Should Athletes be role models - Annotated Bibliography Example

Dr. Connor asks that are the millions spent on the quest for Olympic gold really value for money. The investment is meant to buy success, create role models and encourage engagement, but it does not. The Olympics was founded on participation and the "spirit" of sport. We have now moved so far into ugly nationalism and crass commercialism. The role-model argument is an obvious furphy. Nary has a week gone by without yet another scandal involving an elite athlete - be it drugs, alcohol or violence.

As role models, they certainly are poor choices. Athletes, by definition, are obsessive often to the point of being clinically compulsive in their behavior. The author of this article has presented two contradicting views of people about athletes and their conduct as role model. He elucidates that there are two groups of people having varied opinion about it. One group believes that athletes are just similar to other professionals who are being hired and paid by their employers to exhibit best possible performance in their respective sports and, by no means, they are liable to act as role models.

While the other group believes that, sportsmen have assumed the status of public figures and they are sometimes blindly being followed by people specially the youth, so it is their social and moral obligation to present themselves as role models. The author of this book is a female athlete and presents women athletes as cultural icons.