fshorr's blog

Our athletes of today’s world are put on a pedestal above the normal people of society. The players may not have asked for this, but they end up having to accept it as the fans and media leave them no choice. When a reporter discovers a flaw in an athlete’s life, the reporter seems to jump to the conclusion of, “how could this happen? Athletes are supposed to be perfect.” A flaw surprises the media and makes headlines on the local and national level.

Where did these flaws come from? Simply, athletes are humans too. They just happen to live in the society created by non-athletes that hold them to perfect expectations. Nowadays, youth sports has become a business. AAU basketball, travel ball, has become a huge money making business. Teams travel he country and play basketball when the players are not playing for their high schools. Coaches of these travel teams coach kids as young as the 2nd grade.

The second grade.

I was seven years old in the 2nd grade. I didn’t compete in AAU until I was 16, but I am not the majority, clearly. Kids in today’s youth receive special treatment that elevates them above their peers. This results in a missed opportunity for these kids to learn and grow as normal people, humans. The kids are thrown into the machine of the sports business at a young age.

The next level of competition for the youth is college. College athletes have a daily routine of doing what is asked of them by coaches and the university. They struggle to find time to develop subtleties, as Adam Naylor mentioned.

The media expects these kids to be fostered into angelic adults in the sports world. To be divine, if you will. God forbid an athlete has an interest outside of their sport. When an athlete breaks the expectations of society, it is a big deal. Articles are written, discipline is typically dealt and people are surprised.

Society has restricted athletes’ learning process. All their lives, athletes have been patted on the back if they make a mistake, especially star athletes. Discipline was not handed out in the right manner. This lifestyle carries over to higher levels of athletics, in a bigger spotlight, and repeats itself. Reporters and news agencies make money off of these mistakes that were never suppressed at the right age in the athletes lives. The media and society criticizes players for living in the world that they created for the athletes. A bit unfair, one would suggest. So why does this continue to go unquestioned?

As Peter Roby said, no one wants to ask the tough question.

To me, I think the journalism-coverage aspect of this issue is the most intriguing one. This has been a weird year for me in terms of coverage. For the first time, I’ve been expected by others to know pretty much everything about what’s going on with a high-end collegiate/professional hockey team, both on and off the ice. And all day Thursday, I received text messages asking what’s going to happen to Jack Eichel, should he be suspended, etc. Now, I don’t work for the Free Press; I’m not a beat reporter. But, do I have a responsibility to be tweeting out that BU’s best player was seen in videos drinking, including my opinion on whether or not he should be suspended, while knowing technically I am “employed” by the team? All year, I’ve had trouble knowing where to draw the line between “ask the players about it” and “that’s not part of my job description.” Sometimes, I consider myself lucky that I’m not doing this job while the sexual abuse and rape scandals came about…

To Keiko’s point about Larry Sanders, there’s also a totally different side to the spectrum. Kobe Bryant spends every waking moment playing, thinking, breathing basketball. There are numerous stories documenting how he’s woken trainers up at all hours of the night to turn the facility lights on and workout with him. And to him, he thinks that’s the reason he is so successful in his sport, because he is constantly playing it and thinking about it. And so I think this brings up a good point that pertains to both Dr. Naylor and Peter Roby. Every athlete is different. The development program that works for one guy may be a disaster for another. So, I think it’s imperative for psychologists or mentors working with these young athletes not only to find out what will get the most out of that particular athlete both personally and athletically, but also be willing to adjust their methods on a case by case basis.

The last point I want to make is a point Frank and I got into before the two guests came in. The question Frank asked me was “Does any high-end Division-1 team run a clean program?” And honestly, I don’t think the answer to that question is yes. No matter what sport – Alabama football, BU hockey, Vanderbilt baseball – I’m not sure any program is 100% clean. Now I get it, every athlete has a slightly harder schedule between class and practice and workouts, and deserves a little bit more leeway than most students do. But that being said, all the extra stuff – the meals, the grade fudging, even the boosters at most football schools – just fuel the fire of the mindset that athletes, as Cardale Jones said, “Ain’t here to play school.” But this extra attention isn’t even close to stopping in the near future. To me, it only seems to get worse as the years go on.

So what’s the first step in crushing this “bigger than the world” mindset? I have no idea. But, it’s definitely worth a conversation.

It really is amazing how much influence sports have on all aspects of our society. In my opinion, society is a result of sports and sports are a result of society. We can be blames just as easily as the athletes are blamed for their actions, however athletes must be treated differently than everyone else because they are in the spotlight. With their talents and privileges it is their responsibility to uphold a certain type of character. They are in the spotlight and most people are not and that is just a fact of life.

In sports such as football, there are extremely talented athletes that have transferred from their normal lives, some of which were previously involved in gang related crime and quickly thrust into a life with lots of money and temptations thrown at them. The sadder part is, as fans, crimes such as domestic violence don’t stop us from paying money to see them. We choose to turn a blind eye to it, yet we break them down whenever we feel like it and to our benefit.

Adam Naylor’s job as a player development consultant because most pro athlete’s do need guidance. I can’t imagine how much social pressure athletes feel that lead many of them to performance enhancing drugs just to please society and keep their jobs. I agree with Adam that we don’t protect our athletes very well and our reactions and attention towards them has a lot to do with our encouragement.

Peter Roby is a prime example of someone who should be leading a Division I Athletic Department. As an idealist, I was inspired by his ideas and the measures he takes to keep his athletes in line for their benefit. While he was speaking of all his valiant ideals that he instills to create a culture, it made me sad to think that even with everything he does, some kids will never assimilate. I agree with him in that it is the parents to blame for some of the behaviors and how they were brought up. This goes back to my point about professional athletes that were recruited from the streets and thrown into an environment where they are studied under a magnifying glass.

On the other hand, there are over-privileged kids that go into college or the pros getting away with anything they want and continue their selfish behaviors and that is the fault of society for allowing them to do so. In both cases, there are always exceptions and those are the athletes that stand out and become successful. Changing aspects of a persons life that they have been brought up to know and that have been engrained in them is no easy task and I salute Roby and Naylor for their guidance and their core values that may upset both society and the player, but are for the best because sometimes the hardest decisions are for the best.

“Sport is wonderful and horrible,” said Naylor, “We live in a shade of grey and which says a lot about our willingness to put up with it and we don’t make the difficult decisions. It is tough to lead.”

This statement really hit home with me and it is so important for anyone who’s job it is to guide athletes. Coaches and authority figures such as Roby are some of the strongest influences in the lives of athletes and it is important they feel the loyalty to those people rather than to opinions of society, no matter where they were from. Without their ability to make difficult decisions (cough Roger Goodell), the integrity of sport would diminish. Even though society feeds off of stories like Ray Rice’s, stories like the 1980 Olympic Hockey team are what make sports so important to us and the public must remember that.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a musician or an athlete, a concert or a game, when I’m marketing I just want the amount of tickets available to be zero the day of the event. I care about the behavior of the person or group I’m marketing, but I know the fan doesn’t think about anything but the musician’s new single or the athlete’s home run. Society has a funny way of making people and details seem more important than they are in reality. During one of our seminars, someone mentioned how none of this really matters, and I think it’s important to remember that sports don’t matter but society always will. Every society has to ask itself, whether it wants better players or better people and in an attempt to answer that, society has separated athletes from those deemed too normal to be unique.

Society breeds athletes to be the best at their sport not people who will be able to function outside of the game, and that’s a problem I think is finally being noticed. When you look at the actions the NBA, NFL, and MLB have taken to reduce issues concerning drugs, racial tensions, domestic violence, and general violence, the measures should be applauded for being a part of the organizations’ values. It’s more of an issue how the values are presented and implemented. The rules make the athlete ask, is it wrong because I’m an athlete or because I’m a person? That’s a detail society and the organizations don’t always clarify. I believe society and sports are moving toward a better place, we just have to give it time.

Concerning the Eichel incident, I was surprised to hear how many people were disappointed with his actions after BU won the Beanpot tournament. It wasn’t the outrage, the murmurs of could have/should have, or the facts of the situation, I was surprised that a young adult, by government standards, was being judged so harshly for doing something that a parade of professional football players did on a much larger scale, in front of a national audience after a national achievement. Where was the mass disapproval and concern when Gronkowski was chugging beer in front of high school students and tearing his clothes on the dance floor? I was disgusted by the way some of the Patriots players acted and how Gronkowski was praised by websites and audiences for being a party animal. I don’t know if it’s the college v. professional aspect or the fact the Patriots are grown men, but I’m curious as to why there is such a difference in opinion on how athletes should be perceived and treated when at different career levels. I think what is wrong for one athlete to do should be wrong for another.

This seminar is one that raises a lot of questions society is trying to figure out how to answer. As sports loving members of society, it’s important that we acknowledge the good and the bad of each sport and do what we can to bring about change whether it means appealing to the athlete or to management. With the many issues sport organizations faced recently, the organizations are managing the best they know how. It takes a lot to change a sport’s society, especially when a larger one looms over it.

As Adam Naylor mentioned, these athletes are no different from us. In other words, they’re human too. They just happen to have a God-given skill that we don’t possess.

The dominating topic of our discussion prior to Naylor and Peter Roby joining us was the videos of Jack Eichel following the Beanpot. After class, I thought deeply about the Eichel incident (snap-gate?) and I recalled something BU mens hockey coach David Quinn said in the presser following the Terriers Beanpot semifinal win over Harvard:

‘Sometimes we forget Jack is an 18-year-old kid.’

Of course, Quinn was referring to Eichel’s on-ice play not off-ice transgressions, but in the context of our discussion, there’s truth to that statement. And it draws right back to what was discussed Thursday night.

Eichel is an 18-year-old college freshman (who should be a senior in high school, mind
you) who has a skill-set that some might argue we’ve never seen from an American hockey player. Outside that, he’s no different than any other kid on campus. He made a mistake that I’m sure he regretted — or at least I hope he regretted — and should’ve learned from it. Whether it was a bad night or a sign of a pattern of behavior is speculation. We’ve all made mistakes, particularly on social media, that have proven to be teaching moments.

That doesn’t excuse Eichel. He needs to be smarter than that with the position he’s in. There are people in Canada who have been waiting months to see these videos and plug it into their lazy ‘American Kids Are Jackasses’ headline. More importantly, he’s currently the face of Boston University. He represents a proud college hockey program still trying to polish its image after the sexual assault arrests and investigation during the 2011-12 season.

Like Eichel, the athletes we like to prop up as heroes are human beings. They have flaws. They make mistakes.

Growing up, I listened to The Big Show with Glen Ordway on WEEI on a daily basis. One thing Ordway would always say about athletes was these are ‘good guys at what they do for a living’. In other words, being a good athlete doesn’t make you a good father, husband, or citizen. It means you have an athletic ability 99 percent of the population doesn’t have. I couldn’t agree with that more. That’s not to say there aren’t good people who are good athletes, but we shouldn’t pigeonhole ourselves to the faulty premise that some guy who can shoot a basketball or hit a baseball should be raising our kids.

Like Charles Barkley said, ‘I’m not a role model’. If it weren’t for the NFL, we would never know who Adrian Peterson is. If it weren’t for the NBA, LeBron James would be just another guy.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow sports. We should appreciate these athletes for what they are (good athletes) and what we’re watching for what it is (unscripted drama, as COM grad and Globe columnist Chris Gasper calls sports). I think that’s why we see record ratings and revenue in the NFL despite the year from hell the league has had. People look at the NFL the way they look at a garden, they see the beautiful plants blossom but disregard the worms that are crawling underneath. Should that be our thought process? Again, it’s why we’re having this discussion.

But at the end of the day, we need to look at sport for what it is — a game being played not by model citizens, but model athletes.

I am a firm believer that sports are one of the most important social institutions. A a social institution, as defined by the book “Human Behavior in the Macro Social Environment” is “any structure of social order and cooperation that governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human community.” Is that not the world of sports? Just as we see business in sports, we see sports in business. We use social institutions to structure our daily lives and, as such, I would argue a large percentage of the population structures their lives with sports.

But Professor Shore is right. Most of the time, we only talk about sports and its role in our culture when something goes wrong. Football, in just this past year, has made society discuss everything from hazing to domestic abuse to concussions. Soccer, more recently, has made us confront racism (Chelsea) and domestic violence (Hope Solo). That the discussions and issues are happening in every sport – from America’s most popular to a game that’s still growing in the States – is not a coincidence. Sport can build character, yes, but it can also encourage bad character when winning supersedes all other considerations. It’s happening because it’s a social institution made up of players, coaches, fans, parents and administrators. It’s now its own society.

Maybe I’m cynical, but I think Eichel should have been punished; I think everyone from Tanya Harding to Joe Paterno should be punished. If you break the rules, you have to pay the consequences. Pat said in his comment that sport is a game being played by model athletes, not model citizens. I disagree, they are citizens who should follow the rules. BUT, unfortunately, as AD Roby said, teams and players are a function of the society from which they were born, and unfortunately sport is now a society itself.
I don’t know if sports have always been taken so seriously, but I definitely think the argument that “sport is just a game” is slowly loosing merit. We, as a society, have reached the point where we take the institution of sport very seriously and maybe even too seriously. Sports mirror the human experience in terms of taking risks (as you would in business); sports mirror society in that it has racism and sexism and greed; sports give people the ability to identify with something larger than oneself. Which is where I have the biggest issue, because I think sports stifle moral reasoning as athletes get older (and as the article from Blackboard on NBA arrests actually upkeeps).

That is something I struggle with. I wrestle between athletes being just people in our society versus athletes being people in another society. I talked to Mr. Roby about the proposed changes in the one-and-done rules. He and Professor Naylor had said during the conversation that it’s important to get an education and to have dual identities for when sports are over. I asked Roby what he thought about people not being skeptical of Mark Zuckerberg leaving school early. He told me that hey, what’s right for him is right for him. What’s right for a basketball player may be to leave early – you don’t want to push someone to do something they don’t want to. If it was a bad decision there will be consequences and they will learn from it, just as in ANY type of social institution.

My ranting about sport being a society that has grown too big for itself is done. So, let’s not forget the power that sport has. Maybe that’s why we’ve let it become what it is, why we let some of those athletes “get away with it.” Professor Naylor said that sport has the potential to be an equalizer, and undoubtedly it does. One of thousands of examples is the 1966 NCAA Basketball Tournament, when Texas Western started 5 African-Americans to beat Kentucky, who started none. Texas Western helped equal the playing field. It sent a powerful message for the Civil Rights movement. Sport is powerful.

I mean, what else could get Marshawn Lynch – he of few words – to teach Turkish women how to play American football ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/02/women-football-turkey-_n_6781756.html?cps=gravity_3914_7161061708138117023 ) ?

So maybe that’s why we let all the bad stuff happen within social institutions (Bernie Madoff…Ray Rice…the Catholic Church scandals…), because something good (a lesson, a moment) is going to come out of it somewhere.

Being an athlete — whether it be on the professional level or in a Division-I college setting — certainly seems like a double-edged sword.

Yes, if you sink the game-winning jumper or net the clinching goal in overtime, you’re elevated to a superhuman level, praised for your clutch play and adored by many. But one slip-up — even a minor one — can undo many things, even if the offense is relatively minor.

While Marcus Smart and Zach Trotman acknowledged in their seminar that athletes and ordinary people are really not that different — I mean, we’re all made up of the same flesh and blood, right? — the pressures of society, especially in regards to sports, make such a claim essentially incomprehensible.

Angling this towards sports journalism as a whole, the biggest takeaway from this past seminar revolves around the fact that society’s attitude towards athletes is simply unfair.

In some ways, I look at the society’s perception towards athletes in the same vein as a scout might look at an NFL offensive lineman: You only notice them if they aren’t doing their job. If an athlete that is either paid professionally or earns a collegiate scholarship is doing his/her job and succeeding on the field, than it’s the accepted status quo.

However, at the slightest hint of failure, whether it be a lack of production on the stat shoot or a simple mistake off the field, the rabble quickly emerges and criticism is thrown out from seemingly every angle.

As Katie mentioned above, Prof. Shorr nailed it when he said that the only time that people really talk about sports and culture is when something goes wrong. Society has little regard for when an athletes excels on the field —that’s their job; that’s what they’re here for. However, when an athlete ends up in the spotlight for something related outside of their sport, that’s when it becomes a story.

Certain discretion should be noted by athletes, however, with common sense being the logical way out of many unfortunate scenarios that athletes get themselves into. However, it’s still unfortunate that athletes are held to a higher level than others when it comes to even the slightest infractions.

Sports and society are forever linked, and that’s no necessarily a bad thing. For every negative case of sports clashing into society, such as the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Tonya Harding case and BALCO investigations, there are also triumphs such as the Miracle on Ice and the 1995 South Africa rugby team.

This link will not break anytime soon. Are athletes faced with unfair and even unobtainable standards set down by society? Based on both Naylor and Roby’s words, I would say yes.

It might not be a fair to these athletes, but then again, few standards set down by society really are. If anything, as a sports journalist, this seminar hit home the fact that while most people are told that it’s “just a game,” that’s far from the case for these athletes. A sobering and respectful reality, for sure.

I really couldn’t agree more with what Dylan said above about society’s attitude towards athletes. It doesn’t matter if it’s baseball, football, basketball, hockey, etc.: Athletes are held to a higher standard, with flaws, in some ways, just simply not computing with most members of society.

It’s an unfortunate situation that society as a whole puts on athletes, especially those who are rising up through the college ranks. If you’re in the news for something other than your highlights, then bad news is almost certainly not far behind.

For young athletes in high school or college, the pressure set down by society to perform can be crushing, as the expectations to perform and improve at all costs taking these athletes away from the growth and lessons that is afforded to other people growing up in society.

As Peter Roby noted, the top takeaway for college athletes during their tenure at school should be the same lessons that every person gains: maturing and learning from your mistakes as you take that next big step through life. Most of us have had mistakes or incidents during our time here at BU that we might not be proud of, but that’s part of the learning process. We learn from our mistakes and move on. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for athletes.

Like it or night, Jack Eichel will probably have to answer questions about underage drinking and poor usage of social media throughout this summer as the NHL Draft approaches. Even to this day, Celtics guard Marcus Smart still gets questions about his shoving incident with a fan during his time at Oklahoma State.

Nobody is perfect, that’s for sure, but these athletes can do little but sit back and listen as their past mistakes or choices are repeated over and over to them.

This isn’t saying that someone like Eichel isn’t at fault for what happened to him. After all, the team shouldn’t have gone to such an open spot like T’s Pub to celebrate a Beanpot win. But at the same time, it shouldn’t be a shock that an 18-year-old superstar athlete had a few beers while his whole team was doing the same thing.

Such an explanation has little merit when athletes are brought into the picture. It isn’t fair to these athletes, but they unfortunately have to get used to it. These standards don’t seem likely to change anytime soon.