Example Of Are Professional Athletes Good Role Models Today Essay

Without any doubt, professional athletes serve as role models in today’s world, especially for younger generations. The most successful athletes are people who beat unbelievably intense competition to become famous; as the masters of their sports, they often perform things that are beyond human imagination. As top earners, they also contribute significantly to their economies by paying high taxes and donating for charity. However, athletes often behave irresponsibly, which may have negative impact on their followers.
It needs to be understood that a very small fraction of people who devote their time to a particular sport become professionals, even fewer become superstars. It is far from enough to have talent – it should be supported by hard and, which is important, efficient work. It often happens that bright young athletes fail to blossom into professionals on senior level, while those who had been perceived mediocre become stars due to their persistency.
On the one hand, successful athletes are hardworking people with attitude of winners and mentality of fighters in the best sense of this word. While hard work is often hidden as we see only results of it, the latter two characteristics are something people admire about athletes – and I am pretty sure that almost every father would love to see these qualities developed in his son’s personality.
On the other hand, many athletes forget about their public responsibility as role models and do outrageous things that should not be adopted by their followers. First of all, it includes cheating with Lance Armstrong (cycling) and Alex Rodriguez (baseball) being the examples of cheaters who used to be loved by everyone. The other examples may include footballer John Terry cheating with his teammate’s girlfriend and making racist comment about the opponent, Ron Artest (basketball) bringing a gun to the locker room and Marat Safin (tennis) swearing loudly and breaking rackets on court.