The media (and this site) does a disservice to athletes. Many media sources only focus on the bad things that players do on a daily basis. This site only highlights players’ wrongs in a wrap-up every Sunday night (does that make us any better?..probably not). It is hard for this site to mention all of the good things that athletes do each and every day. Our sources are comprised mostly of a myriad of local newspapers, blogs, and ESPN. It is surprising not shocking that these outlets tend to focus on every bad bone in an athlete’s body. Anyway, I would not be opposed to starting a new column to run alongside Nightmare Clients of the Week that would focus on all of the great things that athletes, coaches, media entities, etc. have done in the previous week. If there is enough interest, I will try to get a contributor working on it right away.
With that little shpiel out of the way, I would like to highlight something that an athlete has recently done (actually done yearly for the past 5 years) to make the world a better place. His name is Jalen Rose (ever hear of him?), and he has just donated $50,000 in college scholarships to 5 needy high school seniors for the 5th consecutive year [Rose awards scholarships to five Detroit high school seniors]. Rose’s story should also be an inspiration for all players that leave early to go professional in their respective sports. Jalen decided to go back and complete his college education at the University of Maryland after leaving early from the University of Michigan in the ’90s.
The story highlighting Rose’s contributions was written and posted on Wednesday at ESPN.com. It is now mid-day on Friday and there are only 16 comments on the page (ESPN.com stories usually generate hundreds of comments). I think that these 2 comments sum up why there are so few comments and builds on what I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post:
blackjackz2000 (6/20/2007 at 3:23 PM)
Come on people…….Pacman gets in trouble again, and there are over 200 posts. Jalen is a breath of fresh air, and no one seems too interested in this. Thank You Jalen, the NBA needs more players like you.
Biafra4Life (6/20/2007 at 3:28 PM)
my thoughts exactly blackjack…had this been an article reading “Jalen Rose Arrested for club shooting” we would see about 500 posts proclaiming all NBA athletes to be thugs and animals…but when you see something positve it gets swept under the rug…thanks Jalen…we need ESPN to publicise more NBA players like you so that we can shut up all these haters on here…
Once again, I will only attempt to start up the new column if there is enough interest. If you think it is worth the pain and agony of scouring the net for positive deeds done by athletes, please note it in the comments.
-Darren Heitner
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