It's more than just "role models"
g0101 said:
Professional athletes shouldn’t be idolized and viewed as role models by the millions of children around the world.
It's not a matter of idolizing an athlete. It's a matter of sending the message to aspiring young athletes that "this is what is necessary to make it". It's not that you're not making any good points. In fact, I agree that it's a mistake to make role models out of professional athletes in general, and the elite specifically.
But imagine you're testing candidates for a job: "Some candidates are able to be successful on their own merits; some others need a little 'help'."
If steroids are what it takes, there is no longer any need for natural talent and athletic ability. And the natural athlete is what made competitive sports so important in the first place. Now it's just, as Syzygys has rightly expressed, "entertainment, a freakshow".
I would like to consider what may at first seem a strange source, Moody and Martin's
The Course of Irish History:
The nationalistic, and even separatist impact of Yeats and his friends was profound, but it was limited and confined mainly to fellow poetic natures. However, what the literary revival lacked in popular appeal was supplied by the Gaelic League. The Gaelic League, founded by Douglas Hyde and Eoin MacNeill in 1893, had its own dream--at first to keep Irish alive where it was still spoken, and later, to restore Irish as the spoken language of the country. By giving up our native language and customs, said Hyde, we had thrown away the best claim which we had upon the world's recognition of us as a separate nation. Therefore the task facing the present generation of Irishmen was the re-creation of a separate cultural Irish nation .... Hyde argued that the practical steps taken by the Gaelic Athletic Association to revive the national games had done more good for Ireland in five years than all the talk for sixty .... (295-96)
Perhaps a more intuitive connection?
Sport and the Olympic tradition are important parts of Slovenia's cultural heritage. In his book Slava vojvodine Kranjske ("The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola") the renowned historian Janez Vajkard Valvasor wrote about the skiers of the Bloška planota (Bloke plain) as early as 1689. The early gymnastic clubs that formed in the mid-19th century brought sports closer to people and made a significant contribution to shaping Slovenian national consciousness. (
Republic of Slovenia
Or something a little more contemporary?
Words can never describe how grateful we are because our great heroes the Iraqi national soccer team made a miracle by winning Asia Championship ....
.... The most important thing our national team did is giving you an important lesson about the most important subject in the school of life. The lesson was (how to be A Real Iraqi). They worked together. We didn’t have 11 players in the field, we had only one player but with 11 bodies. This great player fought like a real lion and like real eagle. He controlled the ground and the sky and captured happiness in spite of his wounds. It was hard job but the Iraqi brave knight accomplished the mission successfully because this knight carries deep in his pure heart the tears of all the widows and all the orphans, the grief of all the old men and more than that, this honest knight carries the hopes of all the honest real Iraqis .... (
Anonymous via McClatchy)
Or something perhaps a bit more American?
.... Historians argue over the question of how deeply baseball affected social mobility in America, but there is little doubt that many young men used it to climb to financial success as well as achieve fame. The players who made up the Red Stockings listed occupations—jeweler, clerk, hatter, bookkeeper—that indicated working-class or lower-middle-class status. Professional baseball gave these men an opportunity to earn incomes far beyond those of their peers. Baseball was becoming a form of male identity and a status symbol for those who could play the game ....
.... In 1874, in an attempt to make a financial killing, Wright and Spalding hit upon the idea of touring England and showing off the new American game. The tour interrupted the regular season and showed how greatly financial considerations now controlled baseball. Wright and Spalding were motivated by two contrary but linked ideas—nationalism and the desire to make money. (
Rossi)
Beyond the flash and dazzle of superstars and the selfishness of ridiculous player contracts, sports are inextricably linked with human cultures. The idea is that athletes are an example of what the human body can do. Most of us are impressed when we see the amputee running on prosthetics, but what about when the able-bodied are using cybernetic enhancements? Work with me here: There was a video game back in the 1990s called
Cyberball. It was rather entertaining; my brother and I played often. The object was, simply, to play 7 on 7 American football with robots. And it was spectacular. It would be
very spectacular to watch as a real spectator sport, what with the robots smoking and burning and exploding. The precise play would be amazing. But what
human connection would there be? The farther we get from the natural athlete, the less important the role of sports in the culture. Cultural heritage? Identity? Nationalism? Unity for a war-torn nation? These aspects bear certain human value in history, and the less human the sports--the less accessible they are to humans in their natural state--the less the human value.
It is, to me, a shame that the national identity fostered by American baseball is its commercial value. Only two decades ago, baseball was taught to children as a model of fair play, of integrity, of the value of hard work and cooperation. I won't blame it on Michael Jordan, but rather on all the wanna-bes that demanded the same respect even though their talent wasn't quite the same. I'll blame it on the fans who wanted to pretend that the differences between Jordan and the next superstar were irrelevant. On the agents who negotiated ridiculous contracts. On the fans who kept paying out for it all. Basketball, baseball, football, and now even soccer are selling out their community foundations for revenue. It's a tragedy.
And in the meantime, the competition becomes more and more fierce. That children will turn to steroids is inevitable, and needs not have anything to do with "role models". It has to do with the desire to be a paid athlete, and the facts of what must be done. If one's natural gifts aren't enough, what's wrong with a little boost? What happens when the most naturally gifted are no longer worth considering unless they destroy themselves with steroids?
Competitive sports have immense human value, effect powerful cultural dynamics.
The issue of role models is irrelevant. If what children learn is that artificial means are the only route to success as an athlete, they will turn to steroids.
Why don't we design shoes for runners that have little spring mechanisms like the metal prosthetics for amputees? You can certainly run faster if pushed along by springs. Why not, when the technology is available, make bionic enhancement the standard for athletic competition? (Jamie Sommers and Steve Austin for Team USA vs. the Fembots?) At what age will we have our children's limbs amputated for bionic replacements? At what age will we tweak their central nervous systems for cybernetic interface? Or turn our children into laboratory experiments for our own pride? ("I'm so proud of Billy, winning the Nationals," said Mrs Johnson. "Having his genes twiddled
in utero was really worth it!" Her husband remarked, "It makes my heart swell with pride to know he is the produce of my loins.")
What's the point of giving a damn about sports at all, then?
____________________
Notes:
