When I was growing up and active in athletics, the world of sports was quite a bit different than it is today. For example, the Olympics was truly an amateur event, and even so-called elite sports colleges had strict rules regarding receiving payments outside of scholarships. With the exponential growth of media coverage of not only professional sports events, but elite college and even high school events, athletes at all levels are under tremendous pressure to perform in the face of physical and mental disability, and, in many cases, financial stress. One only has to look at how some misguided people are reacting to Simone Biles' withdrawal from this year's Olympic events to understand how out of proportion to what is really important in life elite sports have become. While this link is looking at the psychology of the Olympic athlete, it puts big-time sports in general in perspective.
Click on the link below for a podcast expose of the problems within today's culture of the "student-athlete:"
The Myth of the Student-Athlete
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