To say that sport is a central institution in American life would be a gross understatement — its obsessive hold is obvious to anyone who spends more than five minutes examining our culture. As we approach the mid-winter festival of the Super Bowl, the obsession seems self-evident.

Beyond Super Sunday is the deeply imbedded notion that sport leads to the Holy Grail. If you are successful, then fame, wealth, popularity and self-fulfillment will be yours. This is the dream of the young, but it seems even more so that it is the dream of parents. The child as surrogate for the parent has reached pathological levels.

Similar in quality and effect are the dreams of other adults who ride the carousel of Sportsworld, pursuing their dreams on the backs of children and young adults. Coaches, university and secondary school administrators, television executives, product pitchmen, and a vast army of parasites and barnacles have attached themselves to the rich underbelly of Sportsworld seeking riches of their own.

This has infected families as well as teams and made willing victims out of young children who learn to lust for the rewards dangled before them. There are also the unwilling victims exploited by parents, coaches and the fantasies of modern sport.

Every now and then, incidents of striking and disgusting character are exposed and illustrate, in the most startling and crude fashion, the worst consequences of these obsessions. Two such cases involving parents have made headlines recently.

In November, police were called to a Gilbertville, Iowa, home where a 14-year-old boy had assaulted his mother. Police found 105 pills and syringes in the boy’s room, allegedly courtesy of the boy’s father, Todd Anthony Gerleman, who pumped his son with anabolic steroids to make him more competitive in the highly competitive world of Iowa wresting.

Police said Gerleman admitted to injecting the boy and supplying him with pills. His aim was to “motivate” his son, who attends Don Bosco High School in Gilbertville — a hotbed of wrestling that even with a small student enrollment has turned out a number of state wrestling champions. Its fans are described as intensely loyal and, as they say in the bowl game business, they travel well. Apparently Gerleman felt his son needed a few “helpers” to succeed in this highly charged sports environment.

A more celebrated case has its genesis in Michigan, where Corey Gahan, a promising in-line and speed skater, displayed world class skating potential. Jim Gahan — Corey’s father, promoter, trainer and mentor — was driven by a desire to transform his son into a world class winner. When Corey was 13, his father started him on a drug regimen that ultimately derailed Corey’s skating career, destroyed their father-son relationship, and put Jim Gahan in prison.

Corey moved to Florida with his father at age 10 to train for in-line skating as a prelude to speed skating. When it appeared to Jim Gahan that Corey was not developing fast enough, he changed coaches. Corey’s father and his new coach put Corey on a pharmaceutical diet of human growth hormone and steroids. In a good family atmosphere, Jim and his son injected the drugs together, proving that the family that injects together doesn’t necessarily stay together.

Corey began to grow and to win championships, moving into prominence in the skating world, breaking records as he went. With things going well, Jim Gahan rewarded Corey with an assortment of goodies such as televisions, PlayStations and an American Express Gold Card. An intense workout program took a toll on Corey’s body, and so pain pills were added to the mix. The rise to the top ended when Corey tested positive for an assortment of drugs. (The full story can be read at Sports Illustrated.)

These stories are the illogical outcomes of a distorted set of values, but they should not be dismissed as freakish aberrations. They are harbingers of a deepening malfunction of values in Sportsworld.

The third story that caught my attention is one that may cast some light on the previous tales. It comes from the NCAA. At its convention this month, the definition of men’s basketball “prospects” was changed from “ninth” to “seventh” graders. This will allow the NCAA to regulate camps and the participation of coaches in those camps where parents send their aspiring middle school NBA prospects to develop their cash flow potential.

The idea is to protect the middle school students from college coaches and recruiters, but it also indicates that the blood suckers out there in NCAA basketball land are trying to recruit seventh and eighth grade “prospects.” Is it any wonder, with this sort of atmosphere surrounding college basketball, that parents are also pushing the envelope with steroids and human growth hormone? When you add this to the practice of red-shirting children — by holding them back from first grade for a year so that they will be bigger and stronger than their contemporaries — you begin to get a feel for the problem.

Joe D’Antonio, chairman of the Division I Legislative Council of the NCAA, which approved the new rule, said, “The fact that we’ve got to this point is really just a sign of the times.”

What a happy thought for all those who look to sport to build character and develop leadership.