When people think of pro athletes, they may tend to think of them for their achievements on the playing surface and not think as much about the human element to them — and what they do when they are not playing their sport.
However, new data from TickPick provided exclusively to the Washington Examiner indicates that fans do have some standards they would like players to live up to in their personal lives — as weird as it sounds.
In their survey of 1,558 NFL fans from all 32 fan bases, fans showed they are not always so accepting of what players do in their personal lives. For example, only 20 percent of respondents felt as though it was acceptable for a player to pay for sex, while 51 percent outwardly disapproved of it. Meanwhile, only 55 percent of fans approved of players going to strip clubs, and 53 percent saw a player dating a porn star as acceptable.
When it comes to President Trump, a greater percentage of fans (58 percent) said they felt it was appropriate for a player to speak negatively of him than to speak positively (51 percent). Ironically, however, only 53 percent said it was acceptable for players to talk about politics and the news on their social media accounts.
These results certainly show an interesting mindset from the public — expecting pro athletes to live by a specific standard away from the football field in ways that have no impact on their play.
[NFL: 57% call anthem protests ‘unpatriotic,’ want players fired, fan base down 1/3rd]
How does an NFL player having sex with someone affect someone else’s life? One can be repulsed by the idea of prostitution, strip clubs, and pornography in general and still see that wanting to infringe upon other people’s lives is not a great idea.
If that’s what makes them happy and it’s what they need to do to go out and have a big game, so be it. New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski having a sexual encounter with porn star Bibi Jones in 2011 did not stop him from setting the single-season records for touchdown receptions (17) and receiving yards (1,327).
As for politics, the same mindset should be there. We do not have to agree with what a player thinks of Trump, but it’s certainly problematic if more people think it is acceptable to speak ill of him than to speak positively of him. After all, the First Amendment works both ways.
Generally, mixing sports and politics is not a great idea because of the way people react. But ultimately, a player’s opinion of Trump or other news isn’t all that relevant to anything. They only have one vote in elections. Just because they are good football players doesn’t mean they (or anyone else) are rational political thinkers.
After all, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick thinks Fidel Castro T-shirts are cool and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady once endorsed a Massachusetts Republican candidate for state auditor because they have the same last name. Both have the right to do so, but we also have the right to not take their political views seriously because of it.
Ultimately, NFL players are paid millions of dollars to win football games. As long as they are not out there committing terrible crimes or are an evil person, why worry about what they do on their own time? There’s a strong case to be made that these players should not have to live their lives as role models for people’s children, nor are they the people kids should be looking up to anyways.
Just let athletes live their lives in peace and hope they will do the same for you.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
