The Pro Athlete Freak Show

Lance Armstrong has finally admitted what seemed to be the inevitable: that he won his cycling championships by means of illicit drugs and that it was kept quiet by intimidation and the willingness of many in the sports establishment to look the other way as long as they could. This has become the sad state of nearly all professional sports and is indicative of the true values of professional sports.

Professional sports has for many years now had little or nothing to do with 'sportsmanship'; it is not about demonstrating self-control to develop life-long fitness and excellence, it is not about playing in an honorable way to build a life of virtue and honor, it is not about learning the virtues of teamwork and joining together with a team to develop virtue and excellence. It is about winning and nothing else. In the process of subsuming all other potential values in sports to the one goal of winning, it has become a freak show.

With Armstrong, the freakishness was not as visibly obvious as with Barry Bonds, Al McGuire, and Sammy Sosa. Bonds and Sosa especially ballooned from wiry athletes to muscle-bound giants in a very visible way, a way that made it clear that something was amiss. With Armstrong it was less visible but the feats he accomplished were just not believable for normal athletes.  Meanwhile in football we have moved from a time in my growing up when a very large  pro player was 225 pounds to now where 300 pounds is not all that unusual for high school and quite common in college.

Does anyone think that this kind of athlete is an example of good health and fitness? Does anyone think these men should be set as examples for what excellence in physical fitness looks like? Does anyone think these men set the example for life-long athletics and fitness? In their lust for winning at any cost, the athletes and coaches have created demanding profiles for what they must have for a particular position in each sport, and the results are players who will have health penalties for the rest of their lives just based on their body before injuries come into play. Many of them will rely on drugs to meet that profile. Nearly all of them will abandon the positive values that used to be trumpeted as the real purpose of sports, the values mentioned above. When the inevitable injuries are added to the story it becomes much closer to the Roman gladiators in the arena than we want to admit, as witnessed by the rash of suicides among retired NFL players.

I have pretty much stopped watching pro sports as a result. Sadly, college sports are not too far away from these same problems and have been getting worse every year. Sports has always had players and coaches who lacked the judgement necessary to know when winning should be made secondary to higher values, but it has been getting steadily worse in my judgement. And it will not get better until the fans start to walk away.