A small percentage of professional athletes can and do have “issues” just like the rest of us from time to time. Here in the States, when I was growing up in the 1960s pro athletes were held (perhaps undeservingly) to a higher standard of behavior. Because they were seemingly bestowed idol/demigod status we overlooked their socially “deviant” habits such as excessive drinking, drug use, gambling, womanizing and general over the top carousing. I’m neither condoning or condemning that standard or the behavior itself, just trying to make sense of it…
Then sometime in the 1970s we began to glorify their exploits, living vicariously through their reported idiosyncrasies. Still, there was often a double standard. We were concurrently aghast, yet titillated by their bad boy exploits. By the 1980s many pro athletes here started to publicly disavow the mass adulation and expectations. My perception then and now is that such a reaction was perhaps juvenile and ill conceived. Their publicly stated posture generally was that they shouldn’t be expected to adhere to the role model standards of public decorum and perceived behaviors they (the athletes) deemed were unreasonable. And yet they still were and are revered for their on field exploits of athleticism. The general public continues to support them. Attendance records are at an all-time high, and their escalating salaries are completely out of whack with the vast majority of regular folks who work more mundane jobs. Indeed, the very same people who simultaneously criticize yet continue to support, dignify and often deify them. There are corollaries to other facets of society, but for this post I direct my commentary to the pro athlete subset of the population.
Rantjack over.
