Bad boys and the cult of celebrity

These are the sort of leashes that Lipsyte talks about. The behavior of the modern sports stars are meant to replicate success figures like Sebastian Coe, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former world champion body builder and the governor of California. Athlete behavior is meant to be exemplary and virtuous and sustain the rags to riches myths of successful sports stars from humble origins. In most cases these are virtues about sacrifice hard work and dedication. These are also old virtues founded in amateur times that neglect the realities of professional sport.

Professional sports is characterised by a rapid turnover of players who are generally exploited, injured and disposed as dropped or “delisted” which is really a euphemism for being given the “sack”. For every star at “the top” there are hundreds of youngsters whose dreams of getting to the top evaporated in the despair of permanent injury, physical decline or being ripped off by greedy managers.

Without guidance and good training athletes can’t cope with the multiple demands for all round action which requires the celebrity syndrome to stay in control. The dice are loaded against them particularly if their lives are institutionalised by sports in way that rob their autonomy and opportunity to determine their lives beyond the “game plan” of their corporate owners.

The lives of professional sports stars have an artificial and isolated quality directed to the routine of training, preparation, PR, traveling and playing for their clubs. The team atmosphere also has a confining quality where the rituals of bonding take priority over notions of individualised development. The capacity of individual sports stars to make judgments about what is in their own interests is often lacking and they display a naive understanding of life in general. Athletes in team sports are found to be lacking the maturity to make any balanced judgment and tend to be involved in cycles of binge drinking, excess partying and sometimes even drunken rampages, bar room brawls, bashings and sexual assaults. Even the most disciplined organisations that considered themselves “gentleman” like the Australian Wallabies are not immune from these experiences.

Another aspect of this syndrome is the way in which the celebrity sports star is defined by cyclic stunts. Some sports stars generate an identity as a “bad boy” or larrikin. Like ex-footballer George Best, these stars even keep coming up with stunts in later life after they have departed the arena. The serial stunts of Shane Warne such as exposés of betting, phone sex scandals, the doping bust, and the recent well publicised marriage split are hallmarks of a style of career littered with controversy. These are some examples of how the modern sporting identity is typified by self-centered and undisciplined behavior. It’s often attributed to having “too much time on their hands” that leads them into mischief.

The erratic celebrity sportsmen are a contrast to the boredom and predictability of sports packaged for television. In some ways the sideshows of the lives of the celebrity sports stars are more exciting than some of the sanitised and programmed sports that fans have to endure.

Attempts to make changes are made more difficult by the elevated and exaggerated status of the modern celebrity sports star. The status of sports stars in the era of celebrity enables them to assume a prestige and value beyond their own sporting profile. When contemporary notions of identity, community and nation are ambiguous sports assume a new importance.

They have become nationalistic symbols of national identity which are often stoked by the press and established interests as an artificial and contrived way of symbolising unity when many of the bonds of community have been dismantled by the excesses of the market. So the off-field misdemeanors of the modern sporting celebrity are obscured by a new strident nationalism which is used to excuse all manner of indiscretions. The new bad boys are excused as “our bad boys” and lets them get away with racism, boorish sexism and vacuous conservative ideology dressed up as dedication and sacrifice.