Athletes and Not Being Able to Leave Their Friends Behind

[erpowers]

With the latest incident with Marvin Harrison it seems the idea of athletes getting into the pros, but not being able to leave old friends, sometimes bad ones, behind is being talked about a little bit. Is the idea of athletes not being able to leave old friends behind just an excuse to allow athletes to not take responsibility for their actions? Should these athletes be able to leave those old friends behind when they realize those friends have bad character traits? Could athletes give back to their community in better ways than just keeping friends around who do bad things?

I realize nothing has been proven in the Harrison case; however, it seems that every time an athlete gets into trouble one of the first things to be discussed is the old friends. I wonder if the athletes are being let off to easily. Is it possible that the athletes do not want to let the old friends go only because they like the attention from those old friends and not that they fear being called a sellout?

In addition, should sports clothing companies like Nike and Adidas share some of the blame for athletes not giving up bad friends. If anyone ever watches the documentary film about Sebastien Telfair you will notice that during the film an Adidas representative stated, after it was announced that Telfair had signed a shoe deal with Adidas, that the Telfair signing gave the company instant street cred. It seems that shoe companies have no problem promoting an image that some of these athletes may want to and/or need to leave behind. So what do DU members think?

[1gobluedem]

1. What did Marvin Harrison do?

I guess I missed that.

[northzax]

2. there is some street cred issues

it's also about keeping the people who knee you before you were rich and famous, and even sometimes the people who ran cover for you earlier in life.

Think about it. You just signed a 50 million dollar contract. Is that chick atthe bar interested in you or your money? How about that guy on the golf course?