Nary a day passes without another sports figure capturing the headlines for an embarrassing transgression. When star athletes are exposed as impressively multi-tasking philanderers, expensive “johns” for unidentified, underage prostitutes, or repeat-offending, intoxicated sexual aggressors, it makes the insane amount of money that Lebron James will command in his soon-to-be free agency extravaganza seem comparably less obscene. It is somewhat confusing. There have been many voices that have complained for years how athletes are overpaid while police, firemen and educators, those who protect our lives and/or our future, make a measly fraction in salary compared to their societal value. And, when the academics complain that the star athletes are taking university seats from students who actually want a college education, regardless of the fact that collegiate sports often provide fiscal viability for otherwise struggling universities, it is sometimes hard to argue with them.
The amount of media attention that athletes get when they cross the line of moral decency reminds us of the celebrity status and focus that we place on athletes. Surprisingly, if you can suspend belief for a second, there is a good side to sports though…hidden underneath all of the crime, is a relatively boring fact…there are a lot of high character people playing sports. A quick Google search finds hundreds of charities founded by professional athletes. This doesn’t even count the many hospital visits to lift the spirits of sick children. It ignores the strangely familiar smiles peering out from behind a Santa Claus beard or tossing around some turkey and stuffing at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. Even with the public relations efforts that the NFL has made with its United Way partnership, the work of athletes giving back to the community is an unfortunately boring story compared to the portrayal of athletes as hedonistic criminals that grabs our attention. It is easy to lose perspective on this.
From time to time, we have a “feel-good” story that catches our eye and rekindles our spirit like “The Blind Side.” Stories of children that made it from deprivation to stardom make us all feel nice and gooey on the inside. Every year around the time of the NFL draft, we hear stories about kids that came from crime-infested neighborhoods and made it to their dreams. But for every such story, there are hundreds if not thousands of children that never make it to the pros or even their college squads, but because of the guidance that they receive from their coaches, the structure they come to appreciate from their teams, or the confidence that they get from being a part of something that matters to them, they don’t wind up a statistic. Rather than dying young or winding up in jail, they find a new path; one that can take them to better places in life. Sport can provide that.
So as I was sitting in a Juvenile Detention Center a couple of weeks ago, completing an evaluation on a youngster with anger problems, familial chaos, and a lack of direction, I thought about “my old standby”: get him involved in sports…this kid can be saved.
What is the moral of the story? We do need to be mindful of how some athletes who engage in transgressions compromise the reputation of sports, but by no means can we throw the baby out with the bathwater. That baby, we affectionately know as "sports," can do our children a lot of good.
