[Vision2020] Uncommon reading

[lfalen]

There would be more spirit if we occasionally won a game. We will not do so unless we go back to the Big Sky.
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: "Tom Hansen" thansen at moscow.com
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 12:13:33 -0700
To: "keely emerinemix" kjajmix1 at msn.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Uncommon reading

> 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
> 
> 
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