Today's Athletes Are Whiners

Nobody likes a complainer.
Whether it’s a professional athlete or the second baseman in your company’s slow-pitch softball league, it’s just not fun to be involved with a game when somebody won’t stop whining. Listening to somebody argue with the officials, demand the ball again and again, or even just blame everything on everyone else just drains the fun out of what should be an enjoyable experience. Most of us can only take that for so long before we get sick of it and take action.
Jeremy Shockey found that out this week, when the Super Bowl champion New York Giants traded him to the New Orleans Saints for a pair of draft picks. Shockey is considered one of the best tight ends in the game, but the Giants must not have felt that he was a part of their future after he missed significant time with an injury last season and opted to watch his team win the title from a luxury box instead of on the field.
But I think the front office, and I dare say a majority of the fans, will be glad to see Shockey leave. He has tremendous talent, to be sure, but he also has a way of dragging his team down by hounding the refs for a flag or getting into skirmishes with the other team.
And Shockey certainly isn’t the first talented player to be cut loose because of his attitude; Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, Milton Bradley (not the board game company, the baseball player) and Vince Carter all come immediately to mind, and there are so many others in every team sport.
It makes me wonder why bad attitudes are so prevalent in sports, especially at the professional level.
I think it starts with the individual personality, and I don’t think anyone will disagree with the idea that we’re all different.
But regardless of personality differences, most of us find ways to set aside our own personal motives and agendas in the unifying pursuit of achievement. Athletes tend to be especially good at this, at least most of the time, because it takes a lot of work to win a professional league’s championship.
Which makes it so frustrating to find a talented athlete who refuses to set his own ego aside to help the team reach its goal; at some point along the line, the “me first” athlete had to have succeeded, and this implies that he must have been able to function as a decent teammate. He probably showed up to all the practices, played hard on every play, rooted for his teammates when he was on the sidelines, and listened to what the coach told him to do. He played the game the way it’s meant to be played.
But then there must have come a time when this revelation occurred; like the opening of Pandora’s Box, the idea must have formed in his mind that he was the sole reason for the team’s success, and he must be treated accordingly.
Honestly, I think this moment happens to every single talented athlete. We live in a world that glorifies the hype of the superstar athlete, and it would be pretty great to have your own line of Nike Adidas shoes, wouldn’t it? How cool would it be to have your own Gatorade flavor? How about having EA Sports design a virtual you for their next Xbox 360 game?
But along with each of those moments comes a landmark moment in the life of an athlete – the refining influence of reason, in one form or another. Most often it’s a coach who lets the athlete know that, while he has special talent, the game he loves has no compassion for the ill-prepared. I’m sure Todd Marinovich can take some time off from his job at Wal-Mart to explain how that all works.
Basically, the temptation for the athlete to think he deserves more credit is squashed by the reality that he’s already treated far better than he deserves because he gets to play the game he loves.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Every so often, we get one that slips through the cracks. We end up watching Terrell Owens go from a guy who was so happy to catch a game-winning touchdown that he cried like a baby in his coach’s arms (in the 2002 playoffs for San Francisco against Green Bay) to a guy who whose Web site (www.terrellowens.com) has t-shirts proclaiming him to be the “Original 81” and a rap song, performed by Owens, that brags “…to the haters that said I wouldn’t get my money, I’m laughing in your face; ha ha, that’s funny.” Not only is that missing the point of the game, it’s not even a clever rhyme scheme. He’s unpleasant in more than one arena of entertainment now. Let’s just hope he doesn’t do any more TV guest spots like the one he did for the MyNetworkTV show “Under One Roof.”
Obviously, Owens never got the message that football is bigger than the antics of one reasonably talented wide receiver, no matter if he (as his rap song also boasts) “[is] back on a mission, [he has] a new recipe, so [he’s] back in the kitchen.”
I’m pretty sure Owens, just like every other pro athlete, has had a coach tell him that he’s part of a team and that all the showboating isn’t what the game’s about. But at some point, the guys with the shoe contracts and the rap moguls with the proposed lyrics “I'm back, and I'm better than ever; I’m back, and I’m getting this cheddar; I’m back, this time I’m a Cowboy; I’m back, and I'm got 'em sayin' wow, boy” started getting louder than the voice of reason.
And the sad truth of the matter is that things aren’t going to change; money talks and there will always be another talented young athlete who is willing to listen.
But I do still have hope, because there are still those that fight to keep our sports pure.
So to all you coaches, parents, fans and supporters of youth sports – keep up the great work. What you do for our sports is akin to the work our teachers do for our society. You may not ever receive an award, and you may not get mentioned at the Espy Awards, but you are the only thing keeping us from living in a world where Eli Manning has his own rap song.
Please don’t let Eli Manning have his own rap song.
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If you have a particular coach, parent, fan or supporter you’d like to mention for what they do for our sports, I’d love to give them some much-deserved credit.
Send me an e-mail at sports@valleycenter.com and let me know what this person does to help preserve the purity of our sports, and how they’re impacting young players to avoid the pitfalls of listening to rap moguls.
I’m also curious to hear your horror stories about the athletes who are tearing down our beloved games, so please send in those stories as well. You don’t need to mention any names, especially if it’s that one indoor soccer goalie with the goggles who always finds a way to beat your team head-to-head (not that I have any personal stories to tell), but I’d still enjoy hearing your experiences.
Although, I hear it’s a great idea to put your experiences into a rap song and post it on your personal Web site.