Athletes As Role Models Quotes

Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models.

It was all here for me, just as it has all been here for you, the best and the worst of Western Civilization, if you cared to pay attention: music, finance, government, architecture, law and sculpture and painting, history and medicine and athletics and every sort of science, and books, books, books, and teachers and role models. People so smart you can’t believe it, and people so dumb you can’t believe it. People so nice you can’t believe it, and people so mean you can’t believe it.

The problem nowadays is that, by and large, we do a pretty bad job of picking role models. We glorify actors, singers, athletes, and generic “celebrities,” only to be disappointed when—predictably—it turns out that their excellence at reciting, singing, playing basketball, or racking up Facebook likes and Twitter followers has pretty much nothing to do with their moral fiber.

Unfortunately, we don't have all that many good examples to follow. The people that our cultures label as "successful" are the ones who have become wealthy or famous or celebrities, but the truly successful people--those who have become happy and who are living happy, loving, giving lives--aren't often featured in our newspapers or newscasts. We see the politicians and the criminals and the athletes and the entertainment "stars," but we don't see the people who can truly inspire us to be happy by being just who we are.

I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models.... It's not like it was when I was growing up. My mom and my grandmother told me how it was going to be. If I didn't like it, they said, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out." Parents have to take better control.

We were singing for Dr. Du Bois' spirit, for the invaluable contributions he made, for his shining intellect and his courage. To many of us he was the first American Negro intellectual. We knew about Jack Johnson and Jesse Owens and Joe Louis. We were proud of Louis Armstrong and Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes. We memorized the verses of James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Countee Cullen, but they were athletes, musicians and poets, and White folks thought all those talents came naturally to Negroes. So, while we survived because of those contributors and their contributions, the powerful White world didn't stand in awe of them. Sadly, we also tended to take those brilliances for granted. But W.E.B. Du Bois and of course Paul Robeson were different, held on a higher or at least on a different plateau than the others.

When I was a kid, my parents were very careful about who was “acceptable” as my heroes if you will, because they didn’t want me being influenced by athletes who lacked morals. Cal Ripken and Dale Murphy were at the top of my mom’s list of players she felt were good role models, so of course I was a diehard fan of both those guys.

There are as many approaches to unschooling as there are people, by design. A child is supported to read when ready and interested, not on another’s timetable, for example. He can and will be encouraged to pursue a wide range of interests, based on his interests, such as free play, inventing, experimenting scientifically, video gaming, role modeling through friendship, spiritual development through inquiry of self and others, athletics, learning to trust himself and others.

I am not of sound mind. I cannot seem to stop moving - as I write this I have clocked 7,000 miles by truck in the last thirty days and I am hunkered in a motel room high in the Rocky Mountains and yet no nearer to God. I seek roots, just so long as they can accommodate themselves to around seventy-five miles and hour and no unseemly whining about rest stops or sit down dinners. I am, I suspect, a basic American, a perpetual violation that loves the land and cannot kick the addiction of velocity. A person fated never to settle yet always seeking the place to settle. Like cocaine-powered athletes, lying presidents, Miss America, and the Internal Revenue Service, I am not a role model. I am always hungry.

The film stopped and Colin Jackson was asked for his opinion. After Colin refuted the nonsense with a scientific study – which he was actually a part of – that found that both black and white athletes have the ‘fast twitch’ muscle that is apparently the ‘key’ to sprinting, the commentator’s response was: ‘But are we at the point now where if you are a very talented athlete at fourteen/fifteen/sixteen, and you are white, you are almost institutionally programmed to think that you won’t be able to compete at the highest level in the sprint?’ This is a very revealing question from a white public figure, because when black people assert that representation is important, that having role models you can relate to and who look like you is helpful, they are often accused of making excuses, playing the race card or wanting special treatment. Yet here, before the 200 metres final, was a public service broadcaster asserting that, actually, it does matter, and that seeing black people win, in a competition that no white people have ever been barred by law from entering, or in any way discriminated from participating in, could still discourage white teenagers from bothering to even try. Wow.

The film stopped and Colin Jackson was asked for his opinion. After Colin refuted the nonsense with a scientific study – which he was actually a part of – that found that both black and white athletes have the ‘fast twitch’ muscle that is apparently the ‘key’ to sprinting, the commentator’s response was: ‘But are we at the point now where if you are a very talented athlete at fourteen/fifteen/sixteen, and you are white, you are almost institutionally programmed to think that you won’t be able to compete at the highest level in the sprint?’ This is a very revealing question from a white public figure, because when black people assert that representation is important, that having role models you can relate to and who look like you is helpful, they are often accused of making excuses, playing the race card or wanting special treatment. Yet here, before the 200 metres final, was a public service broadcaster asserting that, actually, it does matter, and that seeing black people win, in a competition that no white people have ever been barred by law from entering, or in any way discriminated from participating in, could still discourage white teenagers from bothering to even try. Wow.

However, in a perverse twist on the modern take of the rich, our society gives those who have achieved the greatest success by work and diligence short shrift.We are not interested in emulating the Toyota-driving, modestly attired, bling-less entrepreneur or sales professional. Instead, we take as our role models celebrities and athletes, masters of the universe. Rather than attempt to find their luck, we have come to think that if we act like them, look like them, drive the cars they drive, we are glitteringly rich. In the process of buying into the marketing hype, of getting sucked into the brand advertising, we have frittered away our wealth. It’s not your fault, in a way, as some of the smartest people in the world seem to be working in marketing and advertising,

We’re talking about them as athletes, rather than some of the conversations we had in ’99: My god, who are these women? They’re kind of hot!” Julie Foudy said. After the team won in 1999, the players turned into one-of-a-kind heroes, pioneers, and role models overnight. Many people rooted for them as a larger statement about women in sports. But by 2015, the players of the national team were athletes that America grew to love simply as athletes. If fans were going to be jubilant about a victory in the 2015 World Cup final, it wouldn’t just be because of some deeper meaning or greater impact—it would be because fans knew these players and wanted them to win. It was evidenced by Alex Morgan’s almost 2 million followers on Twitter, Hope Solo’s autobiography becoming a New York Times bestseller, and Abby Wambach appearing in Gatorade television ads on heavy rotation. No longer did the players need to show up at schools and youth clinics to hand out flyers, like the 1999 team did. The word about the national team was already out. In the team’s three May 2015 send-off games, they sold out every match, drawing capacity crowds at Avaya Stadium, the StubHub Center, and Red Bull Arena. Consider what Foudy told reporters in 1999 after the World Cup win: “It transcends soccer. There’s a bigger message out there: When people tell you no, you just smile and tell them, Yes, I can.” By 2015? Players like Carli Lloyd were talking about world domination. It was all about the soccer—and that, in and of itself, was something special and powerful.

Character: developing the moral character of athletes—items such as empathy, respect, and integrity—so that athletes are also good role models

Continued scholarly research reveals just how many women, queer or nonbinary individuals, and people of color perceive very real barriers to their participation in wilderness activities. Recent survey participants list a variety of reasons for these barriers, including outdoor recreation’s continued emphasis on physical strength and technical expertise, sexist and exclusionary programming, and a fear for one’s personal safety while in the wilderness. A recent study of advertisements in outdoor magazines found that while women were present in 46 percent of ads, the majority of them appeared in passive roles, such as sitting around a fire with friends or holding outdoor gear rather than using it. Only the smallest percentage of these women were depicted alone and actively engaged in any kind of athletic pursuit while in the wilderness. Of all the women in the ads, a full 91 percent were white. No known trans or nonbinary models were used.

Treat Your Manager as a Coach Given what we’ve discussed about the role of managers, your own boss should be one of your best sources of learning. But this might not naturally be the case. Maybe he doesn’t see the day-to-day of your work, or he’s busy putting out other fires, or he simply isn’t as proactive about helping to guide your path as you’d like. Regardless, the person most invested in your career isn’t him; it’s you. Your own growth is in your hands, so if you feel you aren’t learning from your manager, ask yourself what you can do to get the relationship that you want. One of the biggest barriers I’ve found is that people shy away from asking their managers for help. I know that feeling well; for years, I held the mental model that my boss—like my teachers and professors of the past—was someone in a position of authority who took note of what I did and passed judgment on it. As such, how I interacted with my manager could be summarized in one neat statement: Don’t mess it up. I considered it a failure if my manager had to get involved in something I was responsible for. It felt to me like the equivalent of a blinking neon sign that read, Warning: employee not competent enough to take care of task on her own. But we know by now that a manager’s job is to help her team get better results. When you do better, by extension, she does better. Hence, your manager is someone who is on your side, who wants you to succeed, and who is usually willing to invest her time and energy into helping you. The key is to treat your manager as a coach, not as a judge. Can you imagine a star athlete trying to hide his weaknesses from his coach? Would you tell a personal trainer, “Oh, I’m pretty fit, I’ve got it under control,” when she asks you how she can help you achieve a better workout? Of course not. That is not how a coaching relationship works. Instead, engage your manager for feedback. Ask, “What skills do you think I should work on in order to have more impact?” Share your personal goals and enlist his help: “I want to learn to become a better presenter, so I’d be grateful if you kept an eye out for opportunities where I can get in front of others.” Tell him your hard problems so he can help you work through them: “I’m making a hiring call between two candidates with different strengths. Can I walk you through my thinking and get your advice?” When I started to see 1:1s with my manager as an opportunity for focused learning, I got so much more out of it. Even when I’m not grappling with a problem, asking open-ended questions like, “How do you decide which meetings to attend?” or “How do you approach selling a candidate?” takes advantage of my manager’s know-how and teaches me something new.