Thursday, February 4, 2010

Does It Really Matter???

In the past few months there has been a lot of hue and cry about the personal indiscretions of many a famous sportsperson. John Terry and Tiger Woods are the most recent to suffer this fate. The media as usual is a sucker for sensationalism and has turned these personal issues in to a stupid circus. Channels running shows in which some stupid sports psychologist living his 10 minutes of fame tries to explain why player did what he did and the impact of it on his mind, game etc if his wife should divorce him or not ?? I mean seriously… get a life. Then this guy is most often accompanied by a "has been " or " never was" player who tries to estimate the impact of the incident on the legacy of the player.
We all know who Muhammad Ali is right?, I can guarantee that most of you have never watched a boxing match or have any interest in watching one in the future. Here are some tidbits about his personal life the man changed his religion publicly, refused to go Vietnam as part of the draft, went to jail for it, has been married 4 times and has 2 children from extramarital relationships. Despite all this turmoil in personal life, He is considered one the best Heavyweight Boxing Champions ever and man was voted "The Greatest Sportsman of the Century" by BBC . If Ali's life played out today, the media would label him as unpatriotic and a man of low moral character who will never be anything more than a footnote in the history of sports. And as usual they would have been wrong because Ali's greatness was because of his ability to overcome these obstacles in his personal life, you stupid morons.


Look at Agassi , the man recently confessed to using crystal meth during his playing days. He was vilified by most of the media for using and most of them portrayed it as if, he used Performance Enhancing Drugs. But fact being Agassi had stated in autobiography that he used it during one of the lowest points of his career 1997, while suffering poor form(Ranking outside 100) and to quell worries about his upcoming marriage to actress Brooke Shields. And promptly the stooges who run the media jumped on the band wagon to vilify him and said that he tarnished his legacy. Well In my eyes if anything, my respect for him has grown for the fact he overcame his addiction, came back to sports to win the French Open in 1998 and the U.S. Open in 1999. If anything he is a role model for all of us, he exemplifies the fact that we all fall make big mistakes but you are never really down and out unless you choose to give up.


Now look at kobe Bryant, In 2003 was accused of sexual assault and later agreed to having a sexual encounter with accuse but said it was consensual. Everyone said it was the beginning of the end for him. Now fast forward to the present, he became the highest scoring Laker in history and four million dollar ring sure did help to save his marriage. And will go down in basketball history as one of its greatest players.

A personality from Indian cricket, Vinod Kambli made a bigger splash than Tendulkar when he arrived on the international stage, many say he probably was more gifted than Sachin and that theory is definitely backed up by his early career stats but rest as they say his history. Despite his fall from grace, many an ardent Indian cricket fan will tell that he was one of the very best batsmen that India had ever produced, the fact that someone is even mentioned in the same breath as one best players of an era is testament enough to their sporting talent.
So now in this case of Tiger Woods I really don't think he has anything to worry about with regards to legacy even if he decides to call it quits. The man monopolized golf during his time and one can take away his 14 championships because he happened to be a serial adulterer. Same with John Terry, affair or not he is one of the best defenders in world football if not the best and as sports fan I will tell you this, I would watch these guys play any day of the week and twice on weekends (confession I really don't like watching golf and probably would not but… it just sounds good). 20 years from now, if anyone asks me who these men were? I would say he was the one man monopolized golf to extent Google has monopolized the internet and the other was a hard as nails defender who made one half of the blue wall at Stamford Bridge.

Basically the legacy of a sportsman is rarely tarnished or reduced by his indiscretions off the field, if anything it his success after it only adds to his legacy.

15 comments:

Rohit Chennamaneni said...

We hail from a country where somebody accused of match-fixing is elected as an MP more than 1000 miles away from his home town.... He put his nation's pride at stake and now he is making laws for the same nation... Not to take away the fact that he was one of the greatest players the nation has produced.... Personal issues will be soon forgotten re.. Sensationalism is short lived

mohith said...

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jayan said...

I was discussing Tiger Woods the other day and I don't remember who said this but the fact that Tiger was like the poster boy of Golf who could do no wrong and cultivated this goody two shoes image attributed to his so called accelerated fall from grace.

On the other hand let's say Tiger was bought up in the playboy mansion, was a serial drug offender with a couple of restraint orders and still managed to kick ass at golf I wonder what the media would have to say to that.

Duncan D. Horne - the Kuantan blogger said...

It's the simple case of young men getting paid far too much money.

Interesting write-up. Check me out at www.duncaninkuantan.blogspot.com

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