Photographer : hometownzero@flickr
Oh, to be a highly paid, morally questionable sports star in contemporary Australia. Surely, this is to also be an automatic role model, a morally unquestionable type of modern day saint whom good Australians should all aspire to being. Contradictory, much?
The majority of the media seems to subscribe to the automatically generated, sports hero as personal hero vision of public life. Play the word association game with the phrase ‘drug scandal’ and who springs to mind? Our sporting elite, namely Andrew Johns and Ben Cousins. What about ‘public bad behaviour’? Who else could that refer to but Willie Mason, Wayne Carey or Nick Darcy? Not only are more inches devoted to these types of misdemeanours than other arguably more newsworthy stories, but these inches rarely omit the words ‘role’ and ‘model’.
Media saturation and a somewhat unhealthy national obsession with sport have resulted in a struggle to protect ‘our boys’ from the volatile influence of some sports figures. Rather than highlighting the good deeds of other sports teams and individuals, it has become much more important to catch certain celebrities at their worst; urinating in public, acting aggressively and dancing badly.
It’s a pretty logical progression from witnessing or hearing about such behaviour to omitting said sports star from your list of personal heroes. However, personal heroes have not necessarily been personal choices of late, as certain media outlets have adopted the role of sorting out the good from the bad. Woe behold if your role model should appear on the wrong list.
Gavin Freeman is a sports psychologist who makes the moderate argument in Fairfax media that ‘You've got to ask yourself is an AFL player truly, really a role model for younger people? Would they still be a role model if they were not an elite athlete? The answer in most cases is no.’
However, Parenting blogger Felicity Moore for the Courier Mail argues that sportspeople should ‘give back’ by acting like honourable people. She wonders ‘Are we asking too much? Maybe, but as along as it’s my money (through ticket sales, merchandising and sponsorship support) paying their wages I’ll continue to demand better behaviour.’
Conversely, Fairfax writer Justin Ballis states that ‘if we believe footballers have a responsibility to be custodians of our youths' values and exemplars of social conduct, we have a serious cultural problem.’
‘Our serious cultural problem’ instead may be the construction of a superficial, defensive argument that provides excuses for intrusion into the lives of sporting figures. The placement onto the public record of the actions of our sports people is the result of a debate that has been entirely constructed and argued in the media. It is a self-reflexive moral panic caused by self-congratulation for excessive media devotion of certain figures under the cover of protecting us from bad role model selection.
It is ridiculous.
I, for one, look elsewhere for my role models. Not because I find sportspeople to be repulsive, as Moore does, nor misunderstood, as Ballis does, but because I recognise that role model selection is simply natural selection. The person whose traits you most admire is the person who becomes your role model. It’s fluid, subject to more factors than just a position on a ladder or world ranking.
Let kids choose their own role models and let’s instead be outraged about the people whose behaviour really should stand up, like our elected officials. Maybe the roads and healthcare system would be in a far better shape if the media did its job properly and our politicians were subjected to the same level of scrutiny as an NRL star is at the start of the season. Priorities, please.
How do I know this?
Ballis, J (2007), ‘Footballers paying the price for fading family values’, Fairfax Digital LeagueHQ, http://www.leaguehq.com.au/news/news/footballers-paying-the-price-for-fading-family-values/2007/06/29/1182624168272.html
Johnston, C (2008), ‘On-field skills no use to errant sports stars’, Fairfax Digital RealFooty, http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/onfield-skills-no-use-to-errant-sports-stars/2008/03/18/1205602388374.html
Moore, F (2008), ‘Sporting role models’ hypocritical oath’, Courier Mail Parenting blog, http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/parenting/index.php/couriermail/comments/sporting_role_models_hypocritical_oath/
This work is licenced under an Attribution-ShareAlike licence.
© 2008. First published on actnow.com.au
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