The Sports Figure as Morality Teacher

By Janis Prince Inniss

Do you receive medical advice from your very smart mail carrier? Or dental advice from a sociologist? Do you look to your garbage collector to help you with career plans? No? Why not? Most of us recognize that people have differing areas of expertise and believe that particularly with regard to important issues such as our health, career, and finance we should seek the best advice and direction—from professionals in these areas.

Yet we often look to celebrities to be arbiters of good taste and expertise on everything including politics, fashion, music, and morality. For example, well after her heyday as a sitcom star, Susan Somers has found fame and fortune as fitness guru (she hawked the Thighmaster) and more recently as an “expert” on hormones, offering advice that many health officials hotly dispute. Legions of celebrities endorse politicians ; in 2008 we saw Oprah Winfrey and Robert DeNiro for Candidate Obama, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Clint Eastwood for Candidate McCain among many others. It is the man many consider to be the worlds’ greatest golfer—Tiger Woods—that brings this home though.

According to his website, Woods has won 93 golf tournaments including the 1997, 2001, 2002, and 2005 Masters Tournaments; 1999, 2000, 2006, and 2007 PGA Championships; 2000, 2002, and 2008 U.S. Open Championships, and 2000, 2005 and 2006 Open Championships. Along the way, Woods has amassed several historical firsts. Among them: first major championship winner who is of Asian or African race/ethnicity, the youngest Masters champ, widest victories of margin in the U.S. Open and Masters championships; the first person to hold all four professional major championships simultaneously in 2001.

Woods earned record winnings from the various tournaments and even larger sums as a spokesman for Nike, Tag Heuer, Cadillac, Gatorade, American Express, Gillette, AT&T and other products; the 34-year-old golfer is considered a billionaire from his earnings on and off the greens.

The golfer’s appeal has increased viewership of the sport on television and in person. His announcement of an “indefinite break” from the sport is considered “crippling” to ratings of the sport on the networks. Lest you think—as I did—that this is hysteria, consider that without Woods, television viewership of the Chevron World Challenge was down 54% this year, compared to last year. As a good sociologist, you know that this information does not tell us anything about causation, that is, the cause of the decrease in viewership. However, a study by Nielsen ratings giant confirms that without Tiger Woods, television viewership was almost cut in half last year. So, apparently Tiger Woods = golf!

Still, that’s golf! Not medicine, or technology or finance or even sociology. With word (more like a steady stream of words) about Woods’ extra-marital affairs we’ve had an onslaught of media attention with people expressing surprise. But what do we really know about Woods or any other celebrity?

In this case, we as the public “know” Woods as a golfer. This gives us no idea of who he is as a man. Or as husband. Or father or friend. Through interviews, we may come to know a celebrity somewhat. Or we may come to know what that person wants us to know or think of them based on a carefully crafted image. The golfer with the yacht aptly named Privacy, has granted few interviews despite his fame. Therefore, the public has had little access—real or apparent—to who he is as a person. I guess that means we could project whatever ideas we have about him because he said or did nothing to contradict our ideas of who he is.

Woods was frequently referred to as a “disciplined golfer” and apparently many people thought that this meant that he was disciplined in every aspect of his life. Again, he’s a golfer. Why do we think we know anything about his capacity to be disciplined anywhere but in the sports arena?

Who do we look to regarding ethics and morality? Where do we get our teachings about right and wrong? Where should we get such training? From our parents? Schools? Religion? Religious leaders? Celebrities/sports figures? Which of these answers seem most out of place in the line-up?

Why all the surprise at Woods’ acknowledged infidelity? I have no insider knowledge about Woods, but that’s just the point. Neither do many people who are/were surprised by this story. Perhaps one way to help explain this is found in this post about celebrities by Karen Sternheimer:

Everyone else knows who they are, but we might not really like them. In fact, we may enjoy finding out that they aren’t that perfect after all. In a large, heterogeneous society as our own, we tend to have fewer and fewer social networks in common with others--except for celebrities.

German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies had a name for this condition: Gesellschaft. Celebrities can become a form of social glue that helps us bond by our admiration and (frequently) condemnation of high-profile people and reaffirm a sense of shared morality.

Perhaps we are less surprised than outraged. The story of Tiger Woods’ extramarital affairs is a colossal one around which we as observers can bond in our moral indignation. What sociological reasons do you think explains the public’s fascination with this story?

Comments

[dating girl]

That old adage "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" still applies to online dating. Chat rooms often give people a sense of invincibility

[Brian Clark]

I think this shows that the public is getting stupider, we get distracted by celebrities personal lives that we aren't paying attention to politics and real-world issues. I can't believe the astounding rates of people who think that a celebrity has the best tastes or science opinion, it's outrageous.

[Autumn Tisdale]

Everyone tries and pretends that they know everything, but really they are just lying. That is one of my pet-peaves, when poeple say things that really they have no knowledge behind and are just saying it to be accepted. What Tiger Woods did was not a very honorable thing, no matter who he is, but thats not to be expected from someone who is so good at what he does and i believe thats why everyone are/were surprised to learn of what happened.

[M. Manjurul Islam]

What is not sociology,It is seems that the telling this more above.But it is true matter that the sociology is the describing way of life that men get new system of living.so there are many argument which is already established by various proponent sociologist.So there is no doubt that the assumption of all factors which are related to living condition that can be explain by social system.

[Lauren]

Thank you for writing about this. I highly agree with what was said, why was everyone surprised? No one knew much about Tiger, but we all assumed that because he has a successful career he must be perfect at everything else as well. I really enjoyed this article, and I learned a lot from it.

[Danielle]

This topic is interesting because I believe that everyone is guilty of allowing celebrities to influence us, even though they are complete strangers. People were disappointed when they found out about Tiger Woods’s infidelity, yet we can’t assume we know who he is as a person based on the fact that he is a good golfer. It’s important to keep in mind that we are giving celebrities power by allowing them to influence us.

[Sexy Black Women]

The power of celebrity is strong. You idolize these people and then think that you should be exactly like them. What young people should do is take the pieces they like about someone and emulate that and discard the rest.

[Lasting Power of Attorney]

Sports stars are that, not anything else. Infidelity concerns only the parties directly involved. I am with the previous commenter 'take the best and leave the rest'.

[Jacob]

I believe that the only sports stars that we should look up to as role models are the ones that actively give back to the community. Now we know that on occasion the ones that we look up to the most will make mistakes, but I believe that you have to take the good with the bad when it comes to role models. When a role model makes a mistake, I believe that it's up to the parent to turn the mistake that the role model made into a positive life lesson that their children can benefit from.