Skip to main content

Sports vs. the Front Page

I don't post a lot about parenting here. I remember when I didn't have kids yet, thinking to myself that parents seem to be obsessed with the topic of parenting, and I didn't want to join that crowd. I haven't changed my mind. Don't get me wrong: I love being a dad. I love Abby, Jacob, and Zachary with all my heart, and I also know that I have a lot to learn about my role as a father. But I don't want to be one of those people who talks about my kids, or about parenting, all the time.

Having issued that disclaimer, I must say, as a dad, i am saddened at what I see on ESPN.com today. See, my 8-yr-old son Jacob, while not being allowed to surf the entire internet yet, is free to go to the ESPN website. He also gets to read the sports section of the local paper. He likes sports, and I've seen some good things in his life as a result of his role as both a spectator and a participant. Thanks to baseball cards and the stats and standings listed in the paper, he has learned a lot of math that I didn't get till I was at least 4 years older. He embraces good role models like Josh Hamilton and Michael Young. He gets the concept of teamwork and trying hard to accomplish a goal. He sees what's wrong with being a selfish team member.

But there's a dark side to sports, too. When I look at the headlines, I see a bunch of stories he isn't ready for yet. Just today, for example, I see, on the front page of ESPN.com, stories about:

--a college football player's stabbing death after a party

--another college football player's suspension for lying to authorities

--an NFL running back referring to fans and reporters as "fags"

--a pro tennis player using crystal meth

and that's just today. In a few days, the list of disturbing, not-for-kids stories will be replaced by new ones.

Ideally, I'd like the sports page to be a place where my kid can read stories which have more to do with...I don't know, sports, maybe? I know that he will be exposed to the realities of life, and the failures of humans, in time. I'd just like to be able to put off that exposure a little longer, if possible. I would like to know there's one section of the newspaper I can plop in front of him and not have to worry that he might be reading something he's not ready for yet. But this is the world we live in, so I have to watch everything and assume nothing is safe. And that's a shame.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Saying goodbye to one set of twins, and hello to another

"It's been ten whole years already? Wow! Hard to believe." Many a father will say something like that while shaking his head in disbelief, when his oldest approaches the 10th birthday. It's a milestone, not just for the kid, but for the parents. It's a head-shaker because I am reminded that on that day, 10 years ago, my life changed forever. In some ways, it has passed very quickly.  In other ways, it seems like it's been every bit of ten years. There are two distinct things, though, about the ten-year anniversary of my dadhood. The first is that I became a father of not one, but two little bundles of joy that Tuesday morning. Abby was born at 8:48, followed by her brother Jacob at 8:50. The second is that their birth marked some rare joy in the midst of the darkest day in our nation's history.  As my wife was in labor, a nurse came in and told us that an airplane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York. I turned on the labor room

The Two Christmases

As I walked through the front door of the Post Office to make my stamp purchase, I was faced with a choice. On my left was a vending machine, and to my right was the customer service desk, where I could make the purchase from actual human beings. Because there was no line at the moment, I chose the human interaction. I strolled up to the middle-aged, slightly balding postal employee, read that his name was "Rex", and I asked for two books of stamps. As it was mid-December, Rex asked me "would you like Christmas stamps, or...". Once I realized he wasn't about to complete the sentence, I looked down and saw that he was holding some very un-Christmas-like stamps bearing images of the Liberty Bell and the word "Forever." Knowing that my wife had planned to mail several Christmas cards, I told him "One of each." To my surprise, the decision-making did not stop there. Rex hit me with a follow-up: he held up two types of stamps: one had a pi

Embarrassing video clip--John Cougar

I recently stumbled across some Youtube gold: a live performance by John Mellencamp when he was Johnny Cougar. He appears to be have been about 23, and he's singing "Ain't even Done With The Night", in front of a fairly unresponsive crowd with Bobby Bare (?!) in the front seat. Cougar/Mellencamp is dressed in a nerdy sweater and generally bears no resemblance to the singer as we knew him just 5 years later. He looks a lot more like Potsie from Happy Days than the guy who sang "Pink Houses". Certainly, there is no way to watch this and make a connection to the guy whose song "This is Our Country" beat us to death by overuse in pickup truck commercials. But the real entertainment value from this clip comes from the guys behind Cougar. In hot-pink tuxedos, there are 5 Pips-like backup dancers/singers who don't sing, but clap their hands real well. They essentially spend the entire song performing cheerleader dance routines not unlike those