A Question

A comment from this predictable pious ESPN.com article:

"ihamos (6/28/2007 at 9:41 AM)
Let me come at this from a different, albeit unpopular angle. Why does it matter? Yes NFL players are subject to the same laws of this country as we are, but I mean as far as the NFL and suspensions go. Salaries in general, be it the $40K that a normal guy makes or the $5m made by a player are calculated based on the amount of money that person produces for the company they work for, relative to the reasonable life of the job and the scarcity of the skill needed to do it. NFL players aren't payed so much because they're famous or they're athletes, they are payed so much because less that 2,000 people can do what they do and on average they each do it for less that 4 seasons. THIS IS A JOB. Short of breaking the law, for which punishment is decided by the courts, why do they have to be role models? They don't choose to be role models, we choose to make them. These are guys trying to make a living to feed their families, just as we do for $40K over 50 years. They're job is to entertain us at the highest level possible for 4 years each, not to raise our kids for us. The fact that we are outraged at the idea of a criminal being a player is a commentary on the state of parenting in this country. We feel the need to blame other people when we should be the ones teaching our kids right and wrong. To expect all these players to be "role models" is unfair to them. I'm not condoning what these guys (Tank, Pac, Henry) do, fundamentally they are taking away years of their playing career if nothing else, but I'm saying that we need to stop expecting so mcuh from 22 year olds who get paid millions to play a game. Role models are the guy who works for 50 years at minimum wage, not athletes. It's high time we realized that."

We get to choose our role models. We get to choose what we watch on Sunday. If we choose to watch and glorify idiots, then that is our problem, not the idiots' problem.