Football season is quickly approaching. I can’t wait to see my favorite team in action after all this time off. Football is a gladiator sport. In football you want to see toughness, strength and heart all laid out in a single game. It is the reason we are so drawn to the sport. Something gets lost in this picture that we paint of our beloved football players. We forget that they are human and that they go through the same problems that we go through. Of course they have millions of dollars, but the saying goes “money can’t buy happiness”. I want to talk about the Epidemic that is arising in the sport of football, players getting into legal trouble.
In this post I’m not going to judge any player or person for getting in trouble. Hell I got into my fair share of trouble growing up and even now. I want to attempt to make people notice the person behind the face mask. I want people to think about how some of these young men are affected and what needs to be done to help them.
Many people feel that it’s the money that is causing these players to get in trouble. That is not the case because of the 2800 players in the league only about 3% maybe even less than that, get into legal trouble. And of that 2800 only about 30% make millions of dollars. Those numbers don’t support the argument that the money is the cause. There is something troubling the football players that we love and I just want to bring it to people’s attention. I’m no doctor, so I’m not going to offer some psychological analysis for the reason. I want to try and relate this to everyone from a regular Joe perspective.
I want us first to understand that some of these athletes have a tough up brining. Let’s take Michael Ohor as an example. Everyone should know about his story “The Blind Side”. This young man’s mother didn’t want him. He was adopted by strangers and had to adjust to a new life, all while fighting for his natural mother. Football players are no different from the rest of us. They have challenges in their lives that they have to face. Some of them battle drug addictions, alcoholism, and abuse amongst other things. Just because they go to the NFL and make a lot of money doesn’t change that they had a rough upbringing. Sure you can say they need to seek out mentally help for their issues, but would you tell your brother that. How many men can sit in front of a psychologist and tell them that their farther of uncle molested them at a young age? Their situations are no different. It’s hard to open up about what you’re going through or how you feel. Men we can all relate to this. Some of us have wives and we don’t tell our wives how hard it is to go to work, support the family and still not be able to pay all the bills on time. We bottle it all up. These players are going thru the same issues as regular people and their getting into trouble because of it.
The next thing I want people to understand is that the company you keep sometimes isn’t the company you should keep. When you make it big and start to make a little money you can’t hang with some of the guys you use to. That isn’t just for players in the league that is life period. We all have friends that choose to take the wrong path, but we still call them a friend. These athletes are no different, but for them this can magnified. When you’re a high profile athlete and make millions everyone wants to hang with you. When you go out you might invite 5 or 6 guys to come with you. Then those guys ask someone to come with them. This cycle continues and you end up at a club with 25 people and you probably only know 7. If one of those guys gets into trouble while with you it looks bad on you. We can all relate to this one. We may go out in an attempt to have a good time, but someone gets out of hand and then everything just goes south. There is no way any one person could police 25-30 people. Sure most of you say “stay home”, but why should they. They want to enjoy the clubs and bars like we all do. They want to impress the women too. My question to you is how do they accomplish this while staying out of trouble?
The last point I want to make is directed at the parents. The only way I see this changing is by the parents changing. The NFL will continue to draft young men out of college; before a young man can get drafted he first has to prove he is good enough to play in the league. That doesn’t mean just running a 4.3 second 40 yard dash. It means showing the General Managers of the teams that you aren’t a bad person.
Parents we have to do a better job of teaching out young men right from wrong. We have to make our young men work just as hard at life as they do on the field. Why should they only feel challenge when on the field? It is our jobs as parents to make sure our child turns out to be a good adult and a good citizen. I want to bring this topic up because so many people think that because he is an athlete he doesn’t deserve your sympathy. This athlete may not be your child but if your child was in some of these situations, you would want people to think differently about your child. I’m not saying find out what’s troubling these players I’m just saying keep an open mind before judging them.
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