Written by: O

Scandal! We see it every day in every part of the news. Front page, back page, entertainment page, business page, economic page, and especially the political page. What we never saw coming is how scandal has now become a normal part of the newspaper where we all went in order to find out about achievement and that is the sports page. Now not only do you read about scandal on the sports page, but you can pick which sport to find a scandal in.

No other sport was more believable than baseball. It was America’s pastime and nothing could touch it. Yet, the fatal flaw of all sports hit it head-on and it has never recovered: money!! Next thing you know baseball has work stoppages because of money, teams moving from one city to another because of money, players moving from one team to another because of money, and now we have illegal drug use with the excess of money. Yesterday it was cocaine, but today, it is steroids. They have almost totally taken away the faith fans had in baseball players because the top players of this decade are now assumed to have taken steroids in order to improve their performance…illegally. Who do you trust??

For years, professional basketball fought many stereotypes that involved their players. Whether it is about the behavior of its players or the perception that the leagues were too black, they did not have much scandal to worry about because the scandals in basketball were on the collegiate level, not the professional level. Yet, scandal has now reached the NBA as well, even though not with the players and now with the owners, but with the referees. Former referee Tim Donaghy was arrested because of passing information to insiders. Then Donaghy said that the league told the referees how to ref games and conspired to “adjust” certain playoff series. Who do you trust??

The National Football League is not a league new to scandal, but nowadays they have it coming at all sides:
 •Michael Vick going to jail because of dogfighting at one of his houses.
 •Adam “Pac-Man” Jones getting into all kinds of mischief after hours.
 •Sean Taylor getting killed in his own home, protecting his family in a robbery, which is the second at the home in nine days.
 •More than thirteen Cincinnati Bengals getting arrested during their time with the team.
  That isn’t even including the infamous “Spygate” of the New England Patriots this year. Who do you trust??

In one time, the sports page was the one place where one could feel good in reading about the news because it told about the achievements of the athletes we follow. However, that has taken a backseat today.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Random Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.