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 "I am not a role model."
Those are the now famous (or perhaps infamous) words former NBA player Charles Barkley uttered in 1993. And today, there is still no clear cut answer as to whether or not professional athletes should be thought of as role models.
The debate is not one that is kicked around on a daily basis. However, when a player finds himself in a bit of trouble, it always seems to find its way into the conversation.
That happened this past summer on the heels of an article written by Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post in which Smith's writing style on Twitter was characterized as a style of writing commonly used by a notorious street gang. This started a rather passionate discussion in the "comments" section of Dempsey's article.
Being based in Denver and relatively close to the Nuggets I received a number of e-mails about the incident. Some were mad at Smith and others were mad at the media. The one common theme that seemed to come through in most every e-mail I received was the fundamental question of whether or not athletes should be role models.
Opinions varied widely.
The most common response was that athletes should not be role models. Instead, that job should be left to the parents.
That's a fairly common response in these kind of discussions. And while it sounds good on paper, it's ignoring some rather important variables.
Growing up as a basketball player I looked up to a fair number of NBA basketball players. I wouldn't necessarily say I viewed them as role models per se, but they certainly served as templates for how I should behave. Often times that behavior was limited to the basketball court, but not always.
Now, that's not meant to imply that my parents weren't role models because they absolutely were. As an adult it's easy for me to see that both my mother and father played a much more important role in my life than any professional athlete ever could have.
However, to put things in proper context, it's important to remember what it's like to be a 12 or 13-year-old young person. Reflecting back to my younger years, I know I really didn't want to hear anything from my parents. Someone else could tell me the same thing my parents had tried to tell me and because I heard it from a novel source all of a sudden it became a brilliant idea.
Moreover, perhaps my father's biggest weakness through my 13-year-old eyes was that he couldn't score 44 points in a NBA basketball game, bring the crowd to its feet, and cap it all off with a 360 dunk. Through my now 29-year-old eyes I fully see and appreciate that my father worked a job he didn't necessarily love and my mother worked long hours so I could live a better life. I also understand now how my father playing catch or shooting hoops with me nearly everyday after he got home from work was priceless and much more meaningful than anything a pro athlete on television could have done. But again, it's important to think about the world through the eyes of young people when deconstructing a term like role model free from the experience we gain en route to adulthood.
Young people, and some adults for that matter, form what social scientists refer to as "parasocial relationships" with professional athletes and other celebrity figures. What this essentially means is that fans form a relationship with the persona of an athlete and not the athlete him or herself. This persona is almost always created through the media, prior to the advent of Twitter, of course, which now provides athletes at least some choice in avoiding the media filter. Whether it happens through traditional media or not, though, fans really believe they know these players when in truth they only know a media construction of these individuals.
Here's the kicker: parasocial relationships can't be avoided by professional athletes or other individuals in the spotlight. These relationships are simply a byproduct of celebrity status in this culture, perhaps more now than ever given our culture's ever expanding obsession with the lives of celebrities. Given this reality, it's nearly impossible for a professional athlete to avoid being held up as a role model.
Young people are taught through virtually all of the media channels surrounding them everyday (television, radio, internet, billboards, etc.) that achieving fame is an important ingredient -- perhaps the most important ingredient -- to achieving success in the culture. As such, it seems quite natural they would embrace celebrity templates as role models for how to achieve such "success."
Some will no doubt say that if parents don't like the message professional athletes are sending, they should simply restrict access to these athletes by not buying tickets, not allowing their children to watch games on TV, etc. This is one of those righteous statements that sounds good in theory but almost always fails in practice. That's like implying that by restricting knowledge to sex, drugs and other hurdles teenagers inevitably encounter it will somehow prevent exposure to these hurdles. This type of reasoning is inherently faulty. If young people are curious about something, they are going to conduct their own investigation whether their parents would prefer they do or not.
It's easy for adults to scream from every rooftop that parents needs to be the role models young persons pattern themselves after as many did in the wake of Dempsey's article. However, this is to ignore the subjective experience of a teenager. It's equally as easy for athletes to say they never signed up to be role models, but this would be ignoring and denying the parasocial relationships that we know exist between celebrities and non-celebrities, most especially young people.
There is a reasonable compromise that can be reached. Parents must remain persistent and understand that consistent involvement in the lives of their children will make a huge difference over time. They are without a doubt the first and most important line of defense and ultimately have the opportunity to impact their children in a way others simply cannot. However, to put all of the burden on the parents by simply pretending that parasocial relationships don't exist between young people and celebrities is to turn a blind eye to reality.
It's also important to understand that professional athletes have a role to play. NBA players can assert all they want that they are not role models, but that doesn't change the reality of parasocial relationships. A more socially responsible way of handling this would be for professional athletes to understand and accept their roles in the lives of young people as something that is a natural consequence of being in the public eye. That doesn't mean they should be the most important or only role models in the lives of a young person, but to deny any impact at all is callous at worst and ignorant at best.
So whether Smith realizes it or not, he does have some responsibility to the broader community and those who support him. No, he's not supposed to raise other people's children. However, he has a role to play by virtue of status, and it's a role that is larger than some might want to believe when delving into the subjective experience of a young person with an interest in the game of basketball who also happens to be similar to Smith across myriad of demographic variables. Whether Smith and other NBA players decide to hold themselves accountable in that role is a choice only they can make on an individual basis.
In many ways, this is exactly what game on Nation is really all about. The game on curriculum serves as the perfect means for an athlete of any age to foster the parasocial as well as the very personal relationships in their lives. Athletes are expected to show up physically fit at the start of each season. It is the goal of game on Nation to help athletes show up psychologically fit, too, with the self-confidence, self awareness, and communication skills necessary to truly thirve.
In retrospect, perhaps it would have been better 16 years ago for Barkley to have said, "I never intended to be a role model." No one can question the truth value of such a statement. However, to make a proclamation such as "I am not a role model" is to tell other people what they should or should not be experiencing.
In fairness to Barkley, we now live in a time where celebrity worship has reached almost epidemic proportions as compared to 1993 when he first made his statement. Given that fact, though, it is now more important than ever for athletes to understand that their actions and statements on television, via twitter, or any other medium, impact the people around them. Simply running from it or denying it exists might help the individual athlete rationalize away any feelings of guilt, but it doesn't lessen the aforementioned impact of those actions or statements.
 | Travis Heath, Ph.D. - Communication CoachTravis Heath is a communication coach for game on and holds a Ph.D. in psychology. His charismatic and active style of teaching combined with his skills as a clinician working with individuals, adolescents, families, and groups gives him unique insight and perspective in helping people achieve greater self-awareness and communicate to their full potential. He has appeared on television and radio shows across the country on networks such as CNN, Fox, and ESPN. |
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