Sports and Youth
Why do big sports stars make headline news when they do something illegal, but only receive a small block of print when they do something good for the community? Its things like this that make professional athletes bad role-models for youth all round the country. Although sports can be very beneficial to children of all ages, too often these want-to-be superstars can get caught up in too much of the negatives and not enough of the positives. Sports in today's society negatively influence children from the moment they watch their first game. Many of these children grow up idolizing people like Jason Williams, Randy Moss, and O.J. Simpson, but what do you think they'll remember about them when they get old enough to start playing college sports? I don't know a single stat of Randy Moss's career, but I could give you a detailed description of his criminal history. Jason Williams, for instance, was accused of fatally shooting his limo driver in the chest. Jeffrey Schrank in his article Sport and the American Dream says, "When I was a graduate student at Columbia, the school had a basketball team. The best player on the team became a degenerate gambler, a convicted criminal." What kind of examp
This problem not only comes from the coaches though, parents today are pushing their children too hard to become a superstar. " How are the stars that children are idolizing more and more showing this message? Kids are noticing that they don't have to have an education to be happy; they can do it through sports. During meetings at jobs he may tend to not be considering of other's ideas. This became evident to me as I sat and watched a youth soccer game. Do we realize that sports affect us all in one way or another? Whether or not you like sports has nothing to do with the whether or not it affects you. Dick Schaap sums it up nicely in So Much of the Joy Is Gone by saying, "Once there was camaraderie among athletes. I'm sure this is the case in high schools across the country. Although the influence of children by professional athletes will never disappear, everyone should try their hardest to minimize the negative aspects and reinforce the positives. Another problem with youth in sports today starts in the youngest stages. You hear the same thing all the time, "stay in school, and get your education so you have something to fall back on. This is not only the players fault though. Now each has a coach, and an agent, and a father or brother, and a fistful of sponsors, walling them off, separating them. The National Alliance for Youth Sports says that violence at children's sporting events has increased threefold in the past five years (NAYS).
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