This is the flip side of our lauding athletes for "playing with a heavy heart" soon after a personal tragedy. We laud their commitment to their team. We laud their fortitude and ability to "put the tragedy aside for a few hours".
Even as we do this, however, we are suggesting to others that the team comes first, that the job comes first.
Personally, I've never thought it particularly admirable unless the athlete suffering the tragedy is without family, in which case its a choice between being alone and being with the team. IMO it is further evidence that we let the job trump the family far too often.
As Lombardi said, it's God, family, and the Green Bay Packers. In that order.
Like Kevin, I find it bothersome and reprehensible that AP left while the kid was still alive. I'm going to say it now: when my mother dies, I'm not going to be worrying a hell of a lot even if my students have an exam the following morning. Even if its their final exam all I'm going to do is PDF the thing to my department chair or the department secretary and leave it to them to distribute it.
And if I don't have the thing written yet (I'm often writing the night before), well, there's a damn good bet I'm not going to write that new final exam either. It's a job. And its an exam. Next to my family, it's almost trivial in importance. And, IMO, it should be. The need for so-called "professionalism" be damned.
To me this example is also yet more evidence of how we let our love of sport and our enjoyment of pro athletes get out of hand. We somehow think -- or, if we don't think, we act as if we believe -- our favorite players are somehow all great people. They probably on average are no worse than the rest of us, but they're also probably on average no better either. All they have is an amazing ability to run or catch or throw or hit people or whatever.
It bugs me when we talk about such-and-so athlete as a "great person," when in fact we know virtually nothing about them other than their avoidance of the police blotter, the output of their PR machine and so-called "sports journalists", and the visible parts of their charitable tax deductions.
I don't know the man. I don't know any of them. They might be good guys, they might be great guys, they might be scumbags. Other than the really egregious examples of scumbags (pre-prison Mike Vick, say, or Ty Cobb), I'm never going to have enough information to know.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)