I decided the good old Bloggolalia tag didn't fit such situations, so thus, SportsBlabbery. I'm going to leave up this post for a while if I can help it, so peek underneath it for new posts.
I got into a conversation with someone about this last week (who was very gracious, by the way, thank you), and it made me think about it. Rather than reprint my e-mail, I wanted to hear from you. Do you think athletes are smarter than average? of average intelligence? or less intelligent than average?
Now, immediately we have semantic issues, which I will ever so graciously attempt to resolve. Let's say professional and Olympian athletes only; some high schools are so small that everyone plays sports, while attending college itself may interfere with our results.
What do you think? I'll repost this with my opinion once you post your opinions; I know you have them.
I've always found professional athletes to be more three-dimensional than they are portrayed. That means smarter (though maybe not objectively "smart") than they are treated by the media, which often infantizes them.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, they are, for the most part, younger than they are treated. Xtrapolator got into this a bit on his "LeBron is only 22" post (and so is Carmelo the "thug", and Chris Paul is younger still, etc). Basically people forget these are people who would normally be just removed from college.
Finally, there is the aspect that a lot of athletes have been treated "specially" for a long time - you don't just appear as the star NBA player out of nowhere. Chances are you have been a star for years - in high school, even earlier. And so thus you have been treated by your peers in a totally different manner than most people your age. D-Wil of The Starting Five has gone into this before. I've also know a few college athletes (and some who made it big in other countries), and it's just a different way of being raised.
Imagine if you were always the tallest kid in your class, by far. And soon your were also the fastest and most athletic (strongest, too, perhaps). Eventually you would probably be competing against older kids, right? Or even adults? Would that not make you more mature?
This is a very interesting topic - if you ever want to get into a deeper discussion of it, you can do a larger post on it, and let me know, then I'll do a large post of my own with my thoughts on it, and maybe we can turn into a round table discussion with a few other bloggers....