by Gary Wonning

Created on: September 16, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Professional Sports are going through a time when they are getting a lot of bad publicity, with the Micheal Vick incident, Barry Bonds taking steroids and the NBA official accused of throwing games.

There is something at stake here other than their so called rights It is time for the sports community to clean up their act, they are in the public eye,and are role models for kids. What kind of an example do they set when these sorts of things are accepted as the norm, whatever happened to the idea that good sportsmanship is important. Sure we all want to win, but there are certain things that should not be done in order to accomplish that goal.

How can we expect our kids to become good citizens when they are taught that any behavior is acceptable ,society is teaching them the only thing that is important is to win at any cost.

Whatever happened to the time when sports heroes were someone to look up to , they supported their country, they tried to lead good lives and set a good example for everyone else.

I played sports in high school and we were held to a higher standard than the rest of the students, when we got busted for doing something wrong,we were off the team, not only did that create a better image for the sports program, we were also put in a position of having to not get in trouble, our fellow team mates came down on us for letting them down, and it made us into better people by having to live up to a certain standard and by doing that, it kept us out of trouble.

As a society, the sooner we realize that an "anything goes attitude" only brings about more crime and bad behavior, and we begin to develop a more common sense attitude about our actions will we have a country where these sort of things no longer are a problem.

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