Sports and Drugs Don’t Mix Well
It is quite a common occurrence to have a story show up in the media about a drug problem in sports. Although, it is not always about a professional athlete and drugs affect more than just them. Aspiring professional athletes can also get consumed by drugs and the lifestyle it brings.
Taboo activities and major drug use are the themes of this week’s three stories: “The Bicycle Thief” by Steven Leckart, “Fumbled Recovery” by Chris Ballard, and “Patriot Act” by May Jeong. The events that take place in these stories are not only taboo but illegal crimes that have repercussions.
Professional sports foster substance abuse. Many athletes are highly paid and can easily access drugs through their social circles. This has led to a substance abuse epidemic that has shattered the lives of countless athletes.
This is seen in Ballard’s piece, where he talks about ex-NFL player Jeff Hatch. Hatch became addicted to Percocet or Vicodin after his herniated disc surgery. He would trade “Giants tickets for pills” and meet a guy in a strip mall in New Jersey for pills. He became sober then had a major relapse which caused him to become a criminal.
Ballard uses ethos a lot to portray the feeling of others in the story and to connect to the audience reading this. His set up of the story in itself as numbers of events add another layer to the story. This makes it seem like a true sequence of events, and the sense of being there in the moment occurs.
Leckart’s “The Bicycle Thief” is not only about drug abuse ruining someone’s life, but about one of the greatest bank robbers: Tom Justice. He biked to his bank heists and would leave his bike in a garage close by. Then the former Category 1, Olympic-hopeful track racer would walk out with a plastic bag full of cash, transfer it to his messenger bag, strip down to the cycling kit he wore underneath his street clothes, and ride off unnoticed, according to Leckart.
Justice was training to be an Olympic bicyclist when he started taking drugs and partying in college. He slowly became addicted to crack and ecstasy which stopped his motivation to train for the Olympics. Eventually, he became a bank robber after going down the list of possible careers he failed at or didn’t get.
These two stories show how excessive drug usage can ruin an athletic career and affect you mentally the rest of your life no matter how long they are sober. The third story is about illegal sexual acts of the rich and famous.
A scandal involving New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and a sex-trafficking massage parlor in Florida is what Jeong describes with great detail. She discovers that the massage parlor is also a place where men can receive sexual acts from the Asian women working there. Jeong uncovers why Kraft was going there and how he escaped jail time.
The way this story is set up also helps in the background a detailed series of events that happen. Jeong truly helps the reader understand what went down and what went into making this story happen.
All three of these stories talk about the use of drugs or illegal taboo acts that have major repercussions and debilitate their futures. They would all flourish on social media as they have a video aspect that would add to the severity of these acts.
