Really Good Article

[deeman11747]

I really had no clue where to put this so if this is in the wrong spot please move it mods.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...sterman/060314

Really good points he brings up today.

Usually, Americans don't hold pro athletes to particularly high social standards. Fans are very unforgiving of performative failures, but there are virtually no behavioral requirements for being beloved: For example, there are a handful of active superstars who many people still suspect might be murderers or rapists. The only thing we truly demand of pro athletes is that (a) they never associate with known gamblers, and (b) they always, always try to win. Randy Moss put a kid in the hospital and purposefully hit a cop with his Lexus, but the biggest mistake he ever made was relaxing on Vikings running plays; his critics will never forgive him for being openly lackadaisical. Ron Artest punched private citizens who paid to watch him work, but I'd still want him on my team if we were up two points with 15 seconds remaining on the clock; he'd surrender his body to protect the baseline. The greatest compliment you can give any athlete is that he would rather die than lose. And this is curious, since that particular behavior would be classified as idiotic in every other aspect of life.

[DGetz]

Re: Really Good Article

Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed it.

His point about the level of competitiveness you see in everyday life versus in sports was particularly interesting to me because since I stopped being young enough to play sports seriously competitvely a couple of year ago I've been trying to find the balance between caring enough to retain my competitive edge and be in the game mentally while still not being the guy everyone assumes has no life outside of Rec hockey once a week because he gets so worked up at games.