The Depriving Sporting World: Athletes Lives in Shambles

The sports world is based on athleticism, money, fame, and, most importantly, passion. The world’s best athletes are bred to be passionate about their favorite sports almost from the moment they begin to walk. They spend every spare minute practicing and playing while their parents eagerly cough up the money needed to foster this passion. Throughout their childhood they prepare to become varsity athletes in high school and scholarship athletes in college, with every hope and dream aimed toward one day reaching the last step of becoming a professional athlete. Even a fan’s passion is vital to creating the environment of the sports world. Fans are willing to fill ten thousand seat basketball arenas, forty thousand seat baseball fields, and seventy thousand seat football stadiums. They too grow up loving a specific team in their favorite sport and never forget the passion with which they followed that team. They become loyal adult fans and spend their whole lifetime passionately cheering for the same team. Later they pass this fanaticism down to their offspring and breed a new generation of devoted sports aficionados. All of these factors create a setting in which the professional athlete is idolized and catered too. They are “routinely hounded by autograph seekers.” Everything they could ever want is bought for them and brought to them. They never have to worry about doing anything except playing their game. These athletes have great lives during their short-lived careers, which usually last less than ten years and rarely go past fifteen years.

In any sport, it is easier to find 10 athletes who failed to make a post retirement life for themselves than 10 who succeeded.

When their contracts end and their careers fade away, those athletes who got used to living on a cloud above everyone else now realize that they must come down to earth and return to reality. Cristina Versari, head of sports psychology at San Diego University for Integrative Studies stated that "there's a developmental arrest. When an athlete retires, it takes four to eight years to adjust to a new life.” Without the catering they have lived with during their professional careers, athletes have to live their own lives and do things themselves. Sometimes they even have to earn extra income at a real job. The pedestal the athletes are placed on, causes their egos to skyrocket and later in life when retirement comes knocking on the door, athletes feel like they are above the rest of society therefore they should attain “better” jobs just because they are who they are. But since they spent their whole lives as athletes, many of them cannot handle the pressures of normal everyday living. The only problems professional athletes face are, for example, getting traded from New York to Los Angeles or giving up four runs in an inning. Those are not typical problems real people face everyday. Their inability to handles “typical” problems cause some to have mental breakdowns, turn to alcoholism and drugs, or maybe even tragically commit suicide. A few even exhaust all of their money and are left homeless. Take for example J.R. Richard, a former Houston Astros ace. Richards, pictured delivering a pitch, was a great hurler during his short career and was destined to have a place in Cooperstown among the best. After his career in 1980, he was found homeless living under a bridge. These athletes do not succeed after retirement because the upbringing that bred them for professional sports did not prepare them for everyday life.

The fans should receive most of the blame for this frequent letdown following the end of an athlete’s career. It is the fans’ over-the-top adoration of the athletes that make them willing to pay outrageous prices to buy a seat at a sporting event, even as greedy owners raise those prices in order to pay the inflated contracts of the players. The fans also worship the athletes enough to buy any product with their favorite player’s name painted or embroidered all over it. The enticement of these huge contracts and massive endorsement deals also leads the athletes to leave college early or skip college entirely in order to become a professional much more quickly than otherwise. Without a degree, it becomes more difficult for athletes to begin a second career after retiring from sports. Also, without the college experience athletes do not develop the social skills necessary to landing a normal nine-to-five job.

The media is also to blame for many of the emotional difficulties that retired superstar-athletes face. They go from seeing their names in headlines almost everyday to receiving little or no attention. They go from the “pinnacle of adulation, excitation and the confirmation of worth to nothing." However, this can also be blamed on the ridiculous fanaticism of many sports buffs. Newspaper editors write their articles to sell to these same fans. If they know that the fans do not want to read about an old, washed-out player than they will not include that player in their publication. It can be depressing for an admirer to see his or her favorite sport star go from billboards and trading cards to rehab and CourtTV, but it is the fans who are at fault and it is the fans who can correct this endemic. If fans stop raising top-performing athletes to the highest pedestals and stop filling their bank accounts with seven, eight, and nine figure balances, then maybe athletes will grow up more humble and modest. Maybe then athletes will be willing and able to work blue-collar jobs after they reach the inevitable end to their careers in the respected world of sports.