If Secretary of State Colin Powell ever ascends to the presidency, he may be one of the last war heroes to accomplish that feat. Athletics are on the threshold of replacing military heroism in popular definitions of moral character. What began as a one-way metaphor - that sports competition was a playful representation of battlefield conflict - has reversed direction.

Athletic team play and character traits, such as self-sacrifice, acceptance of one's role and courage in the face of adversity, are no longer the childhood indicators that predict success on the battlefield. Rather, these tropes of television sports programs have conquered American life.

Lately, media mavens have decried the declining moral character of American professional athletes. The murder and rape trials of football players, the sexual exploits and boorish behavior of superstars - all have become symbols of the moral declension of athletics.

But until recently, nobody cared much about virtue (or lack of it) among athletes. We have suddenly wanted them to be our heroes in ways that were not required 50 years ago. Nobody needed Ty Cobb, a noted bigot and bully, to be a paragon of virtue in order to cheer for him. For most of the 20th century, the criteria for character on the field did not extend to behavior off of it.

Today, moral character in a heroic sense is almost monopolized by sports figures. In the decades to come, this trend, a product of the dominance of a mass media geared around the commodity of entertainment, will only increase. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan entered the White House, many political pundits and public intellectuals derided his motion picture background as unfit for the nation's leader. Yet he remains one of our most popular presidents.

In an age of instant celebrityhood, the realms where character and sociability are constructed have changed. A burgeoning global sports and entertainment industry has begun to transform popular understandings of morality and virtue. Character as a TV event must be quick drama, fit into the spaces between commercial breaks. Just as endless slow-mo highlights of Michael Jordan's dunks and Tiger Woods' approach shots on ESPN SportsCenter deified them as athletic gods, we need slow-motion replay to transform our war heroes into secular saints. But television cannot get close enough to capture in glorious studio perfection the heroic actions of our nation's soldiers.

Modern combat happens too fast, at too great a distance, with too few of the moral quandaries and tests of individual character. War has failed to be a metaphor for sports. And just as Reagan marked the triumph of celebrity as a commodity in itself, so will future political leaders no longer find that their character, forged on Soldier Field in Chicago playing professional football, will be any less valuable than a baptism of fire on a soldier's field in Normandy.

Henry Yu of the Asian American Studies Center is an assistant professor of history. His book, "Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America," was recently published by Oxford University Press. He is currently working on a book on the history and future of race, sports and popular politics.