Sports Flops: When a player’s hype does not live up to the reality; Beckham, Ryan Leaf prime examples
It is not easy being a sports star. There is a huge amount of pressure on an athlete to perform constantly and they get paid huge sums of money to do so. Whenever anyone is given a large sum of money to do anything, the people giving the money expect a lot in return. Sometimes in this highly pressurised situation a lot of athletes succumb to the stress of it all and cannot live up to the hype that surrounds them. Some athletes are truly worth the money and the hype, but others have so much potential but they cannot seem to live up to it in the end. We will continue to see these types of players emerge because, after all, not everyone can become a huge sports star.
Over the years, sports flops have become commonplace; an athlete is drafted or emerges to great acclaim and potential, but after a few years has made such a small impact on the sport they are playing that they are sidelined and eventually retire. Most athletes do not play past the age of thirty; there are some exceptions, but across the board thirty seems to be the cut-off point. When an athlete retires in their mid-twenties, you know something went horribly wrong. If we look at picking athletes and players for teams, we can compare it to the hiring process in top companies today. Around the world, HR managers are on the lookout for the most talented and impressive people to become employees for their companies. They spend a lot of money looking for the right sort of people, testing them, interviewing them and eventually hiring them on large salaries. Even after doing all that, a company can get it horribly wrong and the supposed star they have hired turns out to be a dud. The same thing happens with sports teams; they go through a similar process of spending time and effort to pick the best rising star with the most potential, and sometimes they, too, can fail miserably at it.
In a large number of sports flop lists, one name keeps cropping up: Ryan Leaf. This American football player with the San Diego Chargers was one of the supposedly greatest finds in the league. He was drafted with a huge pay-check and was supposed to be the next big quarterback for the team. In three years with the Chargers, he only managed to deliver four wins but the team lost 14 times and Leaf had huge meltdowns in the locker room. He was eventually traded to a smaller team, then traded again and again until finally he retired in his mid-twenties.
Sports flops do not have to be limited to individual players alone. Situations and decisions can have disastrous results as well. Michael Jordan’s decision to quit basketball and start playing baseball is one of these flops. He went from being the greatest basketball player in the world to becoming a small-time fry in the minor league of baseball. He could not manage anything of substance and returned to the NBA to great fanfare and renewed success. Something similar happened to one of the best footballers in the world. David Beckham’s move to America to play with LA Galaxy was not well received by many in the field. First there was the price tag - £125 million to play in the league - and then there was the return for that amount of money. David Beckham’s entry into the MLS was supposed to bring about a revolution in the league and make soccer a household pastime in America. Well, it did not quite happen like that. Beckham struggled to score goals and he did not seem to like playing in the MLS and kept going to other teams in Europe (Milan, to be exact) on loan. The fans did not like him, and attendance at LA Galaxy games dropped by a quarter during the superstar’s tenure at the club. The icing on the cake was that his team seemed to play better without him.
Sports flops are nothing new, because of pressure and unnecessary hype created, a lot of potentially talented athletes will fail from time to time. We just have to realise that they are humans and they make mistakes so we should not be too harsh on them. We can be harsh on the ones that get huge salaries and then do nothing to earn them, though. Sports flops will continue to be a part of sports in the future as sports teams look for the newest and best talent out there.
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