Say It Ain’t So, Chuck

Charles Barkley is not a role model. He went out of his way to tell us that, in a 90’s ad campaign for his Nike shoes.

Charles is right. He shouldn’t have to raise our kids. But there’s one problem with Barkley’s logic; the kids are watching.

The interesting thing about our society is that we have used it to create heroes. We exalt those who achieve greatness in athletics above all else in our social circles. I realize that not everyone holds sport in high esteem, but this is a sports column, so I’ll address the folks that do follow our games. But we do this. We take a man (or woman) and we measure his accomplishments, statistics, and abilities against those of his peers to determine his worth in society.

Bryan Allain made a good point when he told me that we laud athletes because they excel in the games we love to play. In a sense they live out our dreams, we live vicariously through them, and we don’t like it when they do something boneheaded to screw it up. We can’t relate to a rocket scientist or nuclear physicist. But we can relate to the players that have immeasurable God-given ability in the games we love.

So Charles Barkley is a role model. Roger Clemens was one too. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant—all in the same boat. The list of megastars is endless, and we elevated these fine athletes as the pinnacle of success in our time.

We like to believe we want our sports heroes to be squeaky clean. We want athletes who have other-worldly abilities, but also are nice, decent people, devoid of any vices or unsavory characteristics. We take their achievements and make them among the most celebrated aspects of North American existence. If you’re good enough, all is forgiveable (see: Bryant, Kobe), or at least forgotten for a time.

In light of all the events in the past few years, I’ve been wanting to write something on the morality of sport. Words like scandal have been used inexhaustibly over the past few years as many of our favorite ahtletes seem to have trouble using their moral compass.

The reason I’ve had a hard time writing on it is three-fold; first, I’m not exactly a perfect moral citizen myself, and so would feel strange writing a chastistment on others. Second, I love sports and the greats who play the game, and finally I’m really not that surprised. Athletes are imperfect? Welcome to the club.

We know the basic elements of fall doctrine, we know men are not perfect, yet we’re shocked when athletes stretch the limits of ethics to get to the top of their respective profession. A dangerous combination of humanness and insecurity that leaves us with a desire for especially noteworthy accomplishments.

And so we see the same trends in sport that we experience in everyday life. The meteoric rise and fall of Enron is an example. The weaknesses that drive CEO’s to cook their books and lie to investors are the same ones that drive men like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds. We want power, recognition, respect, and riches and will do unconscionable things to get it.

These desires almost always end in shame. Like most sin, most immoral behavior, there is not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Athletes, like all of us, are trying to make sense of the world we all live in, only they’re doing it with a camera on them 24/7. A-Rod is not the first married guy to go to a strip-club, it is simply more notable when he does, because he is supposed to be a hero. He is in the public eye, something we want him to realize is a privilege, something he should desperately not want to risk. Patrick Roy and Jason Kidd were not the first husbands to have a domestic altercation with their wives, but we hear a lot more about it because of who they are.

I’m not condoning this behavior. Far from it. If anything I think it should remind us all of how we are, that we’re all imperfect and need to remain humble. I catch myself judging athletes, and when I realize it, I can’t even begin to give a good reason.

We love to build these guys up, put them on a pedastal and idolize them as heroes, but maybe even more we love to haul them down and drag them through the mud when we’re done showering them with accolades. It is the ultimate ‘what have you done for me lately?’ mentality. I think we love to praise these guys for their accomplishments that make them ‘better’ than the average joe, but we love even more to reveal them for who they really are and revel in how their mistakes are much greater than our own.

There is a formula that I’ve noticed takes place with professional athletes in our era. I wrote a bit last year about Sidney Crosby that was kind of along these lines, but for the sake of this example I’ll use O.J. Mayo. Mayo, touted as 14-year-old, begins to get rave reviews as the ‘next one’. He goes to high school and plays well, continues to heap in the praise and everyone salivates over the kid who they said would come to the NBA and be better than LeBron. Sounds ridiculous now, but it’s what they wanted to believe. Then our subject begins to get into some trouble, show signs of a slight attitude problem and we discover that the cycle of praise is complete; it is time for the cycle of scrutiny. We then begin to tear the young man down, pick him apart, realize he’s not as good as LeBron and accuse him of not achieving his potential, which ironically was a potential we cast on him before he could drive a car. Mayo is playing well in college (20.7 pts, 4.6 reb, 3.1 asts) but he’s not averaging 35 per game and so we tear him apart.

The cycle eventually comes to an end, it did for Kobe and Crosby and even now Eli Manning, and if the player can endure he’s likely no worse for the wear. But it symbolizes what we love to do with athletes. We elevate them to a level that leaves them no where to go but down, and we send them upon the first appearance of their humanity.

Even now I wonder what this all means. Some say that this kind of attention, negative or otherwise, comes with the territory, and they’re likely right. But it is true that these men are role models, they’re in the public eye and they should act responsibly. But that’s also the mantra for politicians, and we know how they can be (another article for another time).

From a spiritual standpoint this all seems fairly easy to peg. We’re not perfect and neither are athletes. We are searching and so are they. If anything, this shows us that all the admiration, money, and achievement doesn’t bring the euphoria we assume it does. Their mistakes are not any different from our own, they simply occur on a grander stage, with greater magnitude.

Because of this moral issues in sport will never go away. They’ll stay role models, they’ll make mistakes, we’ll cringe and sigh and shake our heads. For every great moment, there will be another to bring us down.

But at the end of it all, Charles will be proven right. He probably shouldn’t raise our kids.