The Cost of Fame...

In an era when superstar athletes are making so much money for their contribution to a franchise, one has to wonder what it is doing to the average players who will never see the $300 million contract Alex Rodriguez has just signed or the $30 million per year Shaquille O’Neal was making or even the $40 million Lebron James signed with Nike when he was just barely 18. The average athlete knows that in order to cash in on his or her talent, he/she will need to have one great season and for that they will do anything. In the case of Marion Jones, a beautiful African American woman, very educated, well articulated, full of grace and charisma, she was the face of track and field, a sport that rarely gets on the 11pm Sports Center highlights, a sport that athletes has to rely on sponsors and other contributions in order to live comfortably. Marion Jones took a very simple road. The road that Robert Frost wrote about in his highly publicized poem, the road less traveled. Indeed, she took it, got paid because of it, and denied (under oath) ever using it, and now she’s spending 6 months in jail because of it.

I often think back to all the glory and how she became America’s darling at the 2000 Olympics. I think about her speeches, the front page magazine covers, the ESPN highlights, the humility she displayed after crushing the field, and then to find out that she was being aided by some type of steroid, it kind of made me wonder. I myself was somewhat of a superstar athlete back in high school but I lacked one thing. Speed. I was great on the soccer field with the ball at my feet yet when I didn’t have the ball a team could really take me out of the game. So I started thinking back to that glorious summer after I made the all star team and my teammate Walter came over to my house and he said Blake, I have something that could help you increase your speed. Now, Walter wasn’t physically in great shape. He was a fat obnoxious Mexican lad but he had a great sense of humor and he was feisty. When he offered me this drug, my mind took me back to all the practices and games that Walter had been involved in and truth be told he wasn’t great or at least he wasn’t better than me in any of them. So I passed on. I ended up making the All-Star team on my own merits yet I’ve often wondered how many more goals I could have scored that season (27), how many more assists (10) I could have had and how many more groupies I could have gotten (?) or even how many newspapers or local reporters would have covered my games and lastly how many scouts would have deemed me one of the better players in America.

O, the choices we make!!!! Now that I look at Marion Jones, a famous athlete who’s going to spend 6 months in jail for something she could have easily avoided. As she came out of the court room on Friday she said that she hopes other athletes will learn from her mistake. So I wonder, was she referring to lying, taking steroids, or getting caught. The money and fame is so tempting that one would do anything to cash in. Growing up on a modest street in Maryland, we had super star athletes on my block…Dominique Dawes, Steve Francis, Jason Miskiri to name a few. But I was also famous on this very same block, not just as a super athlete but an Honor roll student and I take a lot of pride in that. Thank God I had the proper senses to ignore Walter and go my own way. I was never meant to be a super star athlete; I am doing exactly what God destined me to do. I am chasing my dreams and not someone else’s.

Whatever it is you are doing right now, make sure it’s exactly what you want to do…The cost of fame is crazy. It could cost you an arm and a leg, and sometimes it can cost you your freedom.

Happy Sunday folks. Go Cowboys!!!