Athletes, Not Heroes (Revised Edition)

[Ok, some of you did not respond so well to the last version.  I am not taking it down, but I have written a revised version.  For those of you who do not know, I am the editor of my school paper.  I had been planning on putting "Athletes, Not Heroes" in the school paper.  I however, am now changing the article so that it would be less offencive.  I am doing this for two reasons.  1) This new article is more neautral and I think that I get the point across clearer.  2) I don't wanna get beat up!  I am also closing comments for the original post. If you have something to say, say it here.]

So, what do teachers, garbage men, and plumbers have in common?  Give up?  They are all needed for our society to function properly.  Think about it!  Without teachers, nobody would be educated.  That may not sound too important now, but just try to imagine life without being able to read.  (It would make text-messaging kind of hard!)  Without garbage men, what would we do with our trash?  Last but not least, imagine a world without plumbers. (Do I really need to go into anymore detail?)

Oh, there is one other thing that they have in common.  They all make less money than professional athletes.  Does this strike anyone but me as odd?  These people work hard to contribute to society and make next to nothing.  Meanwhile, a bunch of self-obsessed steroid addicts make millions for running after a ball like a little dog.  It seems kind of backwards, right?

Sure, athletes help the world in many ways.  They entertain us and, at times, they inspire us, but does that really justify the obscenely large amount of payment they receive?  All of the people listed in the first paragraph are heroes.  Yes, I said heroes!  Anyone who would willingly go into a line of work that involves toilets, garbage, or teenagers deserves a medal.  However athletes, for the most part, are not heroes.  Yet, they get the praise, and treatment, of royalty.  Why is this?

Why is it that athletes tend to dominate every aspect of life?  From the movies to school everything in our society seems to revolve around sports, even Thanksgiving Day is a big day for football!  The worst part is, this obsession with sports only fuels the common belief that brawn rules over brain.  People tend to get into the mindset that you don’t need to be smart in order to succeed; you only need to be stronger than the other guy.  It is this way of thinking that causes people to forget the passion of knowledge that brought our society to where it is today.  Putting athletic programs in schools does nothing but make the situation worse.  Sure, being part of a sports team requires that you keep your grades up, but it does not take much effort to cheat or to memorize the notes instead of learning the subject.  School is a place for education, not athletics.

The bottom line is, our society places way too much emphasis on the importance of athletes.  We need to realize that, although they entertain us, athletes are no better than you or me.  They don’t help the world near as much as the real heroes of our country.  So, you have to ask yourself  “Does it really make sense that people who contribute nothing to our world are rich, yet the people who work had to make civilized life possible get no recognition?”