Sean Paige

Especially successful sports stars usually become celebrities in American society, and they are often regarded as heroes. However, as basketball star Charles Barkley famously pointed out in a 1995 Nike advertisement, not all pro athletes should be regarded as role models. In the late 1990s, a number of unsportsmanlike, sordid, and even criminal incidents involving sports figures once again raised the debate about whether athletes should be so highly regarded by general society. Sean Paige, who was an investigative reporter for Insight on the News magazine when he wrote the following article, explores the phenomenon and how fans are responding to it. He considers whether the bad behavior of some athletes is part of the nature of pro sports, or whether it is just another symptom of America's celebrity—obsessed culture.