What
is wrong with professional athletes today?
Recently,
much has been written and said about the attitudes and behavior of
professional
athletes. Part of
that discussion has
been generated by the arrest of Aaron Hernandez of the New England
Patriots for
his role in the murder of Odin Lloyd.
On
a scale of lesser significance, but perhaps due to the same factors,
have been
the travails of Johnny Manziel. Realistically,
it is a growing trend, and one that I think may be evolutionary. If so, there will be no
relief from such acts
in the near future. It
set me to
wondering what the causes could be, since so few of the talking heads
on
television seem to have any clue as to why such things are happening.
Many
commentators have ascribed such behavior to a variety of social ills,
some of
which might serve to remove the personal responsibility these athletes
have for
their actions. I
would prefer to look at
3 contributing factors that are generally out of the control of any
specific
athlete, but for which they must be held accountable as to their
operations
within those constructs. These
are
phenomena which athletes for the entire past century have had to cope
with, but
with which current athletes seem to be failing miserably to adjust.
The
first of these is an Altered Reality that seems to keep modern athletes
from
recognizing the effects of their actions.
This can be largely connected to the obscene amount of
money that
athletes earn today. Ironically,
it was
Babe Ruth who ushered in this era, by becoming a player who was so
enjoyable to
watch, that he could use that leverage to increase his salary. The famous story goes that
Ruth was once
asked if he realized that he made more money than the President of the
United
States, to which he responded, “Well, I had a better year, didn’t I?” Despite that, I don’t
think he would have
realistically ever stated that he was a more important historical
figure. What he was
getting paid so much for (as is
always true in virtually any business) was producing income for his
employer. In spite
of earnings that were
high for the times, Ruth still spent much of his free time with kids,
Gehrig
maintained his class, and no one would have imagined that Ty Cobb would
have
played harder for a few dollars more.
The
fact is that money changes people’s perception of themselves and
others, and
the scale has become so outrageous even a “normal” person might not be
able to
handle it. A large
number of players in
every professional sport are now making over $20 million per season, a
figure
that is nearly impossible to fully realize the effects of. The most debilitating
side-effect is that so
few players realize that such money will not always be available (due
to the
shortness of careers, injuries, etc.) and thus do not prepare
themselves
adequately for life after sports.
There
are few paradigms so pervasive as the former athlete who is now
middle-aged,
beaten up, and scraping to get by.
Some
of them brought disaster upon themselves through the use of drugs or
guns, some
have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous agents or hangers-on, but
many
others have struggled to recalibrate their lifestyle once the enormous
paychecks stopped coming. A
better
system would long ago have found some sensible way to put the money in
escrow
and pay the athlete a reasonable sum for the rest of his days.
People
with such enormous amounts of money available to them have a very
difficult
time retaining their original values, even assuming that those values
were ever
sensible. The
availability of such an
income causes most modern athletes to judge the quality of their life
by the
possessions they can attain. Vastly
oversized houses, numerous automobiles, lavish gifts to others, jewelry
– early
on, few athletes run out of money before they run out of unnecessary
objects to
buy. Many crave the
attention they are
paid, and “buy” it by allowing a large coterie of followers to “feed at
their
trough”. The
problem comes later, when
those same followers cannot (or will not) help the athlete in his time
of
need. Worse yet, in
pure economic
fashion, most of the objects he bought came at a premium price, but
when he was
forced to sell, none of them brought back a good value.
As
for Manziel, one of the talking heads recently criticized him by saying
that
“he certainly wasn’t the first BMOC”, but such flippant remarks
minimize the
depth of the problem. Whether
he is
inordinately ill-behaved can remain debatable, but the fact is that
much of the
adulation he has been given he could not have anticipated. He cannot be to blame for
a society that
nicknames him “Johnny Football”, declares him the best player in
America
(Heisman Trophy) and lavishes praise and adoration on him, before he
has even
reached the age of twenty. Compound
this
by making every breathing moment of his life subject to media scrutiny,
and who
could expect any different result?
How would
any of us respond to having our every act and
comment analyzed and
criticized on television? All
this is
even more complicated thanks to the information available through
Facebook,
Twitter, and other “social media”.
It
was once fully understood that fame brings consequences. People watch more closely
the actions of the
famous, and now actively root for their previous “heroes” to fail
miserably. The
money seems to make many
modern athletes feel that they are above such judgments, right up to
the point
when they fail. At
that point, it is too
late for the athlete to return to a position of humility that will gain
the
support of others. Aaron
Hernandez
cannot manipulate the legal system the way he manipulated his “posse”,
and in
short order he will be only a distant cautionary message, as the
Patriots
install a new Tight End and go on to success or failure without him. He will soon be poor,
middle-aged, and beaten
up, with no usable skills for the world.
At that point, his altered reality will have faded to
black, and only
the reality with which all the rest of us must live will remain.
The
second factor in creating these circumstances is a general trend in our
society
for Immediate Gratification. For
many
years now, every member of our society has become accustomed to
receiving
feedback on every single action we take.
Teachers have been increasingly encouraged to lavish
praise on every
student as often as possible, coaches have been admonished for being
“too
intense” and expected to reinforce the self-concept of every player (no
matter
how horrible), and even parents have been expected to become their
children’s
friends, rather than disciplinarians.
Behavior modification has become almost completely
one-sided: be
positive, encourage the child, avoid criticism.
Anything vaguely negative is to be eschewed religiously.
The
end result of this is an entire generation of young people who expect
to be
rewarded for everything they do, and who will receive good feelings
instantly
without consideration for the actual value of their behavior. This craving for instant
gratification blinds
most of our young people to the consequences of their greed. It is a short leap from
needing instant
affection and support to also attaining instant revenge for perceived
insults. In a
culture that makes little attempt to
distinguish positive actions from negative ones, it can easily appear
to the
average person that all actions have equal moral validity, and are
therefore
not to be criticized.
Athletes are more susceptible to
this phenomenon that other citizens, because they have been overly
lauded
throughout their lives. Ironically,
they
have also been the most criticized, which I believe causes them to
crave the
positive attention even more. From
an
early age, athletes get special treatment.
They receive excessive praise when they do something well,
get trophies
and free Slushies, and find themselves the subject of adulation from
adults and
peers who know nothing else about them than that they are athletically
gifted. As they
grow older, the gifts become even
larger. Girls flock
to them, supposed
friends abound, scholarships are handed over freely, and more often
than not,
authority figures overlook their minor misdeeds.
For how long could any of us handle such
treatment with equanimity? I
do not know
that many people, subject to this sort of treatment for long periods of
time
(literally for many years in most cases) could remain humble,
circumspect, and
self-controlled.
Sadly, this need for
instant
gratification has come to infect some of our baser instincts. Hernandez is certainly not
the first athlete
to be affected in this way, and will more certainly not be the last. The sport of football is
probably a
psychological breeding ground for these baser instincts, since similar
actions
are rewarded highly. Hurting
other
people, exacting revenge, and “being mean” are valued, so athletes are
encouraged to adopt this mentality.
The
recent bounty controversies show the extremes to which this mentality
can be
pushed, and that just within the sport!
To such a mentality, it is a very short distance to acts
like that
committed by Hernandez. The
rationale is
obvious: “This man hurt me or my loved ones; he must pay a price; I
must exact
that price.” Knowing
that you are
famous, and therefor untouchable, your vengeance must be swift and
extreme. How could
we expect it to go
differently?
Finally, there is the
phenomenon of
Arrested Development – a delayed maturity that is so evident in a large
number
of athletes at all levels, but terrifyingly so in professionals. Baseball has long been a
focal point of such
criticism, for a variety of reasons.
Ironically, overt violent crimes are probably committed
less often by
baseball players than by other pro athletes.
A large percentage of baseball players were drafted
directly out of high
school, allowing precious little time for social and personal
maturation. Many
other athletes, however, have spent so
much time at camps, practices, and games that they also have limited
their
exposure to the sort of experiences that help one become a well-rounded
person. They are,
in many ways, simply
big kids making a living by playing a kid’s game.
In the Freudian
sense, coaches
particularly have spent so much time encouraging the athlete’s Id that
virtually no time has been left for the development of the Superego. Generally, coaches want
their athletes to go
into a game with violent intentions.
Batters are to “attack” the ball, Basketball players get
high praise
(and plenty of ESPN highlight time) for the slam dunk, and football has
numerous violent references that approach the actual killing of others. In such an environment, it
may be a special
tribute to parents who have managed to raise children who have a sense
of
perspective and social responsibility.
We should be less surprised to find that so many athletes
who have spent
so much time away from home and most of that time seeking approval from
a
succession of non-parental guides are misdirected in their intentions
and
actions.