www.heavensgatel2.fora.pl

[ksdsoft18i72]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych] should have stood up to bully NCAA
Gladiator [link widoczny dla zalogowanych][/u], honored with a trophy that looks as antiquated as the ideal it allegedly represents, avoided a pretty easy opportunity to appear brave last week.
Not to be brave, mind you.
Just to give off the appearance of bravery, which is what seems to matter in sports now that Bill Russell is graying and Muhammad Ali is shaking and Jim Brown is walking with a cane. Perception is shutting out and shutting up the keeping-it-real movement in a way that makes the scoreboard look lopsided.
There's more packaging around the arena these days than ever before, so many handlers and publicists and mythologists around athletes to photoshop and airbrush and help keep things looking just so. This keeps the cash and commercials coming in, but it also scrubs away reality and places public relations above private relations . . . unless you can parlay private relations into public relations the way [link widoczny dla zalogowanych][/u]'s more famous ex-girlfriend Kim Kardashian did.
Regardless, it makes uncomfortable truths something to be avoided in sports unless you are willing for your stand to come with a literal cost.
Contrition is more likable than conviction. So it is easiest to just apologize, even if you aren't sorry,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], especially if you aren't sorry, and then just take your smile and rehabbing image to the next meeting with your agent. This is part of why Randy Moss doesn't have endorsements. And it's also why Clinton Portis, so colorful, appeared with tape over his mouth before reporters last week after apologizing 16 seconds after saying something that didn't require an apology.
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych][/u], engulfed in scandal for taking money while he was a student-athlete at USC, gave back his Heisman Trophy but said it wasn't an admission of guilt. Huh? It was the kind of juke that won him the award, actually. Avoid contact. Run to a safe area. And you can't blame him. It makes the questions go away but not the money and fame, and he can continue to profit in a recession. He didn't do this to protect his alma mater or college sports or the Heisman ideal; he did this to protect his Subway commercials.
But imagine if he had chosen a different play, to run between the tackles. Imagine if he was, if not defiant, at least willing to fight. Imagine if he wasn't surrounded by so many people who, just like when he was at USC, make money off his image. Or imagine if those people didn't mind that pretty face getting into a bit of a public brawl.
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych][/u] could have fought an easy fight as a symbol, with a lot of Sports America at his back. The NCAA, a greedy and faceless bully, might be the easiest punching bag in sports, running a mafia system everyone knows is a sham. Hard as it usually is for a millionaire in the wrong to be the public underdog, [link widoczny dla zalogowanych][/u] could have become something of a martyr slain by evil if he had merely explained why he had no intention of ever giving back a trophy he earned on the field, and then made those old guys in suits come take it from him like a rich landlord evicting a bankrupt tenant in front of the TV cameras.
The rules? Yeah, he broke them, he could have explained. But he did so by taking money against future earnings to help his parents. Who can't understand that? His image-makers could have put a human face on this by turning something that looked greedy/selfish into a conversation about poverty and inner cities and the kind of desperation that wins football games and fills stadiums on manicured campuses all over our great land. And then he could have articulated how the rules are wrong in shamateurism, and the only way to overthrow a bad government is with anarchy. He could have done all of this politely, with his tie perfectly knotted, and looked stronger than he ever did in winning that trophy in the first place.

The post has been approved 0 times