Good rant lm; looking forward to your next post on this.
That's why as a Canuck I still appreciate the Canadian Football League. For all its warts over the years it continues onward - with the 95th edition of the Grey Cup (aka the National Drunk) this year in Toronto. Fans show up from across the country (including the combine pilots from Saskatchewan and fans from Baltimore...the only non-Canadian team ever to win the championships)
Teams are limited to spending 4.05 million (all figures Canadian...but these days they're close) this year for all the salaries.
A few of the elite players make enough to not have to work in the off-season, but most have to work, as the league average salary is around $55,000 and the minimum is around $32,000.
The team I follow, the Edmonton Eskimos (still stinging after missing the playoffs for the first time in 35 years) have players who do all sorts of things in the off-season. There used to be a high school teacher who played offensive line. The kicker is a rising partner with one of the large consultancies. A former Dallas Cowboy (2 seasons), Jason Tucker, goes home to Texas to ranch in the winter. Hell one of the offensive linemen (Kevin Lefsrud) is from Alberta and has a farm a couple hours SE of Edmonton. He farms AND practices/plays at the same day during the season.
It may not have the big name calibre players that the NFL does - but it has contributed much to the NFL. You a fan of Warren Moon? Be glad that the CFL gave him a chance to prove he belonged as a quarterback...irrespective of skin colour. Doug Flutie got a chance to prove himself north of the border. And Marcus Allen's brother Damon is pro football's all time leading passer with 71,889 yards and counting. And it's home of N. America's oldest pro football club (Toronto Argonauts since 1873)
So if you feel like watching a sport where guys still have to work in a real job in the off-season, the CFL is an elixir. A bigger field, an extra man per side, full motion, 3-downs and single points (no one calls them rouges), etc - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Com...erican_football.
The US broadcast sched is at http://www.cfl.ca/index.php?modu...ule=page&
id=314
LowerManhattanite,
I agree with you that sports has taken a negative turn. But, I think there is a racist element to much of what is going on also.
I believe the whole lack of white folks in the pundit class and in our business and political power structure don't like the fact that black folks are getting rich and famous. So, they used doping as a way of diminishing their physical gifts and talents.
I know cycling doesn't have a lot of African-American stars but the pundit class and power structure hates Europeans with equal fervor.
The only sport they haven't gone after is golf and that's because they believe it's still a white man's sport even know the best golfer in the world is African-American.
Doping is technology to the anatomy and physiology. As long as performance can be enhanced by using it people will use it.
Moping around about it is very much like expecting NASCAR to use straight six cylinder engines instead of all of these new fuel and engine technologies to enhance the car's performance. It just doesn't make sense.
Keep in mind, most people could take 10 times the amount of dope these athletes are taking and they'd still suck at sports.
LowerManhattanite,
I agree with you that sports has taken a negative turn. But, I think there is a racist element to much of what is going on also.
I believe a whole lot of white folks in the pundit class and in our business and political power structure don't like the fact that black folks are getting rich and famous. So, they used doping as a way of diminishing their physical gifts and talents.
I know cycling doesn't have a lot of African-American stars but the pundit class and power structure hates Europeans with equal fervor.
The only sport they haven't gone after is golf and that's because they believe it's still a white man's sport even though the best golfer in the world is African-American.
Doping is technology to the anatomy and physiology. As long as performance can be enhanced by using it, people will use it.
Moping around about it is very much like expecting NASCAR to use straight six cylinder engines instead of all of these new fuel and engine technologies to enhance the car's performance. It just doesn't make sense.
Keep in mind, most people could take 10 times the amount of dope these athletes are taking and they'd still suck at sports.
"It's actually numbing. I never thought—in my life ever—that I could be moved to the point where "Sports" per se would begin to lose me...but I'll be damned...
...it's happening. 
"
This is how I became a "finals fan"...
You say its your birthday?
Happy Birthday, LM. I bringed you a shocolatte mocha scratch cake with scraped vanilla bean butter cream frosting and a cherry on top. It ain't the most beautiful thang, but damn, its good and I made it! (Didn't get the sugar and salt mixed up or anything) Enjoy!! 
Excellent, excellent piece! You expressed everything that I've come to feel about the sports world and then some.
"Players tired of being nickel and dimed by millionaire owners now fat with huge broadcast money, or untold capital after being bought out by AcmeCo or whoever. So they fought for salary freedom and the opportunity to make the maximum they could get."
Unlike Ira, I've never begrudged players getting paid huge salaries. Athletes, even in a perfect sports world, have a short shelf life, and owners, media outlets, consumer products etc. get obscene profits off these guys. They deserve to be paid. I used to feel there was a racist element to it, until too many highly paid black atheletes started fucking up their new lucrative status by making despicable lifestyle choices. I refuse to CUE THE VIOLINS anymore at behavior like the kind that has Vick in deep shit now. In a money mad, money driven country, having wealth, particularly if you are black, can potentially transform your life and the lives of your loved ones and actually remove you from the day-to-day drudge that poor blacks deal with. I refuse to feel sorry for guys who can't get their minds out of the 'hood and want to blame racism for their personal fuck-ups. Black atheletes aren't the only ones who have benefited from these huge salaries and endorsement deals. White jocks have been living large as well. They also have their share of fuck-ups and have been implicated in drug scandals. Sorry, but racism doesn't work for me here. (BTW, I'm black.)
And yes, we fans bear some of the burden. I stopped following basketball during the Michael Jordan years. He was the beginning of the end for me. And sure, he was a thrilling player to watch, managed to keep a basically cleancut image and the corporate world loved him. But the sport under Air Jordan went from team to me. The NBA is all showboat now.
I look forward to your follow-up and your take on how to fix this. I've always enjoyed sports, but as time has gone on less and less.
Way to go, LM! Encyclopedic. I too am looking forward to your next installment. Meanwhile, I have some unsolicited advice for my fellow addicts:
- Schadenfreude. Root negatively. Sports are rife with hateful schmucks - in the owner’s box, the press box, on the field, behind the bench, everywhere. Winning is everything in their world. Take pleasure when they lose.
- Turn off the sound. You know about balls, strikes, icing, offsides, 24 seconds, etc., or you wouldn’t be watching. Spare yourself the offensive blather. Put on some music, or just get some P&Q. (And you never watch a commercial, right? Why do you think the Good Lord gave us the remote control?)
I absolutely agree with LM. The current state of professional sports didn't magically happen. We are seeing that short-term thinking sows long-term consequences. (We are seeing this in the political realm as well.) I am a college sports fan; I don't care much for pro sports. Though the current scandals are focused on the pros, I think that the dirty ref scandal upsets me the most because it throws into doubt the integrity of the game itself. I sure as shit have felt that my team (University of Louisville Cardinals) and other teams got screwed by so many bad calls or non-calls in particular games over the years that I have wondered if the fix was in. I am sure I am not alone in this feeling. However, it just seems to me that reffing seems much worse over the last several years across sports in both college and the pros.
In addition, I think it is the perfect storm of bad timing for all of the scandals to break right now. We are in a preseason mode for college and pro football, so there is no big game of the week or college gameday to suck some of the oxygen away from the three big scandals currently swirling. All we have right now is regular season baseball, which is ALL Barry Bonds ALL the time. Goddamn sports pundits talk about fucking Barry Bonds in the middle of January when there is absolutely nothing to say about baseball. My god, now it is wall-to-wall Barry Bonds on ESPN. Will he break the record? Will he be indicted? Hero or villain? Let's talk, talk, talk about it nonstop.
Sorry for the rant, I just want college football to finally start.
Goddam, LM. I've been watching all this for years, but have never read so good a synopsis as I have today. I think I began to doubt the sincerity of sports altogether when the Dodgers moved to LA, but there were bright moments. I hated Willie Mays for his dastardly deed against my Indians back in '54, but this was redeemed by the '59 championship game (pre-Superduper Bowl) between my Browns and Baltimore ("You want the down? Givvit to Brown!").
'59 was a great year. The cellar-cursed Pittsburgh Pirates began a build-up culminating in the ball-shrinking World Series of 1960. As announcer Bob Prince usta say, "You can kiss it good-bye." Iron City Beer flowed in the streets that night. Taxi squads began in Cleveland, you recall, where Modell's extras drove cabs until needed on the field. But the f*****r betrayed the most loyal fan base in pro-sports history. And the Baltimore Colts in Indiana? Gimme a break.
So, I gave up on sports for a long while. European travel introduced me to the fanaticism of rabid soccer fans, and I watched an Argentine friend go crazy when they pulled off the World Cup. But it was Gilliard who really got me interested in the game.
I was mildly interested in Armstrong's runs at the Tour de France, but I think Jesse's live-blogging of the event was pretty exciting and gave me some insights into the sport that I would have never otherwise obtained. And I have seen it close up.
Thanx much, folx. Politix is not the only activity worthy of our attention.
Brady Anderson's and Luis Gonzales freak, fifty-homer seasons and the swelling of their bodies speak volumes for their puffed-up, number-inflated brethren.
Please don't jump to conclusions that a given player's statistical aberration. On what basis are you saying Anderson was "swelling" his body? Because of Jim Palmer's half-assed remarks? Remarks that Anderson rebutted here? (It's an archived Baltimore Sun article from 2004.)
I'm no Orioles fan, and he doesn't need my support -- he can speak well enough for himself -- but I believe Anderson when he says his 1996 season wasn't fueled by steroids.
(Whoops, that should be "...about a given player's...", not "...that a given player's...".)
WAAAAAA! I WANT MY BA-BA EH-HEH EH_HEH WAAA
Nice rant.
A pleasure to see you remember one of my youthful favourites Curt Flood.
Haven't watched a team sport in the last 30 years. Doesn't matter ... anything that require more than two individuals is just choreography with commercial breaks.
While you are creating your second edition on this topic I do hope you will explain the sudden surge in popularity of Texas hold em. The American dream ... something for nothing.
don't forget all the Italian football gambling scandals either. Bleah.
That having been said, I'm loving watching Pinella's Cubbies this year, bloated payroll and all. And Lovie's Bears last year.
LM- Beautiful. How do you get all those thoughts in one place at one time?
Earl Campbell has always been my hero. Earl the Pearl. Such heart. Integrity.
Boxing is a goner and has been for many years now. It's sickening.( Was it ever honorable?)
It seems that everything is getting meaner and nastier. How low can it all go?
LM terrific rant, reminds me of what the great Bill James had to say in his Pittsburgh Pirates essay in his 1986 Baseball Abstract, his topic was the cocaine scandals in MLB at the time, allow me to quote.
"People say it is hypocritical to judge baseball players more harshly than we judge others in society, that if school teachers, and airline pilots, and architects, and engineers use drugs, that that is a lot more serious than a few baseball players. I say it is not hypocritical in the least. We judge athletes more harshly even than our friends, more harshly than we judge ourselves. Athletes are heroes. That is their job."
I've been operating under that quote since I first read it 21 years ago, and it has never been more true when you apply it to today's athletes.
When they dropped the first turnstile, the path was set, the die was cast. Everything that's happened since then has been a very very straight, and predictable path. It's what usually happens when people try to make money off of culture..it becomes corrupted and unrecognizable.
Re:Boxing, you lose your out these days. Millions of dollars on the line, you can't afford to lose. So you fight who you think you can beat. Boxing is beyond dead, at this point, it just doesn't know it yet, barring some scandal, various MMA (Mixed-Martial Arts, such as UFC or IFL) groups will replace it. The younger generation loves it.
Why? Because it really has the competitive spirit missing from so much sport these days. Because the match making is done from a central point of control instead of a whole lot of individuals, the focus is on good competitive matches. Every once in a while you'll see matches put together because of the personalities involved, and it'll be heavily promoted (the various Ortiz-Shamrock matches come to mind), but generally it's just for good competition, which for MMA right now means good money.
In short, MMA companies don't have the same sort of moral hazard that affects the rest of big business sport.
Today, I watched the first installment of the WGC (World Gaming Champtionship). And it was good. It didn't talk down, the Guitar Hero freestyle event was a bit blah, but that's because they were very good GH players, but not freestyle. I don't like Fight Night Round 3. It's boring, I'd much rather watch the old championship videos for Street Fighter.
But the main one, the World of Warcraft 3v3 championship was good coverage. Really good. It gave a good overview, keeping everything up to date on the status of the match, explained effects via screen pop-ups, and really kept the flow of the match moving.
Like it or not, this is probably the future.
Earl Campbell... It was always easy to figure out the next play the Oilers were going to make...hand off to Campbell. 1st and long, 3rd and short - hell, 4th and long they handed it to the man who's legs were bigger around than any three parts of my body, together. I was so astonished to learn that he had spent those years nearly crippled with panic disorder.
The only time I was ambivalent was when they played "my" Steelers. Damn, what a team. Remember how everyone was touting how **cerebral** Stauback was (with Landry calling all his plays)? Everyone fell for Terry's cornpone schtick and assumed he was dumb, but that dummy not only had an arm like a howitzer, he knew how to use his people well - and didn't he have some people. Lynn Swann broke my heart when I found out he was a wingnut - he was one of the prettiest things on the football field. Franco Harris? Rocky Blier? John Stallworth? Sigh.
And don't get me started on Sweetness. When was the last time a player was notorious...for being kind and giving and generous and a g*ddamned inspiration to everyone he ever met?
Your rant was spot on, but mostly, thank you for a walk down my personal memory lane.
Yeah, Earl Campbell. Wow! I was amazed to read a while back that tests showed that Roger Clemens had more lower body strength than Campbell. I don’t know if ‘Vitamin S’ was involved in either case, but it helps explain Clemens’ longevity.
(BTW, Barry Sanders tops my running back list.)
LM, excellent synopsis of the state of sports today.
The only thing I would add to your summary would be an examination of the mostly-ignored scandal of what happens to the 'big sports school' in terms of academics and allocation of resources.
I watched the formerly excellent land-grant university in my home state build HUGE stadia, field houses, etc. while the libraries fell to pieces, tuition even for in-state students skyrocketed, and academic programs and majors were cut.
'Booster' alums donated huge sums to the school--only for the football and basketball programs, of course. They bought cars, rented apartments, and paid for athletes to drink, drug and womanize their way across the campus and in bars and clubs the kids should have been too young to get into. The 'boosters' gave the players summer 'jobs' at their companies doing nothing for extravagant wages. Several of these 'student athletes' were arrested on various charges related to some of the above adventures. Most of these kids rarely attended classes, much less attained degrees.
All because the administration decided to do whatever it took to make the basketball and football teams become nationally ranked.
The non-athlete students and faculty, as well as the taxpayers of the state, have paid a high price for those championships. I hope they think it was worth it. I sure as hell don't.
I think 'college sports programs' in most cases are student and taxpayer subsidies to professional sports leagues. Let the NFL, the NBA, and MLB pay for their own fucking farm teams, and let the universities go back to actually, you know, educating people.
Major college sports are a corrupt farce. I think the teams should be managed by the Business/Economics/Sports Mgt students for clinical experience. Make matriculation optional for the athletes, and pay them a living or market wage.
I like the site.
My rant:
Dear Media:
Either prove Barry Bonds did/is doing steroids or shut the fuck up!
No allegations, just cold, hard proof.
But it was so great when Mark McGwire "saved" baseball by hitting those home runs; you didn't worry about those home runs being chemically enhanced, did you?
IF Bonds is doing 'roids and you nail his ass to the wall, who will you go after next?
Or will you be content that you finally "got" that ol' devil Bonds and say all is well in baseball?
FUCK THE MEDIA!
FUCK THE FUCKING YANKEES!
coincidentally enough, I just did a Zogby survey where they asked about the sports scandals. I'm not nearly as well versed as you folks are, but when they asked which of a long list of sports was the least tainted, which had maintained the greatest amount of integrity, I picked....bowling.
Enslaved: I gotta call bullshit, there is no overwhelming racism in the current negitive press on bonds or vick. Lok bonds got caught, Mcguiar has been basicly blacklisted from the Hall, and while there is stong suspician he was never caught, bonds was. true a lot of people are upset that bonds is goign to break the home run recored...thats due to the cheating, not do to race. Last I checked the current recored holder is black.
i guess sports may be in a funk...but honestly i am a chicago fan....the cubbies, the bears and the bulls are returining to prominance, every thing is right in the sports universe to me
Admiral Komack: bonds admited to doign steroids under oath......any other questions?
I don’t think Bonds is clean, but it’s my understanding that he denied knowingly using steroids:
‘Bonds testified that he had received and used clear and cream substances from his personal strength trainer, Greg Anderson, during the 2003 baseball season but was told they were the nutritional supplement flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm for arthritis, according to a transcript of his testimony reviewed by The Chronicle.’
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
articl...NGGFA0UDU65.DTL
"Admiral Komack: bonds admited to doign steroids under oath......any other questions?"
moonglum
-Got a link?
IF it is proven that Bonds did 'roids, fine, get rid of him.
But I bet Bonds won't be alone out in the cold IF the media and MLB is serious in its "we don't want any chemically enhanced players in the MLB" position (and that's the way I see their position...and them hatin' on Bonds 'cause, you know he's not a nice guy.)
"i guess sports may be in a funk...but honestly i am a chicago fan....the cubbies, the bears and the bulls are returining to prominance, every thing is right in the sports universe to me"
moonglum
-GO RAIDERS! 
Former 49ers coach Bill Walsh dead at 75
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/
20070...CJ7SkgGKg.s0NUE
Sometimes I wonder if the thing about chemical enhancement is a new as everyone acts like it is. The only reason why we can compare Bonds to older players who we assume weren't chemically enhanced is because we are now less naive about the possibilities of chemical enhancement and we have more scientific means of detection.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if back in the good old days, where more was at stake, there were some "home remedies" to enhance performance. A lot of them were probably more witchcraft than science, but still, I bet people tried all sorts of potions to enhance performance. They just weren't as effective or detectable. Nothing about the old days says that players were constitutionally against enhancement, although some may have felt it was cheating or unmanly. And back then, people worried more about alcohol and wild times, than about drugs given by trainers and doctors and Madame Zelda from a bottle in the back room.
Commenting by HaloScan
