AS we look forward happily to the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association’s (ISSA) commemoration of the 100th year of the wildly popular Boys and Girls Championships, we can’t help reflecting on the issue of sportsmen as role models.

Outstanding sportsmen and sportswomen are inevitably held up by the public as role models for young people to emulate. In some countries, including Jamaica, there is a philosophy that sport is an essential part of human development, as well as a way of keeping young people out of trouble and for them to learn discipline.

Whether this approach to social development is working is open to question. Of course, the idea has intuitive appeal but it has not been subjected to serious empirical analysis.

Sport is accepted as a means of social transformation and social mobility, especially for people in deprived circumstances. Some people have achieved spectacular success and sport has paid for their education, even up to the university level; for many, it has provided earnings which, if invested properly, would enable them not to have to work for the rest of their lives. Yet, the vast majority dissipate their youth in pursuit of El Dorado rather than getting an education which would serve them for a lifetime.

Athletes get more attention and acclaim than all other professionals except musicians. Parents indulge their sons in endless hours of ball playing as a way of keeping them away from “bad company”, while compelling their daughters to read a book at home as a way of preventing unwanted pregnancies. Little wonder then that our males are doing so badly, absolutely and comparatively, to females.

In competitive sports, the combativeness of young males is honed and their aggression agitated. They learn discipline only as it applies to the sport and gain nothing in comportment, maturity and civility. Their egos are inflated by adulation and quick money and their egocentric mentality seizes on even the most modest achievements as vindication of their manhood. Add testosterone and this explosive mix leads to violent anti-social behaviour, which is often condoned and covered up as youthful exuberance.

Too many sportsmen, therefore, fail in the capacity of role model which is assigned to them by the public. That’s frequently because they feel entitled to do anything they like.

Tiger Woods’ non-golf sports activities are a gratuitous sign of lack of self-control. Marlon King has two years to rue, ending his stellar career in a flash of arrogance. Ricardo Fuller learnt nothing from King’s misfortune and so Boyz will be boys.

Why does an NBA player earning millions of dollars need to carry illegal firearms. Part of the lack of control is excessive consumption of alcohol. West Indies cricketers celebrate their disgraceful defeat by cooling off on the liquor-sodden ‘Mound’. The time and money Jerome Taylor will spend in court would be better spent on rehabilitation in the gym.

We believe that some of these incidents are a pre-meditated suspension of reality. The unacceptable conduct of our sportsmen reflects their rampant indiscipline and unbridled hubris and is a triumph of testosterone of the cerebral.

Since they cannot resign as role models, let us not appoint them. And since we cannot refrain, let us select much more carefully those sportsmen whom we elevate.