The Cost of Winning

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do the right thing once in awhile; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing."                       --Vince Lombardi

Sports are me. I am sports. From the moment I was born, loving sports was embedded in me by my father. He loved sports and clearly wanted to pass that passion on to me. He took me to the Swamp to watch the Florida Gators play football when I was a toddler and that was just the beginning. He took my brother and I to see American Gladiators, Texas football games, college bowl games, college baseball games, minor league hockey games, high school basketball games. You name the sporting event in the southern part of the United States and my father probably took my brother and I there at one point or another. The older I got the more I realized that this was common for most men. I had a natural common interest with my guy friends because most of us loved the same things; Super Bowls, March Madness, College football bowl season, Friday night lights, ESPN top ten plays, Stuart Scott saying "booya!", watching Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith debate Lebron's legacy. Some of my greatest memories in my life have been watching sporting events with friends or family. Though some channel it through die hard fan hood, other men channel it through hard work and the determination to win at any cost. These men are legends amongst fans and athletes alike. Names like, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, the late great Muhammed Ali, Vince Lombardi, Tiger Woods, O.J. Simpson, Peyton Manning, and Pete Rose. At one time or another these men have been idolized for their athletic prowess and their determination to be the greatest or the best. At one time or another these men have been aggrandized and used as role models for our young and adults alike.

"There is no I in team, but there is in win" -- Michael Jordan

This is not solely unique to the American experience nor is this a new development in the world today. This esteem we give to competitive athletes has been around since the Olympics began around 776 B.C. During the times of the games in Greece, neighboring countries ceased warfare and competed against each other in athletic competitions. In those times, Olympians didn't compete for money or prizes, although they did receive them, it was about the honor of victory and the fame that supervened it. "Although he did not receive money at the Olympics, the victor was treated much like a modern sports celebrity by his home city. His success increased the fame and reputation of his community in the Greek world", says The Perseus Project at Tuft University. This sounds all too familiar and seems to be similar to the times we live in now. So this is not just a recent American phenomena. There has been a pattern of athlete veneration for thousands of years across the world. However, there certainly seems to be an added focus on winning and being the best at all cost that is unique to the US of A. With the recent rape cases happening on the campus at Baylor University, and involving the Stanford swimmer and the Vanderbilt footballer. As well as numerous instances of professional athletes and coaches committing serious crimes such as Aaron Hernandez, Michael Vick, and Jerry Sandusky. Not too mention the constant barrage of abusive behavior towards women by athletes like Mike Tyson, Greg Hardy (case dismissed), Ray Rice (pleaded not guilty), Floyd Mayweather, Jason Kid, and countless others. It might be time for us to take a long hard look at what our priorities are as a modern and educated society, and why looking up to athletes can be as damaging as it is beneficial to our young men, our women and the country as a whole.

"We're gonna win, win, win and we're not stopping." -- Donald Trump

Athletes in the NFL appear to break the law slightly less
when compared to average adult men in the U.S.

It's important to establish that crimes are not abnormally higher in professional athletes than they are when compared to the rest of the population in the United States. The arrest rate for average Americans was at about 4% in 2012 whereas for athletes (if you take the numbers at face value) its drops down to about 2% for basketball and football and less than 1% for MLB and NHL from 2010 to 2014. However, when you move the focus from professional athletes to college you get a completely different picture. Unfortunately, that picture is of preferential treatment and higher rates of criminal activity. According to NCAVA (National Coalition Against Violent Athletes) a 3 year study found that while male student-athletes comprise 3.3% of the population, they represent 19% of sexual assault perpetrators and 35% of domestic violence perpetrators. This study also found that although the general population had a conviction rate of 80%, the conviction rate of an athlete is 38%. Also, a study by ESPN's Outside the Lines found that athletes from 10 high profile universities benefited from a confluence of factors that can be reality at major sports programs: the near-immediate access to high-profile attorneys, the intimidation that is felt by witnesses who accuse athletes and the higher bar some criminal justice officials feel needs to be met in high-profile cases.

"A quitter never wins and a winner never quits." -- Napoleon Hill

It is clear that there are contradictions in the data. Whereas male professional athletes might break the law slightly less than the rest of the population, male collegiate athletes break the law slightly more. This discrepancy isn't the focus here. These stats were not shown to prove that athletes are any more or any less inclined to break the law. This data isn't to prove that athletes are any better or any worse morally than the rest of us. It is there to show that the opposite is true. Athletes are us. We are them. It sounds a bit theatrical, but it's a fact. Tiger Woods is a profressional golfer who cheated on his wife. Floyd Mayweather was a professional boxer who has been charged with battery 5 times throughout his career. Brock Turner was a swimmer for Stanford University who has been charged with rape. Art Briles was a college football coach who allegedly was knowledgeable about crimes his players had committed. These are people who have either broken the law or allegedly engaged in immoral behavior. Does the fact that they are particularly good at a certain sport or a skilled coach make them morally superior to the rest of the population? If the answer is no, then perhaps its time to be reflective and acknowledge that we have a problem in America with winning at the expense of our values and morality. 

"Show me a gracious loser and I'll show you a failure." -- Knute Rockne

One thing my father shared with me some time ago was a variation of a famous quote from the sports world. He said that sports don't build character, but teachers and coaches do. Something that gets lost in all of the drama and publicity surrounding crime and athletes is our own responsibility for what we have created as a society. We point the finger at these athletes and tell them that they need to apologize to the "public" about their transgressions. Yet we fail to realize that we are in part responsible for not properly teaching our children that education is just as important (if not more important) as athletic achievement and winning. We surround our kids with baseballs, basketballs and footballs. We take them to sporting events, cheering loudly for our team and booing the other. We teach them to cheer for a team we want to win and to be angry when the other team wins. We put our kids in front of TV's that show our greatest athletes competing and advertising products we love. We take them to high school football and basketball games, to exalt teenagers' athletic performance. We teach young men to "man up" or "be a man" when they cry or get sad. We allow our young men to watch porn as a way to learn about intimacy and sex (93% of boys are exposed before the age of 18).  Then we wonder why men are four times more likely to commit violent crimes and ten times more likely to commit a sexual offense when compared to women. We fail to explain how sex in videos isn't how it is or should be in real life. We fail to teach our young men how to express themselves in healthy and non-violent ways. We fail to explain to them that, despite the fame, at the end of the day these athletes and coaches are human beings. They are not better or worse than the rest of the American people. They are not immune from making mistakes. They are who society has made them to be, fabricated role models. People our children idolize, but perhaps shouldn't. 

"Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything that comes in second." -- Paul Bryant

This is not to say that some athletes can't make great role models. It is simply saying that perhaps we need to better explain to our children not to idolize these athletes as much as we do. Perhaps it is time to stop asking athletes to apologize for the mistakes they make. Perhaps it is time to extol educators, engineers, doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and police officers to our children. Perhaps it's time to teach our young men how to reveal their feelings in healthier, non-abusive ways. Perhaps its time to teach young men a new approach on how to treat women. Perhaps its time to explain the benefits of finding a role model with ideals that are geared towards making the world a better place. Perhaps its time to say that winning at all costs isn't what we want sports in America to be about. Perhaps our focus should be on what we can do to better ourselves and leave a legacy that future generations will be proud of. Perhaps this is what type of winning we should be emphasizing to our children. Not winning some game on some field in front of thousands of screaming fans, but winning in the classroom, winning in our relationships, and winning at home.