The business of America, it once was said, is business.

One could argue that the business of America today is not business but, in fact, is sports. College and professional sports teams abound, and in some cases, one can hardly tell the difference between the NFL and NBA and big-time college teams in those sports.

So, like it or not, sports is a business at whatever level. We as fans put up with big contracts for benchwarmers who couldn't have carried the bags of players of a bygone era; we suffer through all the accusations of steroid use and drug-aided performances. We wonder who's clean and who's not, and we see that players we once idolized simply have feet of clay.

But sometimes we're reminded that sports and high standards can go hand in hand.

We saw that May 6 when we remembered a half-century ago when sport changed, for the better. On that day in 1954, half a world away in England, a medical student named Roger Bannister made history by becoming the first man to break four minutes for the mile run.

It was a triumph of the human spirit and the physical body over a mental barrier. Since then, several hundred runners have broken four minutes, 258 of them U.S. citizens.

Fourteen of them are from Illinois, 12 from the city or suburbs and two from downstate. Most are no longer young men. The oldest is now over 60; four others are past 50 and two more past 40.

Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn paid homage to the splendid 14 on May 6 -- 50 years after Bannister -- in acknowledgement of what they had done to bring recognition to themselves and their native state.

These men, by and large, ran for pride, not for big bucks. There were no appearance fees and big shoe contracts for the majority of these runners, who in their prime could hope for little beyond their college athletics scholarship.

The real story, however, is not what they did on the track, but what they have done since -- with their careers, with their lives, without any expectation of the free ride that so many pampered pros of today expect.

There's Chicagoan Tom O'Hara, a Loyola (Illinois) grad and the first Illinoisan under four minutes, now a successful insurance man in Lombard. There's Glen Ellyn native Ken Popejoy, who ran for Michigan State and recently won a GOP primary for Circuit Court judge. And St. Charles' Rick Wohlhuter, a Notre Dame grad and 1976 Olympic bronze medalist at 800 meters who's now a financial consultant.

And attorney Mike Durkin, a River Grove native who ran at Illinois and made an Olympic team. And Lee LaBadie, a Des Plaines native who was the first Big Ten runner under 4:00 while at Illinois who now sells real estate in Columbus, Ohio.

There's a somewhat younger group making their mark in business and sports, in some ways giving back to the sport that gave them their many moments of glory. Wood Dale's Jim Spivey, an Indiana graduate who made three Olympic teams, coaches the women's team at Vanderbilt, while another Indiana grad, Lincolnshire's Mark Deady, is an Indianapolis insurance executive. And Lake Forest's Rich Harris, who wore a distinctive bandanna in his running days at Colorado State and afterward, owns a Boise, Idaho, store called, naturally enough, Bandanna Running and Walking.

Len Sitko, a Niles native and the third Indiana runner under four minutes, is a running-shoe representative in the Chicago area, while Loyola's Eddie Slowikowski, who prepped at Hinsdale South, is a much-sought-after professional speaker. Princeton graduate Scott Anderson of Chicago still runs and lives out East, while the youngest of the elite club, Stanford junior Donald Sage of Elmhurst, the 2002 NCAA 1,500-meter champion, still runs for the Cardinal while pursuing a degree in economics.

The two downstaters, Alabama grad Tim Broe of East Peoria and Illinois State graduate Darryl Frerker of Highland, still are involved with track. Broe is a professional runner and Frerker coaches at Southern Illinois Edwardsville.

These 14 men -- from O'Hara to Sage -- have built and will build on the foundation of excellence that began in many ways on that day they first made a little bit of history by breaking the once seemingly impenetrable four-minute barrier.

Sports is business, sure, but excellence in sports can and does translate into excellence in many endeavors.

We talk of role models. We too often look to those who think they are cool rather than those who have really done something. These men have. And their stories -- their pursuit of excellence -- should be lessons for all of us.

Don Kopriva, former sports information director at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, is vice-president and editor of The Business Ledger, a biweekly newspaper in Chicago. Kopriva has covered 104 Big Ten Conference cross country and track championships and 70 NCAA championships in those sports.