When winners are losers
illustration by Maria Rondon
Recent scandals raise the question: Is ‘sports hero’ an oxymoron?
SEX, DRUGS, AND… sports?
Athletes are often highly regarded as wholesome heroes for kids to look up to. But as recent tabloid fodder has made all too clear, athletes do not always set a good example for their fans with violent outbursts, titillating personal lives, and questionable etiquette.
What’s more, many professional athletes’ reputations have been irreversibly tarnished by accusations of substance abuse, sexual assault, and promoting violence towards other players, officials, and fans. Athletes’ personal lives are now analyzed daily in newspapers and blogs, and it appears that public interest in what occurs after the game has increased. People are now searching for more than just statistics on their favourite athlete’s performance—and accordingly, sports stars are delivering scandal after scandal. Have the mighty finally fallen?
Role models and bad boys
Popular Canadian athletes such as Sidney Crosby, Steve Nash, and Donovan Bailey are often heroes to people who aspire to be sports stars—but why does the public view them as role models?
University of Ottawa communications professor Mark Lowes has written two books on the relationship between media, sports, and popular culture and believes that the concept of a role model is a general phenomenon.
“A person is a role model because they represent something that [another] person wants to be,” explained Lowes. “Professional athletes present an opportunity for people to emulate [their characteristics].”
He also pointed out that the term “role model” has positive connotations, which is something that is not always applicable to professional athletes—most recently Tiger Woods, who infamously crashed his car and was outed as an alleged serial cheater back in November.
Louise Lemyre, who teaches at the school of psychology at the University of Ottawa, explained in an email to the Fulcrum that the public has a complex relationship with sports stars.
“On the one hand, people want to identify with stars, and seeing stars [with] weaknesses and soft spots makes them more alike to oneself and bridges the gap of social distance,” she said.
“One wants to admire the icon, and therefore, if the flaw jeopardizes the core of the esteem, then it will incur rejection. So, bingeing, speeding, [and] dating tend to be accepted from sport stars, but core cheating in a competition will lose all [of the public’s] respect.”
Scandal in the sports world
Woods recently became a poster boy for poor role models after he crashed his car in November and rumours surfaced suggesting he had cheated on his wife Elin Nordegren—multiple times, with multiple women. Woods’s image was undeniably tarnished by the incident as a number of his lucrative sponsorship deals fell through, and the situation worsened as more reports of affairs began to surface.
This bad-boy sports story is no isolated incident, though.
A 2001 study entitled “Villains, fools or heroes? Sports stars as role models for young people” by Gill Lines, a media professor at Brighton University in the U.K., examined athletes as role models and their impact on young people. The study, which was published in the journal Leisure Studies, concludes that male athletes tend to exemplify “laddishness” (rowdy, macho, or immature behaviour), drunken exploits, and wife/girlfriend beatings, among other undesirable behaviours.
In particular, hockey—arguably Canada’s most popular sport—consistently deals with incidents involving violent behaviour that precisely reflects what Lines outlines in the study. Lowes described hockey as an environment that perpetuates a “hyper-masculine culture.”
Some golden examples of what this hyper-masculine environment can produce include former Dallas Stars forward Sean Avery, who made a crude reference towards his ex-girlfriend, actress Elisha Cuthbert. Avery referred to his former flame, who had moved on to date Calgary Flames defender Dion Phaneuf, as “sloppy seconds,” according to the December 2008 National Post article.
“I just want to comment on how it’s become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds,” Avery told TSN reporters after the practice.
Even former Ottawa Senators goaltender Ray Emery has caused his fair share of trouble. Emery became newsworthy in September 2007 when a local senior citizen accused Emery of road rage, and again in March 2009 when he was charged with stunt driving in his infamous white Hummer.
Where are all the bad girls?
Although many stories regarding rebellious athletes involve men, women also play sports professionally and also make mistakes in front of the public eye.
Lines’s study examines female sports stars, who are found to be marginalized, trivialized, and objectified in the sports industry. Women play a very different part in the game than men do when it comes to the way they are represented in the media.
Less-than-favourable role models seem to be more often of the male variety than of the female. The majority of negative press in the sports world comes from males. This could be because males seem to receive more coverage in the media, and there are more men’s leagues and opportunities for men to excel in sports.
Fourth-year U of O women’s studies student JoAnne Gordon feels that people react differently to inappropriate behaviour by women in the sports world, compared with men’s behaviour.
“Women do something wrong in a sports environment and they are heavily scrutinized; when men do something [bad], it is usually validated,” said Gordon.
Recent U of O management graduate Sabrina Persuad agrees and compares Serena Williams, who threatened a line judge at a tennis match last September, with Woods, another athlete who also demonstrated unfavourable behaviour.
“The Serena Williams thing happened and the media said, ‘That is so unladylike’,” said Persuad. “[If that incident happened] on the hockey rink, it would be just fine.”
Indeed, FoxNews.com called the incident “bizarre” and “ugly,” but heated exchanges between hockey stars and refs rarely merit a mention in game recaps.
They get paid to play
Some, however, might argue that athletes get paid to play a sport, not to be a role model. Do athletes have a moral responsibility to be good role models?
Lemyre believes that they do, but she also points out that citizens should monitor athletes and advocate for appropriate behaviour.
“The public has a responsibility to sanction abusive behaviours by athletes or professionals through withdrawing its support,” she said. “One should not accept and shrug at violent or illegal behaviour from a ‘star.’”
Although athletes’ personal struggles and scandals may be amusing to read about or poke fun at, professional athletes—like the rest of us—are human beings and therefore make mistakes.
Stories of sports and scandal will continue to make headlines; this will undoubtedly never change. As long as enough people look up to athletes and treat them as celebrities, their lives will continue to amaze, amuse, and annoy us. However, it is also possible for athletes to maintain a positive image in the media.
“In the NBA, [athletes] can [project] a clean image,” said Lowes, who noted that several NBA players dress professionally and act in a dignified manner. “They are role models, and people adopt [their style, mannerisms, and behaviour].”
It is ultimately an individual’s decision to choose to emulate a particular athlete, or dismiss the athlete’s behaviour as inappropriate.
“As ‘consumers’ of sport, we could exert much more shaping of ethos and ethics,” explained Lemyre. “So the question becomes: Do we fall for star behaviours?”
And as long as these behaviours keep pandering to our appetite for the outrageous, the answer is, unfortunately, yes.
The Players
These sports stars have been known to take full advantage of their celebrity status to play the field as well as the game. Kobe Bryant - American NBA player
In 2003, a hotel employee accused Bryant of sexual assault, but the case was eventually dropped and settled out of court. Joe DiMaggio - American baseball player
The baseball legend has been linked to a multitude of women, including Morgan Fairchild, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe. Shawn Kemp - American NBA player
The now-retired basketballer is rumoured to have fathered well over seven children (presumably with multiple women). Tiger Woods - American professional golfer
At last count, 11 different women had claimed to have slept with the married-to-a-supermodel golf star.
The Enhanced
There might be a reason other than genetics for why these athletes can run/skate/throw so fast. Ben Johnson - Canadian sprinter
Canada’s pride soon turned to shame after Johnson set a 100m record at the 1988 Summer Olympics and subsequently lost his medal for using illegal substances. Marion Jones - American sprinter
She won five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics, but later admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs prior to competition. Jones then forfeited all accolades received between 2000 and 2007. Floyd Landis - American Tour de France cyclist
The biker finished first in the 2006 Tour de France, but his win was rescinded after his urine showed abnormally high levels of testosterone—a sign of illegal performance-enhancing products.
Mark McGwire - American baseball player
Earlier this month, McGwire admitted to taking steroids in 1998 when he broke the home-run record.
