Athletes as Role Models

Rob wanted me to blog about sports and stuff. So I guess it's appropriate to address the recent events surrounding the Lakers' Kobe Bryant. He has been accused of sexual assault by a 19-year-old girl from Colorado. There has been your typical canned statements from the Lakers "supporting" Bryant. I am a firm believer in the "innocent until proven guilty" credo. For example, I may think Scott Peterson killed Laci Peterson and her fetus but I don't believe he's guilty until all the evidence has been presented.

Bryant's attorney in Colorado complained about the sheriff getting an arrest warrant without the blessing of the DA. However, an arrest warrant can be issued without the consent of the DA. It's nice to have the go-ahead of the DA but so long as the police or sheriff have probable cause that a crime was committed, they can ask the judge the issue the arrest warrant. The judge makes the ultimate decision anyway - although, most of these warrants are rubber stamped without the judge actually reading the facts or statements. It still reeks of extortion or the girl wanting to get her 15 minutes of fame. I tend to not believe the charges based on what I know and what I've heard others say that know Bryant well.

However, I think the larger issue here, is that we have to be careful of how we view sports superstars because the media and the players themselves can cultivate an image that is not really them. When people talk about the good guys in sports, especially Christians, David Robinson, Michael Chang, and Derek Fisher come up. Those are guys that have had success in their sport and have a clean-cut image to boot which endears them to supporters.

But for each of those guys, lest we forget about O.J. Simpson, who was charged with domestic violence before all that other stuff happened. And the sad story of the Hall of Fame, former Minnesota Twins outfielder Kirby Puckett. We read about how great a guy he was in the Minnesota community - a generous philanthropist who always smiled and looked as if he was having fun on the field. He hustled and was the leader of two World Series winning teams. Every year, the Twins would have some sort of Kirby Puckett promotion and the Twins were guaranteed a large crowd.

However, in the last couple years, his public image started to crumble. It was discovered that he had a long-time mistress as well as other affairs. And his wife was the woman behind Puckett's community work as she carefully cultivated his image to make his a likeable public figure. And despite knowledge of her husband's infidelity, she continued to support him until Puckett's mistress blew the cover. In fact, if Puckett had not already been voted into the Hall of Fame, it is possible these exposed events would have doomed his induction.

The media creates the image behind each athlete we see. None of us know people like Bryant or Simpson or Puckett or Robinson personally. But to view them as role models without knowing who they *really* are can be dangerous. Too often, people will turn a blind eye to a star's off-the-field indiscretions so long as they produce (e.g. Jason Kidd) and remember them more for their athletic achievements instead. We really don't know any of these athletes that we watch perform on the field. And Bryant's reputation, regardless of the veracity of the charges, will take a hit for possibly placing himself in a compromising position, even if he did not do anything illegal.

So next time you hear about an athlete spending time giving back to the community or an athete asking for more money, a lot of it is the work of agents and publicists. The only difference between mainstream American sports and professional wrestling is that wrestling is fake. The image of each player or wrestler is, in many ways, still very artificial - a creation of magazine covers and publicity shots.