The image I will remember most from the 2010 World Cup is Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk pulling off his silver medal in disgust as soon as he left the podium.
Welcome to a brave new world where winning is everything and losing a soccer match is more serious than exposing yourself as a petulant child in front of two billion people.
When I was a boy I was intrigued by Archie Manning, one of the NFL's greatest quarterbacks who played for its worst team, the New Orleans Saints. Season after season good ole' Archie would be pummeled by defensive ends and Linebackers who came charging through his porous offensive line to maul him into the gridiron. Never one to complain, Manning took the beating and continued to clock up impressive stats year after year, even as his team continued to lose.
Why stay with a team so awful that its fans wore brown paper bags over their heads? Why not be traded to a team that had a chance? I never found the answer to that question. But after Arching Manning retired two of his sons followed him into the NFL and became two of its greatest quarterbacks with his eldest son, Peyton, ranking as perhaps the greatest of all time.
Only a father who is truly his sons' hero can inspire them to follow so fully in his footsteps and only a father who has displayed such enormous loyalty and dedication can raise children who, amid being rich and famous, are widely regarded as possessed of high character. So maybe old Archie got his reward in the end after all. Not a Super Bowl but two sons who won Super Bowls and who are models of sportsmen as gentlemen. This is the reward that character, rather than a championship, can bestow.
It's a lesson that LeBron James, who clearly bought into the 'winning is everything' mindset, ought to take to heart. When James dumped Cleveland this week - without the courtesy of even informing the team directly - in order to artificially manufacture a championship team with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh at the Miami Heat, he demonstrated that what really counts in sports is not character but victory, not loyalty but success.
Yes, we all want to win, and no, none of us enjoy losing. But the price we're prepared to pay for our victories is that which will determine our essential character.
Everywhere you look in sports today character is second to victory. I'm an avid cyclist and experience few joys like getting on my bike and getting out into nature. What a pity then that so many professional cyclists have ruined the sport through doping in the belief that crossing the finish line first trumps putting principles first.
It started, of course, with baseball, where players trade teams as easily as kids trade baseball cards. Every player is up for grabs to the highest bidder. In baseball team loyalty is almost nonexistent. It shouldn't surprise us, therefore, that the sport suffered the worst of the doping scandals.
But since sports aren't the most important thing in life, why should any this matter? Because it's indicative of a culture that puts winning above everything.
In today's business world the biggest winners of all are no longer the doctors or lawyers but Wall Street investment bankers who make all other professionals appear like losers by comparison. On Wall Street if you're not in the ranks of the super-wealthy, earning tens of millions of dollars a year, you're a failure who can only gawk in awe at the masters of the Universe who run multi-billion dollar hedge funds. No wonder then that so many on Wall Street took irresponsible risks in order to have the paydays that would take them into the highest echelons. The fact that their risk was paid for by our tax dollars did not much matter. Remember, it's success at any cost.
The winning is everything ethos trickles down to an increasingly rancid and shallow media culture where newspapers and TV rely on shallow Hollywood gossip to boost ratings even as all this nonsense makes the American audience dumber and dumber. It then trickles down even further to vulnerable teenagers whose first desire is to simply be famous, however that might happen.
Want to know why kids cheat at school? Come now. Is that a serious question? How different are they to the rest of us who employ a win-at-any-cost model.
But there is hope among the youth who are, as yet, not as cynical as we adults. The New York Times reported this week that Miley Cyrus has rapidly dropped in popularity by twenty percentage points among girls because of her new hyper-sexualized image, which includes a video of her giving a lap dance to a 44-year-old director and appearing seemingly nude, covered only by a sheet in Vanity Fair. Likewise, her new album 'Can't Be Tamed' has cratered, selling 72% less than her previous album which sported a more wholesome female image.
Which just goes to show you. Not all kids will applaud success at any cost.
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When bullets start to flower, so does one's own legacy regardless of outcome. Yitzhak Rabin the soldier died the moment he became a dove and opted for reconciliation over brute force.
How do you throw away your silver medal and forget you're one of the very few who've ever graced a final? Seems to me Bert van Marwijk had already lost with that kind of attitude! It is time we inculcated belief in the upcoming generations and taught them that winning is indeed everything, when coupled with character, discipline, obedience, respect for the other and humility.
Only then is anyone ready to pick up their deserved accolades. Only then.
He was drafted by his hometown team. If he wanted to play, the only team he could play for was Cleveland. Four years later when his rookie contract expired, he chose to stay home out of a sense of loyalty, obligation, expectation, comfort, or whatever you want to call it.
Now at 25, he sees what his friends who left home experienced. What he missed out on. He figures it's time to leave the nest and make his way in the world. But there are still the same obligations, expectations, and comforts at home. Cleveland's like your mom when you're trying to leave home. If he leaves, he's a backstabber. But if he stays, he'll never know what it's like to be on his own.
It's strange that, as a family counselor, you'd see it differently.
Take the US basketball team at the Olympics - what does it do for society when these great professional athletes win at the Olympics instead of amateurs? (The International Olympic Committee allowed various professional athletes in the Olympics from the early 1990's.) Yes, it is a great show put on for TV by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). - but at what price?
While a guy like LeBron in the Olympics a victory for US basketball fans - there is no reasonable way an amateur US basketball player can nowdays hope to make the US Olympic Basketball team. Wasn't the success of amateur athletes in the Olympics a reason we used to love the Olympics?
These days with pro athletes, the Olympics are evidently more about the character of loving sport for money than the character of loving sport for sport. It would seem to be a reason why the Olympic brand is so protected. If things go wrong, like they did in Vancouver with the death of the luge athlete, there are not too many questions asked - a second example is at http://www.kimberly2004.com.
But it was a no risk move for Peyton, papa Archie had a $10 million insurance policy on Peyton if he were to get injured playing in college. An Insurance policy I doubt Lebron James' mom could have afforded had LeBron not gone pro.
And if Peyton Manning was in school strictly for the education, why would he need insurance against an injury that could derail his pro sports career? Wasn't his goal to pursue a job in the field of his college degree?
Besides, if Lebron decides he wants to become study Biology or Political Science, I'm sure he can afford the tuition.
The day will come when he will have to quit dribbling and start drooling. His life's deeds will come home to roost and he will reap what he sowed.
I think he made a decision to move where the weather is nice year round and to save a heck of a lot of tax dollars. 2 million a year in state taxes. He can do much better to help the local economy than the government could ever dream of doing. His 2 million in state taxes would have been wasted by politicians in Ohio. And I have driven through Cleveland it is not necessarily a nice view, I left a much prettier part of the state so I am not dissing the entire state but Cleveland is just ugly.
As for Cleveland, LeBron gave you what was arguably the best basketball representation your city had EVER seen for 7 years, and all of a sudden, those years mean nothing. I would have left you, too. He didn't dump you, his contract was over. Contracts expire, and people move on. That's pro sports, and if you don't have the stomach for it, maybe you don't deserve a team. If he was everything you said he was (quitter), you should be celebrating his departure. Unless, of course, you're being disingenuous. Stop acting like jilted lovers about the one who's gone, and tell your hometown team's owner to do what it takes to attract top free agent talent to make the Cavaliers contenders again. Focus, boys & girls, this one's for all the marbles.
But the decent thing to do would have been to be upfront with them. Tell them you're not coming back, so they have a chance to go after one of the other free agents out there.
I read your posts every week but you got this one totally wrong. LeBron didn't "dump Cleveland." Like any other professional in his position whether it be sports or medicine or cobbling, he had a contract that was up and he had the choice to either sign another contract with his employer or he could seek offers from other employers who might be amenable to paying for his services. He chose to seek other offers. He gave 7 years of blood, sweat and tears to the Cleveland Cavaliers. For men, that's about a tenth of your entire life.
You see, it doesn't matter why he left. The ring, the weather, the owner, the team, his friends, his momma, the lack of good Cuban cuisine, whatever. He is a free man, not a slave, and he made his choice.
I, for one, am amazed at how he did it. He clearly has been setting up this move for months, if not years. He now gets to play basketball for lots of money with his best friends in one of the coolest cities in the world and he MADE THAT CHOICE. The NBA owners better watch out - this is a tipping point in professional basketball. Three elite players have shown that they can play the owners just like they can run a pick and roll. What a performance. Bravo, LeBron, I hope you live your dream in Miami. I extend my best wishes and continued success.
Deal with it!