It seems like more and more pro athletes are in trouble with the law, and whether or not they're innocent or guilty, it's detrimental to their sports and their leagues as a whole. Combined with the ever-increasing threats of strikes, lockouts, salary caps and just plain whining by the players about their gargantuan salaries, it seems like pro sports are heading downhill.
There aren't many feel-good stories coming out of professional athletes' lives anymore. Sure, they do community service, and start some charities, but when Michael Jordan - arguably the greatest sports star of all time - announces that he's been unfaithful to his wife (and stories like this don't make him look any better), it seems like there's almost no help left for pro sports.
The Mark McGuire/Sammy Sosa race was nice and it seemed to hearken back to the good old days of clean, friendly competition, but now even Sosa's reputation is ruined since it was discovered that he used a corked bat.
I used to watch baseball endlessly. Between kindergarten and fifth grade, if I wasn't inside on a summer evening watching the Cleveland Indians play, I was outside with my dad or a friend throwing the ball around and practicing my pitches. I don't do that anymore. It's not that I don't like playing baseball, or that I've grown out of it - it's that baseball, as a career - as a sport - isn't about playing anymore. To me (and to many of its athletes), it's about money. Personally, I cannot imagine a more satisfying career than traveling all summer, playing ball in front of thousands of fans, and earning a SALARY for it! Yet players are whining about the difference between 3 and 4 million dollars a year - and it seems like the bats, the balls, the pitches, and most importantly, the fans, don't even matter to them anymore.
Will professional sports be around in 50 years? Attendance is dropping, and it seems like most people are losing confidence in some of the only role models that we thought we had left: professional athletes.
There aren't many feel-good stories coming out of professional athletes' lives anymore. Sure, they do community service, and start some charities, but when Michael Jordan - arguably the greatest sports star of all time - announces that he's been unfaithful to his wife (and stories like this don't make him look any better), it seems like there's almost no help left for pro sports.
The Mark McGuire/Sammy Sosa race was nice and it seemed to hearken back to the good old days of clean, friendly competition, but now even Sosa's reputation is ruined since it was discovered that he used a corked bat.
I used to watch baseball endlessly. Between kindergarten and fifth grade, if I wasn't inside on a summer evening watching the Cleveland Indians play, I was outside with my dad or a friend throwing the ball around and practicing my pitches. I don't do that anymore. It's not that I don't like playing baseball, or that I've grown out of it - it's that baseball, as a career - as a sport - isn't about playing anymore. To me (and to many of its athletes), it's about money. Personally, I cannot imagine a more satisfying career than traveling all summer, playing ball in front of thousands of fans, and earning a SALARY for it! Yet players are whining about the difference between 3 and 4 million dollars a year - and it seems like the bats, the balls, the pitches, and most importantly, the fans, don't even matter to them anymore.
Will professional sports be around in 50 years? Attendance is dropping, and it seems like most people are losing confidence in some of the only role models that we thought we had left: professional athletes.
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