Athletes Who Indulge Their Dark Side

Book excerpt: A leading psychologist explores the phenomenon of athletes across the sports world who engage in high-risk behavior that often destroys lives, bodies, and reputations. From sex and drugs to violence, gambling, and wholesale conspiracies, scandals are everywhere in sports. Each of these problems is its own issue, and every case is separate, but taken as a whole this criminal pathology is indicative of a widespread problem with athletes and responsibility. In this wide-ranging and deep-seeking investigation, psychologist Stanley H. Teitelbaum asks why elite athletes take enormous risks with their lives and careers. Teitelbaum analyzes and diagnoses this culturally resonant set of problems with an honest, critical eye, looking at everything from baseball's steroid abusers to gambling scandals in the NBA to the steady stream of athletes arrested for domestic violence to the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and wrestler Chris Benoit. A concluding chapter holds sports commissioners and others to task for hiding behind a façade of ignorance and duplicitous naïveté in attempting to cover up or defuse brewing scandals.