Hold-Outs: A New Level of Corruption in Sports

Holdout athletes are becoming more and more common in sports these days. 

Top athletes think that they are entitled to bigger and bigger contracts because every expert, fan, and agent tells them that they're the best.

Holdout athletes are doing more damage than we think.

Any athlete who holds out makes himself look like a selfish, arrogant jerk. The fact that he's holding out tells the team, its fans, and the media that he thinks so much of himself that only $20 million a season will cut it. 

It also tells them that he's only worried about himself and couldn't care less about anyone else. 

Worst of all, it shows that he doesn't care about his team's success—that he's probably not giving it his all to win, that he's only giving about 50% and he doesn't care how the team does. 

All that is bad enough for the player's image.  The latter is no doubt a crushing realization for kids who idolize the athlete—that he isn't dreaming of winning every game and the championship.

But then you have to think about the fact that many professional athletes are countless kids' heroes, idols, and role models.  

A lot of these kids are young and highly impressionable. 

Think back to when you realized every one of those holiday icons (Santa, the Easter Bunny, leprechauns) weren't real. 

These corrupt athletes are impacting kids at least as old as that, maybe older depending on just how gullible they are. 

They're essentially, inadvertently teaching all those kids to adopt their horrible attitudes.  That's just wrong.

Holdout athletes not only do damage to their image that is represented in the fans' opinions of them, but they also greatly impact young kids in a very negative way. 

That has to stop.