Not a blatant douchebag. 25 year old virgin religious goody goody missionary that went on a crazy winning streak. It;s easy to see why the media made a big deal out of him
I'm ignorant because I disagree with you. You sound like an awesome guy

Here is a list of deified athletes in the the U.S.:

NBA: LeBron, Kobe, Melo, Durant

NFL: AP, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Ray Lewis, Aaron Rodgers, Tim Tebow, Troy Polamalu, Patrick Willis, RG3, Andrew Luck, CJ2K

MLB: Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, Justin Verlander, Steven Strausburg

NHL: Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin

I know I left a bunch off, just a sample.
I agree. Tebow is a good guy, not a douchebag. But he is definitely deified.

For an athlete to truly be deified, everyone knows who he is. Off of your list, that's LeBron, Kobe, Brady, Manning, Tebow and Pujols with Lewis, Peterson, Rodgers, Crosby and Ovechkin as rather big maybe's.

Depending on who we mean by "everyone" as I'm sure that none of the names are known by everyone worldwide.

I would not expect most non-U.S. people to know U.S. athletes that well, though some will be known. I was trying to give a sample of names that the average U.S. person is likely to know.

Of course, by that standard, I probably should have left the NHL off the list.. haha

Anything biological / evolutionary about it in your opinion?

Is there an implication in your sentence that a "better" society would not have this behavior?

If all those sports players are considered deified just because they are rich and famous, why not also ask why actors, musicians. directors are deified too. And the simple answer is: Because a lot of people like watching them and are entertained by them.

That wasn't hard to figure out. I didn't know the question was even necessary,

Hehehe

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/its-actually-not-that-big-a-deal-everyone-tells-bolt-2012081037928

No implication that its better, but that it is. I would argue that we could create different heroes in our culture. I mean if we can deify the gun toting, law breaking , cheating sort, it seems we can only go up from there.

I hate sports.

Not sure. Striving to be the best over the other guy certainly results in advances, Western culture is proof enough of that. Is it best though? Well it can be pretty immoral, and if you believe conflict theory is the root of pretty much all strife, but then what else is better? Can it even be overcome anyway?

As for biological over ingrained I am very much a social constructionist who believes damn near everything is a social construct, however obviously things like muscle mass and childbirth influence what social lessons are taught.

You say we not only deify athletes but other people of superficial importance as well....

and then you go on to wonder why we would question this facet of society?


Oi vey...

Nope, didn't say that at all.

That's fine but being intentionally obtuse doesn't help your case.

The fact is that it's not hard to see how the media, more-so than the people in general, deify our athletes. Look at Michael Phelps: he was the guy who showed China what for but then *gasp* they discover that he smokes weed every now and again. All of a sudden our hero is human, all of a sudden he's not some avatar of our national superiority now he's just a guy who enjoys the same thing millions of other people do and can also swim really fast.

That's not the kind of reaction you get from people who understand that he was just as human as the rest of us, that's the kind of reaction you get from people who have elevated this man far above the station of us mere mortals and were slapped in the face by reality.

Someone mentioned Tebow here, I live in Colorado, and if you did too you'd know that people do indeed see him as Jesus in a football jersey. Even the story of his birth is told in a religiously reverent way. For those who don't know his mother was told by her doctors that due to complications she would have to abort her baby. But she prayed and prayed and showed those evil doctors by giving birth to that boy and that baby was Tim Tebow. This is a story I first heard in a church for Pete's sake.

I'm 100% in agreement that not all athletes are d-bags, Tim Tebow seems like a genuinely nice guy if not a genuinely good quarter-back (although Manning has earned the ire of many a Bronco fan because of that playoff game) but to say we don't elevate people who can move their bodies better than others, or as you kind of suggested, people who are better looking or more talented is just silly.

The question the OP is asking is easy to answer, yes, we elevate these people because physical performance was an easy way for us to determine one's genetic superiority and those people were the ones who were able to feed the village. Today it's the smart guy not the strong guy who brings home the bacon but that doesn't mean our instinct to value the guy who runs fast magically goes away. But that's not the question he's really asking, is it? He's really asking "should we be deifying these people?" To which the answer is no, but again, you can't just tell your baser instincts to disappear completely.

In the end elevating our more talented humans above the status of "mere mortal" is good, it gives us something to strive for, another incentive to succeed, it's just that athletes really should be much lower on that totem pole if at all.

The question is necessary to help make people aware of that fact so we might change; to answer the question and simply leave it at that is missing the point.

Stopped reading right there. I have no interest in reading what you just wrote. I gurantee I wasn't being obtuse. I would discuss it more but yeah....I already tried having a discussion by asking some questions and I got BS evasive vague answers
I'm pretty tired of this conversation

Edit- I lied. I ended up reading some of your post. I'm not sure how saying "All of a sudden our hero is human, all of a sudden he's not some avatar of our national superiority now he's just a guy who enjoys the same thing millions of other people do and can also swim really fast." is an example of the media deifying somebody, but I am going to stop reading again. You are wasting my time with nonsense.