May/June 2003
Heroes or Zeros
Pro Athletes as Role Models?
by Randy Franz
Since he was age 6, Evan Matthews could tell you the names of every player on the Boston Red Sox, all 25, plus any on the injured list. To him, they are Pedro, Nomar, Manny, et. al. No last name necessary. But it isn't just the names. He gives you the jersey numbers, too. Today, Matthews, age 9, of Medfield, Massachusetts, delves much deeper.
Ask him what he thinks of Carl Everett, who left the Sox after the 2001 season. "He loses his temper sometimes," Matthews says. "If the ball hits him or if the umpire calls a strike and he thinks it's a ball. But he's a pretty good hitter and good fielder."
Your favorite? "Manny," he says of slugging outfielder Manny Ramirez. "Good hitter, fielder and baserunner. And he doesn't lose his temper like Everett, because he doesn't want to get thrown out."
The Celtics, the Patriots, the Bruins -- whatever sport is in season, Matthews is up-to-date on the ins and outs of his hometown team. Along with being a huge sports fan, Matthews gets good grades in school, picks up his room and lends a hand with his three younger sisters. His father, Paul, sees real positives in Evan observing the enormous skill and sometimes boorish behavior of today's highly paid professional athletes. Like it or not, they are role models for his son.
"I do think it is inescapable," says Paul Matthews, age 40, a former college ice hockey player who is an executive with a benefits consultant firm in Boston. "But I think looking at them as human beings, kind of discussing what's good and what isn't good, to some degree, puts them into perspective. It humanizes them and maybe makes them less the subject for idolization and more the subject for measured admiration."
Hero Worship
Pro athletes have confounded Americans for the past 30 years. The hero worship of sports stars through the first 70 years of the 20th century eventually gave way to a more guarded, jaded outlook. Players' salaries became astronomical, causing many people to believe they were overpaid and pampered. Today's average salary in the National Basketball Association is nearly $4 million a year. In 1983 it was $275,000. Evolving free agency in athletes' contracts allowed them to move among teams more easily. Hence, fewer players stayed in one city and bonded with the community.
| "...discussing what's good and what isn't good, to some degree, puts them into perspective. It humanizes them and maybe makes them less the subject for idolization and more the subject for measured admiration." |
The media changed radically, too. Even before the Internet and 24-hour sports channels, print media led the charge to more detailed reporting about players' lives, whether on the field, in the locker room or outside the stadium. Readers discovered their once sacred heroes suffered from many of the same frailties they did. Until the 1970s, the press had a covert understanding with the players they covered that the personal stuff would stay out of the headlines. Few reported, until much later, that Green Bay Packers wide receiver Max McGee starred in the 1966 Super Bowl despite a raging hangover from partying all night on the eve of the game.
With today's cable sports shows, satellite feeds of thousands of games and round-the-clock Internet updates, fans are inundated with minutiae about players in all cities -- warts and all. When basketball star Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers announced in 1992 that he was HIV-positive, the news was covered in painstaking detail, including reports of his womanizing ways that might have led to the disease. Magic, of course, had been married for many years.
Should Pro-Athletes Be Role Models?
Is that a good role model? The media glare on him left it open for debate. On one hand, Magic handled the crisis admirably, and his subsequent efforts to educate people about living with HIV underscore positive values. The man is undeniably a positive force who has done much good for other people, particularly in his life after basketball. On the other hand, he failed to denounce in strong terms the wanton sexual promiscuousness that pervades the NBA and other pro sports. Athletes temporarily slowed down before resuming their escapades, according to sports insiders.
The question of whether successful pro athletes are or are not role models remains practically moot. Like it or not, they are celebrities in every way, and celebrities are emulated. There is a "cultural assumption that athletes should be role models," according to Jim Mathisen and Tony Ladd, who coauthored Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestantism and the Development of American Sports (Baker Book House, 1999).
If athlete-as-role-model generally is assumed, then we also must assume that not all role models are positive ones.
| J.B. McCormack of the University of Chicago produced a study in which she asked teenagers who were the most influential people in their lives. She found that more than 90 percent of those polled named personal acquaintances rather than public figures. |
Dennis Rodman, a cross-dressing hard-partying pro basketball star in the 1990s, had parents reeling when their little ones emulated his pink hair and pierced face. Rodman once did a book signing in a mall dressed in a full wedding gown and women's makeup. Rather than show these to be publicity-seeking antics, he compounded his image with delinquent behavior. He rebelled against team rules so much that, despite his All-Star talent, Rodman was traded or let go by five teams in his final eight seasons. He was famous for missing practices and arriving late to games to go on all-night drinking binges or on sudden party junkets to Las Vegas. He set the official record in the city of Newport Beach, California, for having the most police calls to his home for disturbance-related offenses.
Two basketball players for the New York Knicks, both born-again Christians, were vilified in 2001 when it came out that they talked openly in a team Bible Study about the Jews' role in killing Jesus Christ. "They had his blood on their hands," Charlie Ward said. Teammate Allan Houston concurred. The outcry was swift and significant. They were labeled anti-Semitic and worse. Business Week opined: "These are role models? God forbid."
Positive Role Models
On the flip side, one season Rodman played alongside one of the NBA's truly wonderful role models: David Robinson of the San Antonio Spurs. He encompasses everything one would want in a role model: Naval Academy graduate, three-time Olympian, winner of an NBA championship, generous contributor to charitable causes in money and time, gracious in victory and defeat and a responsible team leader who doesn't get into trouble on or off the court.
In 2002, The Institute for International Sport named Robinson one of its 15 "Sports Ethics Fellows" -- athletes who consistently demonstrate an interest in promoting the ideals of ethics and fair play in sport and society. The NBA gave Robinson its 2001 NBA Sportsmanship Award and The Sporting News honored him in 1998 with its "Good Guys in Pro Sports Award."
Robinson is one example out of many to be found in sports today. Baseball slugger Sammy Sosa's humble ways amid his record-setting home-run hitting have elevated him to near-sainthood in his native Dominican Republic. Super Bowl-winning quarterback Kurt Warner inspired millions with his candor, honesty and, again, humility, as he rose from unknown to superstar in less than one season. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Lisa Leslie, Mia Hamm and hundreds of others exhibit qualities worth emulating.
The key is to choose wisely. Just as parents try to steer their children away from negative influences in their neighborhood, they ought to be as discerning with the athletes they see on television and in the newspapers.
| "It's pretty clear that my son's biggest role model is me," Paul, his father, says. "Even if he likes watching sports, he'd rather be out having me pitch to him, or playing basketball with him, or hitting golf balls with him, than sitting around watching what some professional athlete does." |
Janet C. Harris, a professor at California State University-Los Angeles, studied in detail children and their heroes in the early 1980s. Twenty years ago, she conducted a survey among children from third grade through 12th grade. She found that a personal acquaintance was named as a child's hero more often than a public figure (athlete, entertainer or political/military figure). Of the public figures named, about one-third were athletes. And among athletes, "clearly the most important thing to the children was the professional competence" of the athlete, Harris said.
"I came out of it thinking the children had a more positive, uplifting view of athletes than those who write about them," Harris said.
Children Need Heroes
A few years later, J.B. McCormack of the University of Chicago produced a doctoral dissertation based on a study in which she asked teenagers who were the most influential people in their lives. She found that more than 90 percent of those polled named personal acquaintances rather than public figures.
Today, athletes have many obstacles to their role-model roles: labor disputes, contract disputes, salary envy and steroid-use accusations, to name a few. But Dr. Gordon O. Matheson thinks athletes still have a positive side that won't go away, even amid the scandals.
Matheson is associate professor and chief of the Division of Sports Medicine at Stanford University medical school. In that role, he is the overall team doctor for the university's 800-plus athletes.
After home run record-breaker Mark McGwire was criticized for taking androstenedione -- a nonprescription anabolic steroid labeled by the FDA as a dietary supplement -- Matheson didn't condemn the ballplayer. Instead, he claimed it was a prime opportunity to educate youth about making proper choices in the absence of clear rules.
"Children need heroes," said Matheson. "McGwire spends hundreds of hours and millions of dollars in charitable work for children. Organized and professional sports can still generate inspiration, motivation and dreams. Athletes can still give joy, excitement and hope to millions of youngsters. If we learn the right lessons from recent events, we can help ensure that this will always be so."
Stephen D. Mosher, professor of sport studies at Ithaca College in New York, questions the wisdom of anointing athletic stars as heroes. Yet, he admits to idolizing Ted Williams and the Boston Bruins players as a youngster and viewing it in retrospect as healthy. Assessing the sporting landscape today, Mosher is resigned to the powerful grip of athletes on our behavior.
"The double-whammy of the economic downturn and 9/11 has really bummed the country out," he says. "It is even more critical to find people who can lift us up. Athletes do what is concrete and easily measured. That's not quite the case with genetic engineers, etc., even though what they accomplish might be a thousand times more important than what Derek Jeter does."
Some Pros Sacrifice and Give
Troy Aikman, a wildly popular quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys football team from 1989 through 2000, was often critical of the attention given to him. Mostly, he chafed at the media prying into his personal life.
Yet, when he joined a panel discussion on athletes in the media hosted by the Dallas Morning News newspaper, Aikman used the forum to give his take on athletes' responsibilities.
"I don't think any of us want to say we shouldn't serve as role models, because I certainly feel we should," Aikman said. "I used to chew tobacco, and I used to get a lot of letters from parents who were saying it was bad, and I shouldn't do it in front of kids. I knew it wasn't real good for me to do it, but they (youth) shouldn't think it's OK to do it just because they see me do it. It infuriates me when they (parents) want to say, 'Look what you're doing to our kids.'"
Tobacco might have been a problem for Aikman, but at the same time, he has raised and distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars through a youth foundation he established in 1992. Just as many high-profile athletes do, Aikman uses his celebrity and high salary to do charitable acts. Some celebrities view these charitable deeds as PR events to be endured; others contribute willingly without seeking glorification. How many know that Australian tennis star Patrick Rafter donated $300,000 of his prize for winning the 1997 U.S. Open to a hospital in Brisbane? Rafter also cut his wildly popular ponytail one year to help raise $26,000 for charitable causes.
Such are the acts of worthy role models in today's sports world.
"If we really believe that politicians or athletes can carry out the functions of fathers or mothers, we're stuck in a pretty dangerous delusion. Our goal must be to provide real role models to our children -- people like us. We have to do the hard work of showing our kids what good, honorable people are like by being good, honorable people ourselves. Not pointing them to Washington D.C. for heaven's sake." -- Paul Jacob, syndicated radio commentator |
In yesteryear, they wrote folk songs about sports stars. Remember the warm and fuzzy ditty about "Willie, Mickey and the Duke"? Ithaca's Mosher still marvels.
"What was so wonderful about Mickey Mantle? He was a boozer and a womanizer and not a very upstanding person," Mosher said. "But we like who we like becausewe want to. We're willing to overlook all kinds of things."
Which brings us back to the Matthews of Medfield, Mass. Undeniably, the family loves sports, both as participants and spectators. Evan, the 9-year-old, knows what he likes to play and whom he wants to be like. For now, at least, it isn't Manny, Nomar or Pedro.
"It's pretty clear that my son's biggest role model is me," Paul, his father, says. "Even if he likes watching sports, he'd rather be out having me pitch to him, or playing basketball with him, or hitting golf balls with him, than sitting around watching what some professional athlete does. That's a good feeling because that means I still have influence to shape his thinking on things. And he's recognizing some degree of distance between people he sees on TV and his parents."
That gap doesn't always tilt toward the parents. The Matthews, like everybody, must choose their role models carefully, whether from among professional athletes in their city or the people on their block.
Randy Franz is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in Christian and secular publications. A former daily sportswriter, Randy enjoys highlighting athletes who use their popularity to help others draw closer to Jesus Christ.
HeroesMia Hamm: Soccer-Washington Freedom (WUSA) Michael Jordan: Basketball-Washington Wizards Lisa Leslie: Basketball-Los Angeles Sparks David Robinson: Basketball-San Antonio Spurs Kurt Warner: Football-St. Louis Rams ZerosAllen Iverson: Basketball-Philadelphia 76ers Ray Lewis: Football-Baltimore Ravens Randy Moss: Football-Minnesota Vikings Bill Romanowski: Football-Oakland Raiders Rasheed Wallace: Basketball-Portland Trail Blazers |