Tony T
10-21-2012, 09:28 PM
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/10/22/sports/YRHODEN1/YRHODEN1-articleLarge.jpg
Charles Barkley, then a star for the Phoenix Suns, declared in an ad, “I am not a role model.”
Seeing Through the Illusions of the Sports Hero (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/sports/seeing-through-the-illusions-of-the-sports-hero.html?ref=sports)
In light of the dramatic falls of Michael Vick, Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Tiger Woods and now Lance Armstrong, we need to either recalibrate our definition of the sports hero or scrap it altogether.
Why did Nike abandon Armstrong and not Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant?
The reasons Nike stuck with Woods and abandoned Armstrong have more to do with money. Woods and Bryant are still making loads of it for the corporation. But Armstrong has no more mountains to climb, no more Tour de Frances to win. Publicly humiliated, his reputation shattered, Armstrong has no value to any of the companies who backed him, including his own, apparently.
At the funeral of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s Mark Antony says, “The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
The American hero is part of our mythology, a relic of days gone by. Dead and unnecessary. Charles Barkley may have had it right, after all.
Charles Barkley, then a star for the Phoenix Suns, declared in an ad, “I am not a role model.”
Seeing Through the Illusions of the Sports Hero (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/sports/seeing-through-the-illusions-of-the-sports-hero.html?ref=sports)
In light of the dramatic falls of Michael Vick, Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Tiger Woods and now Lance Armstrong, we need to either recalibrate our definition of the sports hero or scrap it altogether.
Why did Nike abandon Armstrong and not Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant?
The reasons Nike stuck with Woods and abandoned Armstrong have more to do with money. Woods and Bryant are still making loads of it for the corporation. But Armstrong has no more mountains to climb, no more Tour de Frances to win. Publicly humiliated, his reputation shattered, Armstrong has no value to any of the companies who backed him, including his own, apparently.
At the funeral of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s Mark Antony says, “The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
The American hero is part of our mythology, a relic of days gone by. Dead and unnecessary. Charles Barkley may have had it right, after all.