Tribune News Service

Charles Barkley has done many controversial things throughout his life.

The NBA superstar was equally known for his antics off the court as he was for becoming one of the greatest players of all time on it. Among his most famous controversies, was his 1993 commercial for Nike Air in which he proclaimed that he “was not a role model.”

Not everybody agreed with Barkley’s premise that athletes aren’t people young kids should pattern themselves after.

“The first time I got hit really hard was for taking that stance,” Barkley recalled in his 2002 memoir. “There were some columnists that defended me but mostly I got killed. I’m okay with it, though, because nobody in all this time has been able to convince me that it’s wrong to tell kids to listen to their parents and not a basketball player they’ve never met.”

Barkley’s logic is somewhat flawed, as unfortunately, not all kids have parents worthy of looking up to. Some go through their childhood without their mom and/or dad being there for them and other kids are raised by terrible human beings that they would be better off striving to be the of polar opposites in every way imaginable.

Where Barkley is right, however, is that kids patterning their lives after athletes, singers, actors etc. could stray them into a world of hurt.

A lot of Pittsburgh Pirates fans were fooled by Felipe Vazquez. Throughout his time in Pittsburgh, Vazquez developed into one of the most popular players on the team, mainly because he was extremely good at baseball. If we see athletes as “role models,” Vazquez would have been looked at as a good one before last Tuesday. Then, the world found out that he faced charges relating to a sexual relationship with an underage girl, and his reputation and  fell to pieces at the age of 28.

Tribune News Service

If a child grows up a sports fan, it’s likely that their parents/guardians are fans as well. It should be their responsibility to make their children cautious about who they look up to. There’s a chance that their favorite player isn’t who they think they are and making children aware of this may soften the blow in cases such as that of Vazquez.

For years, Antonio Brown was thought of as a fun-loving guy who worked his tail off to become the best wide receiver in the world. Now, he’s been released by two teams in the span of two weeks because of several occurrences of poor off-the-field behavior. How does it look now that Brown was once looked at as a role model for America’s youth?

Not all athletes turn out to be poor human beings, but there have been so many cases over the years that are similar to those of Vazquez and Brown in that sports stars have destroyed their reputations and broke the hearts of their fans. Inevitably, there will be plenty more of these cases in the future, and adults must make children aware that these circumstances occur in real life.