Military and Athletic Heroes According to Author

Military and Athletic Heroes

According to author Joseph Campbell, "A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." (Campbell 123). Soldiers are the most obvious example of heroes; they put their lives one the line, and lose them, for their country. Athletes too, are often called heroes. Athletes rarely die while playing sports, but many of them do devote their entire lives to success on the field of play. Of the two, soldiers clearly have the most at risk; but military heroes are almost never as heralded or well-paid as athletic heroes. In a perfect world the people who take actions to save others lives, as well as their own, would be the most wealthy and famous people in the world. Yet, that is not the way America works. Athletes earn a lot of money and are admired because they are a novelty -- they are rare. Soldiers are less admired, and receive worse pay because they are not rare -- almost anyone can join the armed forces. This is a sad consequence of our capitalist economy, in which eighteen-year-old kids can earn eighty million dollars a year if they can put a ball through a hole, or they can earn thirteen thousand dollars a year for risking their necks (salary.com).

Few American heroes are as recognized or well-known as George Washington. Washington fulfills the criteria of a hero because, although he did not die in combat, he did give his life to his country. As the general of the first United States army, and the fist president of the United States it is hard to say that he was anything but a hero. Whereas athletic heroes of today would never jeopardize their own bodies without, first, signing a multi-million dollar contract, George Washington served without pay for the entire duration of the Revolutionary War (Keegan 342). Clearly, personal gain was not his goal. Washington believed in something that was more important than money, more important than personal gains, and indeed, more important than his own life. As the most easily identified American military hero, Washington has achieved fame that few soldiers ever have; but during his life he was never flooded by fan mail, he never received gross amounts of money for endorsing a product, and when he captured Yorktown he did not hear seventy-thousand people screaming his name. But, when Shaquille O'Neal manages to sink a free throw he receives all these things.

When you join the military it requires a compete alteration of the way in which you live. When civilians become solders they typically sign-away two years of their life to the service. They are taken away from their family and friends, put in a uniform, and given a haircut. Their previous identity is wiped away, and they are placed in a system where you must obey without question, and without hesitation -- it is a very different world from civilian life, and it is very different from the world of the professional athlete.

Professional athletes, in addition to having ridiculous amounts of money handed over to them, are treated like gods. In today's world, where Allen Iverson is worth nine point four million dollars per year, he is not required to do anything his coaches tell him to do, or to live his life in any other way than he sees fit (www.chromehorse.net).When Iverson is given the order to weight train he is known to make a trip to Taco Bell instead (espn.com). So, we must wonder why such people are admired in our society, and particularly, why are they admired so much more than individuals who put their lives on the line for their own security.

First, it must be understood that professional athletes are rare. They are rare because there is a small number of them and they are rare because not very many people are physically capable of the feats they accomplish. Essentially, they are freaks and this makes them a novelty. Howard Cosell writes, "People often ask me if players today are deserving of the astronomical salaries. Realistically, they aren't, but in our society, a person deserves what he can command.... And if Tom Cruise can negotiate thirty million for a movie, and if Jack Nicholson can demand forty million for making Batman, who's to say that it's absurd for an athlete to make three million or five million a year? In reality, we know they're not worth it, but if the marketplace allows it, so be it." (Cosell 214). As long as people are willing to part with their hard-earned money to witness the best athletes in the world go head-to-head, the athletes will continue to make outrageous sums of money.

Soldiers, on the other hand, may be a superior form of hero but their marketplace value is far lower than their social value. A society could function without athletes, but it would be extremely difficult to run society without some form of military order (Shea, 4). Military heroes, although they do exist, are not good vehicles through which to sell products. No one would ever buy, for instance, George Washington brand running shoes; but when the new "Jordan's" come out, every ten-year-old boy in the country desperately wants them. Athletes can be strongly tied to products, but soldiers would have difficulty selling anything other than combat boots or "Hummers."

By the nature of our definition of a hero, as someone who devotes his or her life to something greater than oneself, it becomes apparent that not all athletes can be considered heroes but simply all solders must be. In the United States "democratic conscription has in every instance occurred as the voluntary dedication of a nation's resources to the cause of defense." (Clarkson 128). This means that everyone who signs a contract with the military is volunteering their life, should it be called upon, in addition to giving up several years of that life. Regardless of the heroic actions of the soldier after joining the military, by signing the contract they have already demonstrated their devotion to something greater than themselves.