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What are the responsibilities of a professional athlete once the game is over?
Is their job done? Is all that is left is to collect their pay check and spend their time and money however they please?
Whether it be on drugs, performance enhancing or entertaining; purveyors of the oldest profession; at sports bookies; or, even creating elaborate dog fighting rings, it is their money and their choice, is it not?
After all, they do not owe anyone, anything. They made it to the big leagues after a lifetime of work, staying at the gym long after everyone else had left. Where were all those little kids seeking autographs, the so-called friends expecting favors and the media pundits lauding their every move, when they got cut from their junior varsity high school team and everyone said they were no good and would never amount to anything.
In a society where celebrities are treated almost as Gods, or at the least, larger than life, perhaps professional athletes are not to blame for all the trouble they have been finding lately. With seemingly everyone telling them how great they are and how there is nothing they cannot do, it is easy to buy into the hype.
Certainly it would be hard to be a professional athlete these days. They are expected to replace parents as role models for children, carry the pride of an entire city on their back; yet every dropped pass and every social move is criticized, critiqued and overly analyzed.
These performers are adults after all; they have earned the right to go about their lives as they choose. Can someone who can do anything on the playing field really be blamed for believing they can do anything after the job is done?
No. Yet, that does not mean they have a chance to do more if they choose. For, regardless of what they prefer to believe, the power of a major sports figure extends far outside the lines, and it can be used both for evil and good.
There is the old saying, that to whom much is given, much is expected.
In the modern context, giving someone a multi-million dollar contract certainly would qualify as "much." And despite all the professional athletes seemingly finding their way into the police blotter more often than the end zone, there are still individual's who go about life, on and off the court, in an honorable fashion.
They respect their significant other and shoulder the responsibility of bringing children into the world. When teammates go to the club on a Saturday night, they go to bed to make it to church the next morning. They are active members not only of their team, but of their communities, bringing light into even the darkest of corners.
We here at Chicago Sporting would like to celebrate these individuals with PURPOSE DRIVEN SPORTS: HIGHLIGHTING THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS AND POSITIVE EFFORTS.
JOIN US AT CHICAGO HOPE ACADEMY ON AUGUST 10TH TO CELEBRATE THESE REAL ROLE MODELS. INTERVIEWS WILL BE ONLINE STARTING NOW!
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