Sports Fans and the Liberties We Take When Judging Athletes

Through the history of time, celebrities and big name athletes have always been held under a tighter microscope than the average joes of society.  Every action and every word spoken are no longer taken with a grain of salt, rather it's as if those actions and words act as giant boulders to the masses of the world and affect their daily lives more than they should.

Sports are a tremendous form of entertainment and also a way to forget about reality for a little while.  Many people have told stories about how sports made them enjoy life at least for a few hours, even in the hardest of times in their lives. 

After the 9/11 attacks, the country was in shock and disbelief.  People started to question whether or not the country could survive or if the government was taking the appropriate measures to protect them. Sports allowed for all Americans to ease their minds for a while and just enjoy the art of the game. 

Now, sports are no longer just a scapegoat to forget about reality, it's now turning into our own reality.  Star athletes have become so entwined with the common folk that they are gossiped about just as much as the neighbors down the street who put up a new fence or the girl at work who showed up in the same clothes as yesterday with her hair a mess.  Their lives are almost as important as our lives.

And all that is just really sad.  Any athlete can screw up in any way, shape or form and everybody in the country will know about it by the next morning.  Tiger Woods' car crash by his house Thanksgiving morning was blasting on ESPN and numerous other media outlets within five hours, in full detail. Ben Roethlisberger, being suspected of sexual assault, was reported almost literally the night the alleged attack happened.  Even if it's just a minor report, it's still being reported for a world wide audience to hear for themselves and quickly jump to some kind of a conclusion. 

It's amazing to think that say even 20-30 years ago, in order to find out intimate details about an athlete, you would have to wait for them to write an autobiography three years after they retire.  Now, these same athletes have zero privacy.  Their lives are plastered all over the television and Internet, with them being defenseless to stop it.

What makes this current public view of athletes agenda is the fact that no matter what the slip up in the athlete's life is, we as everyday people like to use those stories to take liberties upon them.  It's human nature to judge quickly on somebody based on what we have heard from a different source, but the amount of criticism athletes take from the public, especially from fans of the sports, is ridiculous.

Tiger Woods' sex-scapades, Kobe Bryant's alleged rape, Michael Jordan's private drinking and gambling matters and Michael Vick's dog fighting conviction are just a few examples of how people around the star athletes can take a story and make whatever they want out of it. 

Do we, the public, have somewhat of a claim to judge athlete's based upon their personal life problems?  Absolutely not.  We need to view them as just that, athletes. 

Problem is, some people cannot and will not look past an athlete's personal life until they have accomplished something in their respective sports after the event. 

Woods is consistently scrutinized about his lack of ability to play top notch golf, writing it off to him being too focused on sex to keep his mind right.  Bryant wasn't able to live down the rape allegations until he started to win championships again.  MJ was basically forgiven for his personal demons because he resurrected a city and continued to win. 

That leaves Vick.  He has been demonized by the general public for his dog fighting arrest and consequential prison sentence.  For a prime example, earlier today I posted an article on here.  In it I questioned if Michael Vick might possibly be using the race card in his rant about how officials aren't protecting him this season. 

Now it has been up for about seven hours and the only people who comment are those who just want me to know that it's OK for him to get hurt because he is the scum of the earth and deserves it.  Those comments really had no relevance to the article in question, rather it just opened the door for the anti-Vick squad to be heard again. 

Now, I'm all for letting your voice be heard.  I wouldn't be a writer on here if I wasn't, I just feel we all (including myself) need to sometimes think twice about a subject matter before we try to make our voices loud and proud.

We, as fans, have every right to enjoy a game and love what were enjoying.  What we don't have the right to do, however, is to judge athletes based on their personal lives.  We don't have the right to hold athletes to a higher standard than we hold ourselves and the people around us because they are athletes. 

We could all stand to take a look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we are perfect.  If that answer is a resounding "Hell no I'm not perfect," then we should always have that mindset while attempting to judge other people.  Nobody's perfect, especially not athletes.  It's about time we all start realizing that.