SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE:Athletes can find it easy to lose morality

As we view the arenas of sport and the fields of competition, we are appalled at the barbarism of dog fighting, the mendacity of point-shaving, and the fraud of steroid use.

Athletes prolong their stay in the limelight and lengthen the shelf-life of their careers through illegality and immorality.

Once, the motivation for players was pursuing excellence, not chasing after endorsements that promised a tsunami of wealth.

Physiques were enhanced through painstaking workouts, not through performance-enhancing substances.

Good sportsmanship is often banished by unseemly avarice and preening arrogance.

Players have too much too fast; in fact, they often have everything but the strength of character to withstand the temptations and pressures that accompany being idolized and catered to.

Recipients of bloated salaries, they feel themselves to be anointed, royalty, surrounded by a coterie of sycophants that basks in the radiance of their reflected glory.

Their spoiled behavior demonstrates , amid all their enjoyments, they do not enjoy the requisite maturity to remain humble amid the adulation.

The pressure to succeed at any cost opens the trapdoor to the compromise of ethical standards, and many fall through into the deep darkness.

Sport does not create integrity, nor does it make one dishonest.

Athletics simply reveal who and what we are.

Every sport teaches that the most important aspect of playing is to first learn the fundamentals, but how many know there is nothing more fundamental than character?

You can master the fine art of bunting, you can master the fast break, you can master the Cover 2 defense; trophies can adorn your shelves, accolades can be deafening, fame can be world wide.

But no matter the victories you can count, the salary you can command, the achievements you can calculate, if you haven't mastered yourself, you are one thing: a loser.