Comments on: What Makes an Athlete an Entertainer?

By: Microblogging | The Future is Bright

Microblogging | The Future is Bright — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:56:19 +0000

[...] hopefuls have taken full advantage of the trend. This trend has yet to be embraced by professional sports and the entertainment industry but would be a great tool for athletes or actors that want to keep their fans up-to-date with their [...]

By: EK Powers

EK Powers — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:18:07 +0000

In Response
Good points and true. I love sports as well especially the game of basketball, I’ve been a player since I received my first trophy in elementary school to the time I had to swallow my pride in high school when my team and I lost the championship game to rivals until college when our record was 0-12 and I quit because of my lack of dedication and commitment. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, exploited and distraction are the key words in your sentence. Exploitation is the American way! This country exploits our women in all sorts of videos; crime is splattered on the fronts of major newspapers as means of distraction, along with child and internet porn, killings of human beings, racism, sex, wars. These are all distractions to the human life that blinds us from what’s really going on in our government, in our family life, in our schools, our economy and our tax dollars.
Entertainment in a lot ways has become our escape from life’s pressures rather than dealing with our own demons. Sports in this world is more important than dealing with public school teachers that have no resources to better teach their class and training to deal with disruptive students, it’s more important to take Roger Clemons to court and ask him questions about steroids than to investigate our so called government on why are American dollars are being spent on rebuilding a country that we destroyed because of weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
The NFL (another entertainment sport) finds it more important to investigate a team or coach for secretly taping the other teams plays than to investigate why this Government can make an agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico unregulated by congress that merges these countries into one entity. When sports start to be more important than the real issues that are going in this country then this country has its priorities backwards.

By: Kenji Summers

Kenji Summers — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:26:21 +0000

In Response
I will always love sports because I have seen professional sports provide members of marginalized groups access to social and financial parity when they had none (but not neccessarily equality).
EK Powers I see that you believe outside influences created the entertainment but I guess we really need to think about why sport became entertainment. Since the times of Nero in Rome, “bread and circuses” were used to pacify the citizens and provide a distraction from their (often) miserable lives. The government or power structure always exploited the athlete(competitor) and gained more value from the relationship. That is why I think Western culture is obsessed with celebrities today. They are our distraction from the hustle of everyday life.
I don’t think the question really should be whether “Is sport entertainment?” rather that “Should sport be entertainment?”

By: EK Powers

EK Powers — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:56:21 +0000

These times and days the roles of an athlete are far greater than being just an athlete. An athlete especially a well known athlete is automatically put into “rock star status”. I was fortunate enough to witness Michael Jordan make the winning shot against Georgetown in nineteen eight-two up until the end of his extraordinary career with the Washington Wizards. When he first came into the league, fans saw this skinny kid dunking on everyone in site, making spectacular moves around the basket and winning six NBA world titles. This was entertainment then because this level of talent was never witnessed before and fans were pouring into the arena paying top dollar to see this athlete do something amazing.
What makes an athlete an entertainer are the fans, the media, the basketball culture, and the incredible dollars that are being paid to this athlete to play a game. To be part of a team sport that really contributes nothing to society accept for one purpose and that’s entertaining. The athlete doesn’t see him/her self as an entertainer because this is their career, this sport puts food on their tables, pay bills, put their kids through college, this sporting career takes cares of there families and themselves. It’s a different kind of nine-to five but it serves the same purpose.
The entertainment part was created by outside influences and now it has blinded some of our children with big pipe dreams, and crushing hopes that this is the only street that they can take to become successful in America.

By: Do it yourself at home » Blog Archive » Plotting with Mythic Structure

Do it yourself at home » Blog Archive » Plotting with Mythic Structure — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:05:32 +0000

[...] and images. Publicity plays a major role in whether an athlete or entertainer can leve source: What Makes an Athlete an Entertainer?, SportsAgentBlog.com – I Want to be a Sports [...]