The other day I got to thinking about Michael Vick and his run in with the law. Here we have a young man who has the world on a string. He has a dream job as a NFL quarterback, plus there's the endorsements and his contract. It made me wonder why a pro athlete would engage in such risky behaviour with the possibility of losing everything he worked so hard to get.
It's not just Vick that has this problem, it's countless other athletes. They're smart, they're intelligent, yet for some reason they fail to recognise the dangers of their actions.
My curiosity got the better of me so I decided to find out what the so called experts and journalists had to say about this.
The Public and the Media:
It appears we as fans and the media itself have created an image of athletes as being gods. And through this athletes supposedly feel a sense of entitlement. To a point where they fell indestructable.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/28/AR2007072801369.html?hpid=topnews
Alan Goldberg, psychological consultant to many college and Olympic teams, blames an adoring public and the media, which he said help to create images of players as gods. Too often television, newspapers and magazines mythologize athletes, he said, giving an illusion that they have some kind of superior integrity when in reality they aren't much different than anyone else.
And when they fail us, watch out! We zone in on that athlete and crucify that person at every opportunity. Not just the media but the fans themselves. An event that in some cases would never make it past the local crime blotter if that person was just an ordinary Joe.
So the question I had to ask is why do fans and media do this. To understand this we need to understand why me make super heroes of others.
My search lead to me to a most interesting article written by Havard Law professor Jon Hanson titled:
"The psychopathology of athlete worship:"
http://sports-law.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-do-we-love-hating-maurice-clarett.html
To make illustrate his point he does a comparison of former Ohio State footbal player Maurice Clarett, who was arrested for robbery, and American cyclist Lance Armstrong.
We love loving Lance because his success confirms our faith in the power of perseverance. The message for us all is the American creed: We can overcome our situation, no matter how grim, if only we work hard and choose wisely.
This brings us back to the more tragic Clarett story. Why do we love hating Maurice? For the same reason -- just from a different angle. Clarett was at the cusp of fame. Had he simply chosen better, as one editorialist wrote, Clarett "would be signing autographs in some National Football League training camp right now. He'd be the face of a franchise. He'd be a millionaire. He'd be wearing Nike shoes and getting paid to do it. He'd be posing for magazine covers and billboards, instead of mug shots."
The message of Clarett's story is just the flip side of the same creed: If we work hard and make good choices we will succeed, but if we are lazy and make bad choices, we will fail.
Now we're left wondering why it is we the fan and the media love these messages. The author describes it as some what of an addiction.
Social science provides several reasons, but among the most important is our subconscious craving to believe that our world is just and that anyone can overcome circumstances. When our heroes are "good guys" who make "good choices" and our villains are "bad guys" who make "bad choices," that craving is satisfied.
Found another article that reinforces this sense of entitlement athletes seem to have. It also delves into the mind of an athlete in an attempt to understand how they think. It's written by Robert Lypsite and focuses on the work of psychiatric resident Michael Miletic
Outside the Norm: The Mind-Set of the Elite Athlete
http://www.uic.edu/classes/psych/psych270/outside.htm
The article begins with Miletic treating an NHL player who attempted suicide. While the article doesn't directly talk about athletes in trouble with the law, it does illustrate how the mind of an athlete works and the influences that help to shape it. More to the point, how it can cause an athlete to go astray.
If Miletic's ideas about athletes and early trauma ever lift from anecdote to data, it may help create a productive discussion of the ethics of sports psychologists and the responsibilities of teams and leagues.
Athletes' sense of "agency" -- their power to make changes by their own actions -- is a two-edged sword, Miletic says. Athletes have been conditioned to believe that if they do enough repetitions, shoot enough baskets, they can overcome anything, from poverty to injury. Yet a belief that serves them so well on the field can be translated, Miletic says, to a sense of entitlement in everyday life, a sense that they are above the law.
It is a feeling too often reinforced by how they are treated, as superior humans with extraordinary achievements. Rarely, until they get into serious trouble, do fans, the news media, coaches and management see them as fellow vulnerable humans with problems that need to be faced.
Miletic goes on further to talk about the cuture of socialization. He illustrates the negative effects of the pressures they are put under by parents and coaches alike.
"The upside of their drivenness is their orientation to their goal, their ability to focus," he said. "The downside is they are often emotionally constricted outside the white lines, with superficial marriages and friendships. The only place where real emotion can come out is on the playing field, where they can hug and kiss and cry. The only time they feel alive is when they are playing.
"There is a whole culture of the socialization of appearing invulnerable that's put into play, almost automatically and unconsciously by coaches and parents. For example, they've been shamed, humiliated as wimps, if they show pain."
The article finishes by illustrating that most healthy athletes can dissocoiate themselves from the game when it's over and are able to return to their normal lives. The ones that can't seem to do that are the ones that end up in trouble.
Get outta jail cards for every jock:
This entitlement they feel gives them this false sense of superiority where they actually feel they are above the law. A good example is Ty Law. His comments to a police officer had me shaking my head in disbelief.
http://www.sportsfanmagazine.com/sfm/articles.html?id=841
Ty Law had a problem with the police in April, and he handled it much better. After a short jog with police, Ty said to the cops; “don’t touch me, I’m a professional athlete.”
The arresting officer said that Ty decided he was above the law, and he’s not, and that’s why he was arrested.
Then we have the court systems who aren't doing much to disspell this. Jamal Lewis accepts a plea bargain charge and gets to serve his time when the season was over.
The Baltimore Sun is reporting that Jamal Lewis accepted a plea bargain that would make him serve a four to six month jail sentence instead of the career-ending 10-year sentence he would face if he was convicted of the drug conspiracy charge. Naturally, he wouldn’t have to serve his sentence until after the season.
Continued in next post..........