Star Players: Is Your Talented Athlete With Character Issues Worth It?

Talent trumps all, right?

In sports, as in life, those with supreme talent usually rise to the top. However, extremely talented people are sometimes difficult people; and when it comes to teams sports, difficult personalities cause problems.

Selecting the best player available for your team is always the best choice, but what happens when the most talented player is also a problem on or off the field, court or ice? What happens when your star player has issues with teammates, or worse, the law? Is their talent worth the trouble of having them on your team and disrupting your locker room?

Let’s look at whether talented but troubled star athletes are worth keeping on your roster:

It’s a risk-reward scenario.

Typically, when you have the most talented players, you are always in a position to win.

The reward of building a roster around the best players is that they play for you and not against you. But when your star player or players are problems, you run a major risk of the whole thing blowing up in your face. That means never experiencing the reward of winning, but only the agony of what could have been.

Do you need the talent that badly?

If your team is in desperate need of talent, the boost a troubled but talented player brings may be worth the hassle.  

This can apply to teams who are one piece away. If things are so bleak at a certain position that it’s holding your team back from being a contender, you might need to swing for the fences.

Just keep your fingers crossed that you don’t swing and miss. While that player may be the missing piece that puts your team over the top, they also have the ability of submarining the team’s entire potential. And that doesn’t just mean a team’s season.

Problem players are capable of ruining the very fabric of a team. They turn teammates against each other, players against coaches, and fans against the team. Attitudes, effectiveness and culture are all potentially affected and changed by one player.

What message are you sending?

It’s also important to consider the message your sending to the rest of your team. By selecting a transcendent yet troubled athlete, you’re effectively telling your other players two things:

• We want to win now and we will do anything we can to put us in a position to do so…
• But that means potentially mortgaging everything we’ve built by admitting that character doesn’t matter.

The first message is a good, strong one to give your team. The second is also strong, but not so good.

Sure, talent is highly important. But is the trouble really worth the cost?

While talent typically trumps everything else in sports, it isn’t the only way to win. Are talented but troubled problem players worth the risk? What do you think?

Performance Trumps Talent

Author Bio

Travis Armideo, marketing manager at Gladiator Custom Mouthguards, is a lifelong ice hockey player. He began playing for various clubs at a young age and continued onto junior teams, while also playing lacrosse at the collegiate level. Travis is still heavily involved in athletics, coaching high school and youth ice hockey athletes, as well as playing men’s league ice hockey on a regular basis.