroyed his reputation and took away all his trophies and medals by accusing him of doping without proof. Now they tell us that the reason he never had a positive test was because he or someone close to him was paying off the corrupt officials that oversaw the testing procedures.
I'm cynical, and take with a grain of salt whether the payoff charges are true. But the larger message is that "everybody" in cycling was doping. All the Tour de France winners over the last several years seem to have been caught doping in what they say was a rampant practice, with doctors who were experts in avoiding positive tests helped the athletes. So now we don't know whether any TdF winners over the last decade or so were actually clean.
Look at olympic gold medalists who took banned performance enhancing drugs. Every silver medalist who knew he or she was absolutely clean is justified in being very angry to lose that gold to a cheater.
Rather than going on Oprah to confess, Lance should have held a Press Conference. He should have told the truth, whatever that is, then announced he was retiring to his private life and will no longer be a public figure. That's the right way to do it. I'm disappointed that he was willing to go the exploitation route to try to rehabilitate his image.
Chip Kelly went on an interview with the Philadelphia Eagles. He came back and told his college, Oregon, that he decided to stay. Perhaps too coincidentally, he got all the Oregon recruits signed for Oregon right before he announced, "I changed my mind, I'll be taking the Eagles' job".
Maybe the Eagles came back with an offer he couldn't refuse. Maybe after taking some time to think about it, he decided that job would be best for his career. I hope so. But that story smells.
Manti Te'o was part of a big story last Fall about his girlfriend dying of cancer. It brought him fantastic press and the sympathy and increased admiration for Notre Dame fans all over the country. Now we find out the girlfriend didn't die. She didn't even exist. Notre Dame says Manti was duped by some sort of internet prank.
Sorry, I don't buy it. If your girlfriend is somebody you've never met but spend lots of time flirting with over the internet, she doesn't qualify as a girlfriend. Whether or not you were duped by the fake cancer story is irrelevant. She wasn't your girlfriend, but some fantasy date you found on the world wide web. Manti should have stopped the story when it started by telling the press that the girlfriend who died of cancer was somebody he'd never actually met, but just communicated with online.
All these stories suggest we should never get caught up in a sports personality as someone to emulate or admire. Because in real life that personality may be a complete and total jerk or fraud. So where does that leave the kids?
Without heroes, how can young kids aspiring to be great at some endeavour, or even just a person of high integrity and character, find the role models they need to actually achieve their goals?
No comments:
Post a Comment