Today's American sports culture is out of bounds

                Today in the United States sports and athletes are a huge part of our culture. They entertain fans at least once a week for a season, and make millions of dollars doing so. They are the role models many children look up to and strive to be. Every year the Super bowl is one of the most watched televised events. According to this article however the sporting culture is getting out of hand. Many athletes today have made mistakes, some are forgivable, and others will lead to scrutiny for the rest of their lives. For example, many baseball players have been charged with using performance enhancing drugs, the best golfer fell out of everyone’s good graces when he cheated on his wife, a lot. Now he has to fight to get back on the good side of the fans, as do many of the other plays charged with using PEDs. But, this article claims we look into and rely on sports too much. Our youth look up to these players that are constantly in the news for doing something illegal, or wrong, or just plain old cheating. If the athletes can’t live up to being role models, than maybe we shouldn’t let our youth look up to them.

                I both agree and disagree with this article. At first I was shocked and remembered how many star athletes have screwed up at some point. They are constantly on the news and always doing something. But we have to remember these are athletes and many of them came from having nothing to more than a million dollars in a matter of months. They may not know how to handle the money or the fame, and do what they were shown to do growing up. This relates to my point that many athletes don’t know how to handle fame and fortune, and many athletes end up blowing away all their money and end up bankrupt. However, there are still many professional athletes that our children SHOULD look up to. They are great athletes, leaders, charitable, and show how a true professional should be. We should not be so quick to throw away these role models, and not lose our faith in professional athletes.

"Today's American Sports Culture Is out of Bounds." NY Daily News. N.p., 08 Jan. 2010. Web. 05 Apr. 2013