The State of Sports

Have you seen all the crap that's been going on in the sports world of late?

In the last week alone, an NBA referee was fired for his gambling improprieties, myriad cyclists are mired in doping scandals and the leader of the Tour de France was disqualified in the middle of the race, a soon-to-be home run king is still mixed up in a steroid scandal while his ex-mistress does a Playboy spread and tells all, an over-hyped English soccer player had a lackluster debut, and the Atlanta Falcons' quarterback was arrested for staging dogfights.

Sheesh!

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm going bemoan the devolution of sports from a gentlemanly (and womanly) pursuit to nothing but fertile territory for the vice patrol.

Not so. Where an up and coming vice cop can indeed make a name for himself by tracking sports figures alone, I have nothing derogatory to say about the current sports headlines.

I mean, I don't want to see a basketball game that has been "fixed" by a crooked referee. I like to see games contested on an even playing field with as little interference by the officials as possible. But if these guys are simply betting on the games, I have no problem with that. I understand some of these poor bastards have to make ends meet by selling Amway for chrissake. If they can supplement their income with an occasional wager, so what.

And let's face it, there's an upside to this scandal for the league as well. Having the traditional Mob involved in professional basketball in any capacity is exciting. It'll put butts in the seats. If anything, it'll be fun to see how the gangsters in the crowd interact with the gangstas on the court.

And even though I don't really care about cycling, I can't fault the cyclists for trying to get an edge. When Lance Armstrong quit racing, I quit caring, but he set the bar way too high for those poor saps still pedaling away. These cyclists really have no other choice but to try to enhance their performances somehow. Hell, it's not easy to win seven Tours in a row and have France and most of Europe despise you like you're Hitler's invading army. There is no denying that Americans have a distorted sense of importance when it comes to sports, but Europeans take it to bizarre new levels.

Speaking of new levels, Barry Bonds is about to break Hank Aaron's all-time homerun record. I personally find this very exciting. I like to see homeruns, and I don't really care about steroids. In fact, I'd like to see Major League Baseball allow steroid use openly. I want to see a guy swell up so big his uniform rips. I want to see a season with a hundred plus homeruns by one player. I want to see a guy shred his massive hamstrings like cheddar cheese when he steals a base. I want to see a batter break an umpires arms and punch a hole through the dugout wall after a questionable call. I want to hear widows crying about the deaths of their ex-ball player husbands who past away while only in their 40s. I want to see ball players that look like some lab experiment by a mad scientist. I have no problem with ball players taking steroid use to extremes.

The only thing about the steroid scandal in baseball that ever really bothered me was the way the players insulted our intelligence by denying they shot the juice. Like we were going to believe it's natural to add forty pounds of lean muscle and three hat sizes after the age of 36. Hey, when you look like a Thanksgiving Day Parade float in a baseball uniform, everyone knows what's going on. It's time to come clean.

Now, I haven't heard of any steroid scandal in soccer, but lately I've been forced to see news and video footage of David Beckham and his Spice Girl wife everywhere I look. I suppose Beckham's presence here is meant to boost soccer in this country. But I admit I have no more interest in the sport than I did before. Hell, aside from being annoyed by the hype, I can only feel sorry for all the Brits. I mean, we brought the two best looking people in the entire United Kingdom to the United States; just stole them away from a country that really can't afford to lose too many good looking people. Not only that, but we plunked them down in the middle of Los Angeles. Out there, they are somewhere in the middle of the pack of good looking people, and near the bottom of the pack of talented people. That's not a very nice way to treat our guests from across the pond, is it?

At any rate, Beckham hobbled through something like 12 minutes of action in his debut outing, not scoring and getting involved only minimally.

And that's supposed to boost the popularity of soccer in the US?

You all know as well as I do that David Beckham is not going to boost the popularity of soccer in the US. Only more scoring and a marked increase in violence is going grab our attention. We have a bloodlust that needs to be satisfied, and if you're not satisfying our bloodlust, you best score a lot of points to keep our minds off it. Only then will soccer sit alongside American football and the UFC in popularity. In the meantime, I suppose we can all hope for a good soccer steroid scandal. I'd tune in for that.

Still, I don't see any of this as a detriment. We have to look at all these instances as a collective before we make a judgement on the state of sports. And when we do that — when we see a somber David Stern speaking of a rogue referee that might have had a direct impact on the outcome of a playoff game, when Bud Selig can't decide if he'll be on hand to see Bonds break the homerun record, and when we see one of the most talented quarterbacks in football amid the bloody corpses of dead dogs — we can only conclude that sports is entering a vibrant, new era.

Folks, welcome to the Golden Age of Sports.