Fallen sports heroes media and celebrity culture

Sports Scandals Reflect the Culture at Large Are Athletes Good Role Models, 2014

Dennis Maley is the editor of the Bradenton Times and a former columnist for Boxing World magazine. Prior to his career in journalism, he was a captain in the US Army and participated in the Army World Class Athlete Program as a heavyweight boxer.

The rash of scandals that have swept professional sports in recent years is not only indicative of widespread corruption in professional athletics; similar corruption has been discovered in the business and political worlds. At the core of these scandals is greed, which is fueled by our culture's infatuation with wealth and material gain. Instead of feigning shock when an athlete fails to live up to society's professed ideals, sports fans should consider how their own values might be contributing to a culture where scandalous behavior is required to get ahead.

Americans seem to love feigning shock any time we are "betrayed" by those we worship, and the media is always willing to sensationalize a story that offers elements of corruption and deceit. But from [cyclist] Lance Armstrong to Major League Baseball, to the crooks on Wall Street who nearly

took down the global economy, evidence abounds that we live in a culture of cheating where the

rewards for skirting the rules vastly outweigh the punishments for getting caught. It's time to stop blaming the people we enable and take a look at our collective role in creating such an unethical society.

In just the past few years, the sports world has been confronted with the use of performance enhancing drugs more directly than any time in the history of sport. Enough so, that there now seems to be a critical mass of concern in our society, something like a collective shrug asking, shouldn't we do something here? Collectively, we don't really seem to have much of an idea of what that should be. It's sort of like gun control. It's obvious something is going terribly wrong in our culture, but where to start?

Both issues face the same primary obstacle—money. Like selling guns, sports is big business and

athletes are among the most handsomely-paid members of our society. Just look at Forbes' list of

top-paid athletes. Many of them make more than a Fortune 500 CEO [chief executive officer], just through their endorsement deals. Naturally, those who pay the insanely rich athletes are even higher up the food chain. It brings to mind the old [comedian] Chris Rock joke: [Basketball player] Shaquille O'Neal is rich; the guy who writes Shaq's checks is wealthy. So the stakeholders draw a lot of water, and in a society like ours, where money directly influences influence, change doesn't come easy.

If we stopped paying $200 for "official" replica jerseys, three figures for good seats, $9 for flat, watery beer and $150 for athlete-endorsed $10 shoes made in an Indonesian sweatshop, then the $100 million contracts would dry up quick.

But let's remember why top athletes make more than the GDP [gross domestic product] of some small countries. We pay them. That's right, stuff all of that nostalgic baloney about how back in the day [baseball players] Lou Gehrig made this or Ted Williams made that. None of them worked

for free and none of them ever offered to so far as I know. They earned what the market bore. What did happen, was post-WWII prosperity, television, cable and a giant global economy in which

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international corporations became awash in unthinkable wealth with which to advertise their products.

The value of everything went up and when you look at where we dropped our collective dough, sports and entertainment are near the top of the list. So the market for those providing that product exploded and the people most instrumental in delivering it began demanding their fair share. We can gripe about how much it costs to go to an NFL [National Football League]

game or get box seats to see the [New York] Yankees, but at the end of the day, it's a market, and the demand sets the value of the supply.

If we stopped paying $200 for "official" replica jerseys, three figures for good seats, $9 for flat, watery beer and $150 for athlete-endorsed $10 shoes made in an Indonesian sweatshop, then the $100 million contracts would dry up quick. I don't do any of that, you might say. Well, neither do I, but enough Americans do that a market exists. I don't buy Rolls Royces either, but they still sell enough of them to keep the lights on in West Sussex. The same goes for the actor getting $20 million a movie off of the $11 ticket at the multiplex, or the band who's hauling in a fortune on overpriced concert tickets. If an athlete's product is bringing in outrageous sums of money, where should it go? In a capitalist society, why are they any less deserving than the guys who started Facebook?

With such a lofty market out there, it's not only going to draw a lot of aspiring participants, but it's also going to up the ante on what most of them are willing to do to get a ticket on that money train. As consumers, we either reward or punish those decisions, and while a group of sports writers may have kept a bunch of juiced up ball players out of the Hall of Fame, they're still laughing all the way to the bank. And think about when the market for sports exploded the most—during the dawn of the modern PED [performance enhancing drug] era.

Looking for an Edge

To be sure, PED's have been around as long as sport itself. From ancient Greek Olympians using drugs like opium to the gladiators of Rome using stimulants like strychnine, to cocaine's introduction

by competitors in various sports in the late 19th century, athletes have always looked for an edge. Most of the time, anything short of rigging a competition by unknowingly sedating someone or paying

them to throw the event, was considered fair game. Even during the supposed golden era of baseball, many star players later admitted to using cocaine and other stimulants regularly, which, before steroids, were the premier way to impact performance through drugs.

Nazi Germany experimented with testosterone enhancers as early as the 1930's, but in 1958 things changed for good when Dr. John Bosley Zieglar invented the FDA-approved steroid Dianabol, which could effectively synthesize the effects of testosterone, while being easily and cheaply manufactured and administered on a mass scale. This was different than a couple of uppers. Steroids were an ability for athletes to defy DNA, and within 20 years they were commonplace in sports.

Zieglar later denounced his creation when he saw how it was being abused by athletes, but the genie was out of the bottle. Nonetheless, it's useful to remember that the rise of anabolic steroids coincided

with advances in sports nutrition, economic factors like abundant and inexpensive meat becoming a

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much bigger part of the American diet, and scientific applications of weight training. Americans, and athletes in particular, were getting bigger in the 1980's than they had been in previous decades, so the willful suspension of disbelief needed to imagine some of these guys were clean was somewhat mitigated by fans who hadn't grown up in the same era as these young kids. Maybe it's all this weight training and vitamins they do nowadays?

As a society, we are quite good at believing the things that confirm our own desires, while ignoring the ever more numerous ones that prove otherwise.

But by the mid-1990's, when all of those things had been a common part of our everyday culture for a generation, it became a bit more difficult to delude ourselves, especially as rapid advancement in PED's (itself driven by the insane money in sports) had greatly changed the degree to which athletes could enhance themselves physically. The ingestion of Human Growth Hormone became more common and better understood scientifically. Existing drugs became more potent and new designer

drugs emerged targeting almost every facet of physical performance, drugs that to some extent could

circumvent the genetic lottery that had otherwise ruled over professional sports at the highest level.

American sports fans were right there cheering on these new mutant super-athletes. We pretended that it was suddenly possible for men in their late thirties and even 40's to inexplicably add massive amounts of lean muscle mass they didn't have in their teens and 20's, decades after their natural testosterone levels would have peaked; that athletes' hat and sneaker sizes could change in their 20's, long after the human head and feet stop growing; that linebackers who were once considered oversized at 250 lbs. could suddenly weigh up to 300 and be faster than running backs of just a generation earlier.

Still, when they get caught doing what everyone knew they were doing in the first place, we say that it is us who is disappointed in them. I'm sorry, but that seems like blaming a director when you find out the special effects used to blow up the Grand Canyon were CGI [computer generated imagery]. In fact, it also sounds a whole lot like the same self-serving naivete that preceded the run up to financial crises, with everyone from everyday joes to Wall Street CEO's telling themselves (and anyone who'd listen) that the housing bubble could continue to grow infinitely despite basic economic principles, and we could become a nation where everyone was a rich landlord and no one was a humble tenant.

Looking for heroes in the world of professional sports is a fool's errand and it always has been.

Selective Ignorance

As a society, we are quite good at believing the things that confirm our own desires, while ignoring the ever more numerous ones that prove otherwise. Is it a surprise that a nation that found Tony Soprano [main character in the HBO show The Sopranos], a homicidal, sociopathic gangster who stole anything within reach, to be its most endearing television character hasn't prosecuted a single banking executive after a global financial crisis supported almost entirely by wholesale fraud? Is it a surprise that a nation reared on superheroes and video games idolizes today's gladiators who by the miracle of modern science have actually been allowed to look like the hulking cartoons that once mesmerized us?

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In a country where all of the top pop culture—hit music, reality TV, movies, etc.—revolves around tales of gluttonous wealth, wasteful and unsustainable consumption, and other forms of resource- driven debasement; a place where we advertise a legal drug for every possible ailment plus a few imagined ones, our concern is probably better described as curiosity. Like most things in our culture, we know something is amiss, but then again why wouldn't it be?

What about the example it sets for our children, you might ask? The answer isn't pretty, but in truth, it probably sets an effective example of how to best prosper in such a wicked society—cheat. If you want your children to learn better values, I'd suggest you take care to teach them yourself. Bring them up to find their heroes at home and in their community, and to know that success shouldn't be measured by how many precious resources you can afford to waste air-conditioning a 15,000 square foot home, filling up a fleet of gas-guzzling cars and putting blood diamonds in your watch that some kid in Liberia lost their arm for. Looking for heroes in the world of professional sports is a fool's errand and it always has been. We just used to market athletes differently before the days when the American Dream became keeping up with the Kardashians.

Further Readings Books

Steve Bailey Athlete First: A History of the Paralympic Movement. Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.

Joel Best Everyone's a Winner: Life in Our Congratulatory Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011.

Tom Bunevich Sign This: The Real Truth About Your Sports Heroes and the Sports Autograph Industry. Tampa, FL: T&S Publishing, 2000.

David M. Carter and Darren Rovell On the Ball: What You Can Learn About Business from America's Sports Leaders. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall/Financial Times, 2003.

Fred Coalter A Wider Social Role for Sport: Who's Keeping the Score? London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2007.

Simon C. Darnell Sport for Development and Peace: A Critical Sociology. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012.

Debbie Elicksen Positive Sports: Professional Athletes and Mentoring Youth. Calgary, Canada: Freelance Communications, 2003.

Randolph M. Feezell Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

John Garrity Real Sports Heroes: Athletes Who Made a Difference. Kingston, NY: Total Sports Publishing, 2001.

John M. Hoberman Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Kathryn Jay More than Just a Game: Sports in American Life Since 1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

M.J. McNamee Sports, Virtues and Vices: Morality Plays. London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2008.

Patrick B. Miller and David K. Wiggins Sport and the Color Line: Black Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Geoff Nichols Sport and Crime Reduction: The Role of Sports in Tackling Youth Crime. London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2007.

Michael Novak The Joy of Sports: End Zones, Bases, Baskets, Balls, and the Consecration of the American Spirit, rev. ed. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1994.

David C. Ogden and Joel Nathan Rosen, eds. Fame to Infamy: Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

Thomas O'Toole Champions of Faith: Catholic Sports Heroes Tell Their Stories. Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 2001.

Sandra S. Prettyman Learning Culture Through Sports: Exploring the Role of Sports in Society. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.

Ken Rappoport and Barry Wilner They Changed the Game: Sports Pioneers of the Twentieth Century. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1999.

Stanley H. Teitelbaum Sports Heroes, Fallen Idols. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

Deborah V. Tudor Hollywood's Vision of Team Sports: Heroes, Race, and Gender. New York: Garland, 1997.

Lawrence A. Wenner, ed. Fallen Sports Heroes, Media, and Celebrity Culture. New York: P. Lang, 2013.

Janet Woolum Outstanding Women Athletes: Who They Are and How They Influenced Sports in America. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1992.

Periodicals and Internet Sources José M. Alamillo "Beyond the Latino Sports Hero: The Role of Sports in Creating Communities, Networks, and Identities," National Park Service, n.d. (accessed April 5, 2013). www.nps.gov.

Steve Buckley and Karen Guregian "Boston's Sports Stars Take the Lead: Athletes Recognize, Embrace Their Duty in Helping City Heal from Marathon Bombings," Boston Herald, April 28, 2013. http://bostonherald.com.

Mac Engel "Commentary: A True Hero Remembered in the Home of Sports 'Heroes,'" McClatchy DC, February 16, 2013. www.mcclatchydc.com.

Bob Frantz "Today's Sports Stars Fail to Set a Good Example for Young Athletes," SF Examiner, August 14, 2011. www.sfexaminer.com.

Simon Kuper "Dangerous Myth of the Role Model Athlete," Financial Times, February 15, 2013. www.ft.com.

Andrew Skinner Lopata "Athletes Can Set Example on Domestic Violence," Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, March 3, 2010. http://special.registerguard.com.

Miranda Murphy "Sports Heroes Are Needed," Southeast Sun, March 14, 2013. www.southeastsun.com.

William S. Paxton "Musial Last of Our Sports Heroes," Connecticut Post, January 27, 2013. www.ctpost.com.

Leonard Pitts Jr. "Gay Athletes Need to Be True Sports Heroes," Detroit Free Press, March 8, 2013. www.freep.com.

Bill Zuck "Use Sports Role Models the Right Way," Sun Chronicle, February 10, 2013.

www.thesunchronicle.com.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2014 Greenhaven Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.

Source Citation Maley, Dennis. "Sports Scandals Reflect the Culture at Large." Are Athletes Good Role

Models. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2014. At Issue. Rpt. from "Sports Scandals Reflect Our Culture at Large." Bradenton Times. 2013. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.

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