Pro Sports are currently in bad shape

[Burkex]

What's up with pro sports these days? There seems to be problems everywhere. Is it the money that is causing all of these problems? Or has this always gone on but the reporters are are so intense these days that everything is coming out? What's the deal here?

Some current problems:

Baseball has a huge problem with steroids and performance enhancing drugs. There is a witch hunt going on right now on who used these steroids, people like Bonds, Sheffield, Giambi, Mcgwire, Sosa, are all in the spotlight. Also alcohol and baseball players seems to be a huge issue too. The cardinals manager got arrested for a DUI then one of their players got killed in a car accident when he was drinking and driving. Seems players like to booze it up after games and then drive home. In game coaches are going crazy and getting throw out of games more this year than any other year there are also a lot of bench clearing brawls between players.

Pro Wrestling players are getting killed before the age of 40 in huge numbers. Steroids and pain killers are apparently wide spread in this sport and they don't even test for them. All of the wrestlers look like they juice. A few weeks ago a pro wrestler killed his family then killed himself.

NFL Football. Dog Fighting scandel. Shooting off guns. Doing drugs. And so on. NFL players are getting arrested in huge numbers for various things. Pacman Jones gets arrested every week it seems. On top of this players like Sean merriman are still testing positive for steroids and other game enhancing drugs. Players like Rickey Williams smoke pot all the time and fail NFL drug tests. The NFL's list of problems goes on and on.

Golf. This week Gary Player a well respected golf vet said he knew that steroids had crept their way into golf and now he knew that some pros were using steroids because everyone has to drive 350+ yards on the tour to compete.

Car racing. It seems that road rage has found its way into pro racing. Drivers after races are getting out of their cars and fighting with each other like it was the WWF. A little while ago Danica Patrick a women almost threw down with a male driver after he cut her off.

NBA basketball. NBA Referees shaving points and betting on NBA games in connection with the mob. NBA players fighting with fans and players both on and off the court. Let me say that again: fighting with fans. That is crazy, going into the stands and beating on some drunken fan, that should never happen, fans should be allowed to heckle its part of paying for the ticket. NBA players cheating on their wives, sexual abuse, domestic violence abuse.

Bicycling. Blood doping, steroids, and any other game enhancing drug seems to be widespread in cycling. Floyd Landis the Tour De France winner for America was busted with increased testerone levels in his blood.

Hockey. The fighting has gotten pretty bad. Some players are hitting other players in the head with their sticks and sending them to the hospital, not by accident but with intent to hurt and intentionally send them to the hospital. Criminal charges were filed in many cases.



So I ask you what is up with professional sports these days? It wasn't this bad in the past was it? It seems like things have really gotten out of hand. What is causing all of this? Is it the money?



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[cdyhybrid]

I think it's just coincidence that all these things are happening at once. The steroid/pro wrestling deaths issues have been going on for a while now, as have fights in racing. The dogfighting/ref fixing coincidentally were exposed at around the same time, so it seems like we're being bombarded with issues.

[psu199]

I don't doubt that pro sports have issues these days, but I'd imagine that the biggest change from days past is simply the overabundance of news coverage on sports and athletes. With ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN News, ESPN.com, 50 different sports blogs, Fox Sports, CNNSI.com, and who knows how many other sports news outlets are out there, anything even remotely controversial will get huge coverage. As a result, if you stack each sport on top of the other, and list their problems like you did, you paint a picture of a pretty bleak landscape. But in reality, it's not much different than it's ever been, it's just all force fed to us in such a way that makes us believe it's a massive problem

[prescient63]

Someone wrote a book a couple of years back about all of the cover ups the NBA did for their players. The players were constantly in trouble. I agree with the above poster, it is just impossible to cover anything up anymore. There are too many reporters and too many news outlets.

[Miele]

It's not that it never happened, it's that you never heard about it before.

I think the sport with the largest worldwide audience is football, what you call soccer in the US. It's corrupt, it always has and always will be and the reason is only one: money.
When a relatively small country such as mine ("only" 60m people, Italy) can call football the third industry of the state because it has more than 6 billions euros / year business running, you know something must happen behind the scenes (and since it's Italy, you are sure something's wrong, you can quote me on that, we invented the mafia after all).

During the 2006 summer ther was a huge scandal here: a whole system corrupted, not a referee with debts trying to pay the mob, I'm talking president and vice president of the federation, the vast majority of the referees, a truckload of players and their sport agents, journalists, etc. Hell, you'd be faster to name those who were not involved! It was all going on for years and years...

Luckily (or unfortunately depending on points of view) Italy won the FIFA world cup in the same summer and an italian team won the Champions League this season (major club european competition), so everything took a less shitty look, but it's still disgusting.

[Arbuste]

As far as drugs and doping is concerned, there are solid evidence and testimonies that they have been used for as long as it has been professionalized. In the 70s, they used just as much stuff. Today, there are just more controls. And they work better.
Apparently, the more "corrupt" sport right now is Cycling. But it only appears so because they have the best tests.

Fun soccer fact. Blood testing was introduced for the 2002 World Cup, in Korea. But in 2006, they decided to remove them and only use urine-based tests (which are very easy to avoid. Most drugs barely appear in the urine.) Too much money was at stake. Nobody really wants to know.

Trying to fight drugs is going to kill the Tour de France (and all cycling.)

[Rune]

Would it be too cynical to speculate that someone wants Americans to focus on sports right now rather than the other shit going on?

Professional sports haven't been clean ever. The shit that went down in the Mafia era was ridiculously more corrupt than it is now. When millions of dollars ride on these games, legal and illegal, someone's going to try to boost their odds whether it's the player's livelihood or someone higher up.

[Ishad]

You're off on hockey. Injuries are up not a result of fighting, but the lack of it. Throw out the instigator rule, contract the league (Bye Florida, Phoneix, Nashvile, Carolina), fire Bettman and get the NHL a tv deal with a real channel.

The head injuries you're talking about are mostly from players getting hit high on dirty checks not fighting. The instigator rule prevents what alot of teams used to do to prevent cheap shots. You have a guy on your team getting league minimum that can barely skate but could punch while standing on them. Someone took a cheap shot at a player? When that guy got out of the box he knew you were sending your resident thug out to punch him in the face a few times and remind him why not to to do that.

Also I don't remember another incident that charges were filed execpt Bertuzzi in '04 and McSorely '00

[Nebuchadnezzar]

There's nothing wrong with the NFL that's new, guys have always been arrested in larger numbers than the normal population (Ray Lewis double murder, Nate Newton with his pot, etc.) its just the new Commish isn't going to take any more shit.

[MorinkhanMT]

A large part of it is the money IMO.

Pro athletes make such insane salaries, which often causes excessive behaviour, especially since so many pros originally come from pretty poor economic backgrounds. All of a sudden, they have a bajillion dollars, they go crazy, and more importantly, they develop the egos to go with the cash. They think they're above the law, and in many cases the justice system seems to agree. Either that or they just buy away all their legal troubles.

It's a pipe dream, but I'd love to see what would happen if all the pro leagues went to a tiered salary system. All A-level players get 3 million a year, all B-level get 2, etc.. no exceptions. Set criteria for the different tiers in each sport, by position/role/whatever...

I know it's a simplistic view of a complicated system, but it just bugs me when you see PlayerX get $10M a year, then complain when PlayerY gets $10.1M because he had one more goal or homer or TD.

[Rush]

Simple answer:

Stupid Niggers.

[Clericnon2boxed]

Originally Posted by Rush

Simple answer:

Stupid Niggers.

YTMND - Nigger Pirates - Coming to a walgreens near you!

anyhow

genetic doping, can't wait for the olympic freakshow in 40 years

[Moontayle]

The problems appear in like... 1% of the sports population and you're essentially calling it an epidemic. The sheer stupidity of your post is mind boggling.

[darksensei]

Originally Posted by Moontayle

The problems appear in like... 1% of the sports population and you're essentially calling it an epidemic. The sheer stupidity of your post is mind boggling.

Unless you're the Bengals, in which case its closer to 15%.

[Akileese]

Originally Posted by darksensei

Unless you're the Bengals, in which case its closer to 15%.

Wasn't it 10 guys on a 40 man roster..can't remember. Look, the point is for every ONE good story out there, there is about 8 or 10 terrible ones. It's not even the major stuff it's the little things. I seem to think the money plays a part in it like most, but I mean, look back to the 80s and 90s when guys were making a TON of money (while less in a monetary sense, when you add in how much more expensive things are now, I think it may even out a lot more than you'd think).

I think it's also a product of our society in all honesty. Whether it's a minority issue (pertaining to African Americans) or not, I really can't say. Not only that, I don't want to open a Pandora's Box on race in pro sports. All I will say is that it SEEMS like most of the athletes getting arrested for these absurd crimes are African Americans. Who knows, maybe it's the racism in this country that most people are pretty much oblivious too (Myself included for quite sometime).