I am a huge sports fan and I have always looked up to athletes for their work on the field of play, their dedication to excellence through practice and living a healthy lifestyle and their determination for becoming the best in what they do. However, with each week that goes by, more and more athletes are on TV and in the newspapers for all the things they are doing wrong and that are illegal, and not for their athletic successes. Yet we still try to suggest that because they are on TV and in the public eye they are role models. Why? Haven’t we learned from the days of Charles Barkley when he said, “I am not a role model,” and even had a commercial to state that fact? Hasn’t the lifestyles of famous athletes made us cringe and question the way we put them in the spotlight? Recently we found out that the king of the Olympics was pictured doing illegal drugs and let down hundreds of thousands of fans, young and old who looked up to him. Baseball players left and right are admitting t...
A blog published by the (now dissolved) Literacy 'n' Poverty Project