CollegeFix Front Page: Where have all the ethics gone?

Monday, July 23, 2007

Through our lives, we grow up as professional sports fans. Whether it be professional baseball, basketball, or football, our country has been captivated by the thought of World Championships, as it reinforces to us, as a nation that we are the best in the world, despite the fact that much of these games are played in other countries as well.

Still, something has happen that has changed this culture. It all started maybe twenty years ago when I could no longer go to a ball game and lean over the dugout to get an autograph. The salaries started going up, and the availability of the athletes went down. Players were no longer one of us. People like Pete Rose began actually charging people for autographs. Mean Joe Greene would no longer trade his jersey for a coke, and the kid was perminently stuck in the pepsi bottle.

To make matters worse, Major League baseball was so in love with numbers, our last couple of commissioners neglected to think about the fact that how you get there is much more important than whether you get there at all. Neglecting to make a steroids policy twenty years ago might go down as the biggest blunder by any sport in our lifetime, so much so, that one cannot legitamately blame Barry Bonds for his success. After all, his actions may have been against the rules of law, but they weren't against the rules of baseball.

Still, this ineptitude is seemingly dwarfed by the actions of professional football and basketball.

While Major League Baseball is at least attempting to correct the errors of the past, the NFL has seemingly turned a blind eye the kinds of citizens our football players have become. Where baseball didn't care about the ethics of athletes on the field, the NFL has done one worse, by turning a blind eye to the ethics of its players OFF the field, and the NBA appears to have no idea what the word "ethics" means.

Speaking of the NBA, all I can say is, "WOW, You're dumb"! It's hard to believe that any professional sport would allow organized crime to creep into it's culture, thus completely nullifying it as a professional sport. Al Capone once tried his hand at fixing games by buying officials in baseball but all he could manage to corrupt in boxing, as baseball was inpenetratable, as he was once quoted as saying from Alcatraz. Still, the NBA was more than game (no pun intended) and made successors in an area where the king of all Mobsters had failed.

So what are we to think? The three biggest sports have all become significantly less ethical over the past ten years and they are becoming more of a Warning to our children as opposed to an example to them. This is a sad testiment for our time, in my opinion.

I guess there is some truth to the blissfulness of youth; consider this...

Unofficially, between 2001 and 2007, there have been roughly 125 arrests (excluding DUI's) among college football players in Division 1A and there has been 96 arrests with NFL players, despite the fact that there is TEN times the number of Division 1A football players as compared to the NFL.

To add, the NCAA has had a steroid policy for thirty years and athletes of all sports are regularly tested.

Finally, I don't recall ever hearing about an official on the take in a college game, despite the fact that their pay is dismal and the opportunity is much more evident.

What does this tell me? It tells me that many of todays best athletes are corruptable because they feel that they won't get caught due to their celebrity status.

More importantly, it tells me that the only pure sports in our society are amature sports, where the players aren't paid, at least not legally.

There's something to be said about athletes playing football, baseball, or basketball with their hopes and dreams being that they might one day play in the NFL, MLB, or NBA. This "carrot" that is dangling before them is the closest thing to insurance that we, as sports fans, have to ensure that we are watching players who are ethical on and off the field... good citizens and students of life, as they are trying their hardest to show the decision makers that they have both the skill and the maturity to merit a contract.

This, to me, is the single reason that, while I love Professional baseball, and I love the NFL, it doesn't hold a candle to college sports. I can't help it, I just enjoy watching people play when they are playing because they love the game as opposed to playing for a paycheck.

If you're not entirely sure what I'm talking about, go watch a highschool football, baseball, or basketball game. You'll be hooked soon enough.

As for me? Five weeks left until the fun begins again!

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DM14

Labels: CollegeFix, Dawgman14

Written at 10:31 AM by dawgman14.

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