One thing that I realized when I first started this blog is that in athletics, there is always something to write or comment about sports reputation management. 🙂 With all of the doping scandals of the summer, from Floyd Landis to Justin Gatlin to even Marion Jones– we have seen the large amount of coverage in the media on it. Newspapers, TV, Internet, Blogs– you name it, it was there! But one has to ask– what do the fans of cycling, track and field, baseball, and other sports really think about it? Do fans really care if an athlete competes clean or not? Bob Molinaro, a writer in the Virginia-Pilot, brought up this exact issue in his column.
So what does this say about the reputation of athletes from a fans’ point of view? Well– I feel that athletes that do compete clean have to try to prove to people that they really are clean, and still fans have certain perceptions of them. Athletes need to be aware of what their status is to the public– there are people that think that all athletes are on steroids. Gene doping is also one of the obstacles that athletics is going to face– how do you know if someone has done it or not? With the pressure to break world records, perform amazingly in a game, or be undefeated in your sport– athletes will and some already have turned to this new type of doping to get their 15-minutes of fame. From an athlete’s point of view– it is hard to realize all the hard work, dedication, and time that you spent in the weightroom isn’t enough to beat someone that is cheating with performance enhancing drugs.
From the fans’ point of views– there can be two reactions to this. Fans can be divided into two extremes. The first group wants to see the amazing game performances and world records– but they don’t really care if the athletes are on steroids. The second group wants athletes to do well clean, period. I have gotten a few emails and comments from people who are parents who said it was hard to tell their son or daughter that their “role model” just got busted for using performance enhancers. There are some fans that view athletes as role models, and are dissapointed to find out that they are not the people that they thought they were. These two groups do have a common characteristic– they want to be entertained by the athlete’s performances.
We will have to see what happens with these high profile cases and see what the athletic governing bodies do in the meantime.
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