“Why should I give a hoot about you, huh? Or anybody else out there?”
“I’m supposed to wear myself out for the team? What team? No, what I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna look out for myself, and I’m gonna get mine.”
The quotations above come from one of my favorite sports movies of all time, “Remember the Titans.” In this scene, teammates Gerry and Julius are expressing their opinions of each other and their problems with the team. I think many of the things that Julius says in this conversation (in the quotes above) give an accurate description of the attitude that is currently overtaking much of professional sports today. Disclaimer: I know that there are still plenty of classy guys in professional sports today, but what I’m describing in this article seems to be the way that professional sports are headed.
This trend had remained fairly subtle to me, until after the 2014 NFC Championship game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Seattle Seahawks. The game ended with a fantastic defensive play by Richard Sherman to swat the ball away from 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree and into the arms of Sherman’s teammate, Malcolm Smith, to seal their victory and send them to the Super Bowl.
After the game, Sherman taunted the 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and wide receiver Michael Crabtree, and then proceeded to give one of the most infamous post-game interviews of all time. Instead of praising his teammates, Sherman immediately began to berate Crabtree by calling him “sorry,” and then he referred to himself as the “best corner in the game.”
There were plenty of mixed responses in all areas of media regarding what Sherman said, and I don’t know what was said between Crabtree and Sherman previously to spur the malice, but I believe that there is a certain amount of respect and sportsmanship that should be shown to your opponents, in victory or defeat. I realize that trash talk has gone on in sports for a long time, but this was the most pompous, arrogant display that I’ve ever seen in a nationally televised post-game interview.
My fear in this trend is that kids will see professional athletes act selfishly and disrespectfully, and look up to these athletes and model themselves after them. Are our current professional athletes instilling this air of selfishness among the professional athletes of the future? Have we only seen the beginning of this trend of promoting personal success over team performance? It seems to me that selfishness and personal attention is being bred in the name of “swag.” I believe more players should be concerned about the name on the front of their jersey, rather than the one on the back.
