“ THE CURRENT EPIDEMIC OF SPORTS SCANDALS”

Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, Floyd Landis, Spygate, and  Pete Rose.

We are bombarded with sports scandals on a regular basis.  Last July there were three major scandals within a three week span: the Tim Donaghy NBA referee gambling scandal, The Chris Benoit wrestling murder and suicide episodes, and the Michael Vick dogfighting scandal.  Even the gentlemens’ game of tennis has been rocked with reports of match fixing.

The public put sports stars on a pedestal because they need heroes to admire and identify with, and the fans are sadly disillusioned when these heroes are discovered to have clay feet.  The culture of cheating in sports has become so prevalent that we have come to expect it, and, yet, we are repeatedly shocked and disappointed with each new scandal in which an athlete is exposed in off the field misbehavior, or a sports league is tainted.

We have come to look at sports and sports figures as symbols of integrity and character, as our political and business leaders submerge in a sea of corruption.  As we become increasingly disillusioned in celebrities who are exposed as fraudulent (e.g . James Frey’s memoir “A Million Little Pieces”) and politicians who are guilty of lying, cheating, hypocrisy, and deception (e.g. Governors Eliot Spitzer, Jim Mc Greevey, and Senator Larry Craig), many people turn to sports and sports heroes as emblems of excellence.

In many ways sports represents the last frontier for establishing solid values and commendable character traits in our children.  Instead of solidifying these goals we are seeing an erosion of character in our sports stars, which is being passed along to youths who are all too eager to emulate their heroes.  As a result we are in danger of producing a corresponding epidemic of erosion of character in our youth culture.

Scores of athletes whom we idolize have become tarnished by their transgressions, and the major sports leagues including baseball (steroids), football (spygate), basketball (referee game fixing), and tennis (gambling) are currently riddled with scandals of corruption.

As the 2008 NBA finals got underway, pitting the Celtics vs. the Lakers, the excitement about this classic rivalry was preempted by new allegations from the disgraced referee, Tim Donaghy, about NBA executives and referees involved in manipulation of game results.  The media, which trades on scandals, played it up, and once again sports fans were obliged to confront questions about integrity and honesty in sports.

Many fans have become inured and desensitized to the media frenzy about cheating in sports, and in some quarters the former widespread sense of moral outrage has morphed into reactions of numbness and indifference.  For example a recent

Gallup

poll indicated that 57% of the respondents believe that Roger Clemens had lied about using steroids, and 62% maintain that, nevertheless, he should get into the Hall of Fame.

In “Sports Heroes, Fallen Idols” I describe how under pressure from their inner demons or as an outgrowth of a distorted self image that conditions them to think they have a free pass to do whatever they want, some of our sports stars behave in ways that have dire consequences. What I call the toxic athlete profile often emerges, which includes the personality characteristics of arrogance, grandiosity, and entitlement, and leads many of our cherished stars to transgress into moral and illegal territory.