[Vision2020] Uncommon reading

[Tom Hansen]

Although I love (more like "addicted to") college sports, it is my opinion
that . . .

Collegiate sports is absolutely NOTHING like it used to be when I was
growing up in Los Angeles (having attended virtually every UCLA Bruins
home football game from 1959 thru 1968) and attending the USC game was
more of a ritual than a right, and having attended UCLA basketball games
commencing when Walt Frazier was a freshman and Lew Alcindor (aka Kareem
Abdul Jabaar) hadn't even been heard of yet.

Back then the major calling card of college sports was spelled
S-P-I-R-I-T.  Don't get me wrong.  Collegiate sports spirit is still alive
here in Vandalville.  It's just kinda on life support.

What is, to a major degree, killing this spirit?  The cancer of "corporate
sponsorship".  Corporations are buying their way onto college sports
venues.

And it doesn't end at college any more.  Many high school sports
facilities in Los Angeles are "littered" (and I mean that in its worst
connotation) with corporate logos.  As long as colleges and high schools
permit corporate America to enter their campuses for commercial reasons,
as these corporations line the financial pockets of the respective
athletic programs, it will only get worse.

This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  Couple this corporate
influence in academia with the non-existent "policing" of professional
sports and this cancer will become permanetly malignant.

By "nonexistent policing of professional sports" I am referring to . . .

Alex Rodriguez - Professional (potential hall-of-famer) baseball player
for the New York Yankees who has admitted TWICE to using illegal
performance-enhancing steroids, yet no action is taken against him.

Manny Ramirez - Another professional baseball player for the Los Angeles
Dodgers came up positive and admitted to using illegal drugs.  Again - no
substantial action taken against him other than a 50-game suspension.

Congress thoroughly investigated the use of illegal substances in
professional baseball.  Several players, agents, and physicians were
identified as major violators of baseball's drug use policy.  And again -
NOTHING!

As long as corporate America is permitted to "sponsor" college and high
school athletics . . . and as long as professional athletes are rewarded
for using illegal substances . . . ethics, morality, and simply "doing the
right thing" will be disregarded as financially insufficient to the powers
that be.

How can a parent convince his/her child, who is competing for an athletic
scholarship, that hard work and a strong moral ethic pays its own rewards
in the long run . . . when that same child watches multi-million-dollar
contracts being signed by athletes who openly admit to violating the law?

Thoughts?

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown