Letters to the Editor
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Pardon me, off topic
Just need a place to get on record my Saturday night game pick, which is New England. I'll post Sunday picks in this space too, later.
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No not really
It's just that pro sports have become so programmed ahead of time the only thing remotely interesting is the off the field criminalities. I mean Art Model for years had an entire team of felons some of whom he bailed out of jail personally and drove them across state lines. But no one paid it much attention because back in the day there were games worth watching. Now when you turn on the TV you hear Mercury Morris being a dumb crackhead and Chris Berman saying the 1942 Bears ARE (not were, ARE) a greater team than the 2007 Pats but the real action is in the fantasy leagues.
So fuck pro sports, fuck ESPN and fuck the NFL.
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Hey King (or anyone)
who are the other two 24 year old NFL players that died? google isn't finding it fast enough for me.
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It's all about the moola
The fact that pro athletes are mostly unethical and often criminal shouldn't surprise anyone who knows how capitalism works.
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Super Bowl XXX$$$
Nice wrap up King. Re the Super Bowl: I think it's worth mentioning the halftime show -- Prince, simulating masturbation on his guitar neck in the pouring rain. That was pretty cool, and memorable. If you're 5-2 and you can keep a rowdy Super Bowl crowd enthused, that should qualify as some kind of achievement.
It beat the previous year -- looking at the visage of Keith Richards in Hi-Def reminded me of a topo map of southwestern Utah.
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Black Athletes only 7% of USA population still dominate Sports and remain targets of contempt..
Barry Bonds, Mike Vick,Isiah Thomas treated by MSM and most white sportswriters as if they were violent criminals..
Black athletes at every level from prep to pro's get the usual less than stellar respect and value.
The white media many staffed by acute penis envy types still give Black players the shaft( exuse the pun)
MLB still treats latin players as children if latin player is Black the insults are more lethal...
Despite it all BLACK ATHLETES STILL THE BEST ON THE PLANET!!!!
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NFL deaths
To Anonymous -- the Broncos lost two players before the season started: Darrent Williams and the other was Damien Nash, who died during a pick-up basketball game in St. Louis.
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One other insult to post: Black teens can die in Iraq but cannot play in NBA!!
White sports writers including King have yet to write any articles in depth about this travesty... I wonder if majority of players were white and jewish ( David Sterns is jewish NBA commish apparently is more concerned about dress code than facts that Black teens could die in Iraq but not play in NBA)..
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Something I realized in 2007, speaking of a "steady rain"
Baseball looks really gross in HD. You can see right into their mouths.
Basketball players don't dare spit like that because they'll slip and hurt themselves. Football players wear mouthpieces, so they pretty much have to swallow, and the face guard hides whatever else goes on.
But baseball -- you can see right in there. You can see exactly what comes out and you can even see what they suck back in and save for later.
HD could be the undoing of baseball, I swear.
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2007 shows again that it's time to legalize performance enhancing drugs
Salon rarely covers drug policy (in or out of sports), so I'm going to use this mention of drugs in professional sports to address the drug topic. My apologies if this seems out of place here. At the outset, let me say that I support the right of private organizations (from sports leagues to employers or gardening clubs) to set whatever rules they want on drug policy for inclusion in the group. I'd like to distinguish private groups from government oversight of drug policy, or the grey areas (like congressional hearings into steroids in baseball). My argument is that there are meritorious reasons for professional sports to "de-penalize" performance enhancing drug use.
The fundamental reason to not allow drugs in sports seems to be the ideal that sport should be a noble and healthy pursuit at its core. There are other arguments, including that more athletes would be tempted to use drugs to stay competitive, or that this would send a bad message to children about what's appropriate to do with the human body, or perhaps that drugs inappropriately allow one to gain advantage.
I reject these claims, and believe that legalizing drugs in sport would have many positive aspects:
- Legal access to drugs is safer for the athlete. Athletes would have full access to the medical science establishment for proper, therapeutic use of pharmaceutical grade products, rather than often questionable information from non-clinicians and drugs that are manufactured by underground chemists in covert labs. This would improve safety for the athlete, make risks and adverse events more open, and advance the science allowing certain drug regimens to be proven effective for certain uses in sport.
- Legal access to drugs allows athletes to address genetic disadvantages. If the history of sport in recent decades is any indication, professional sports are not a utopian pursuit, but one in which athletes frequently use every "legal" advantage possible to circumvent drug constraints. One example is the use of altitude tents to raise red blood cell counts instead of taking Epogen to do the same. How is it fair that one individual genetically predisposed to a lower red blood cell count should not be allowed to "level the playing field", and raise their count? Should only those with the combination of talent and genetics be among those we deem appropriate for success in sport?
- Drugs do not create talent. The use of steroids doesn't make an athlete, never mind a great athlete. The use of drugs will not magically create the brilliance we look for in our best athletes, the core of what many find so distinguished and magnificent in these individuals.
- Legalizing drugs in sport is consistent with other legitimate applications of performance enhancing drugs we already endorse. Society already accepts the use of performance enhancing drugs in areas apart from sports, such as the use of Adderal or Provigil for focus, mental speed and acuity. We even put our children on amphetamines like Ritalin in elementary school, yet somehow this is seen as fundamentally different from physical performance enhancement because it only affects one body organ that people can't see.
Our nation's "War on Drugs" (drugs like crystal methamphetamine), has clouded and confused the discussion on the legitimate use of drugs to advance human pursuits. As this article notes, 2007 is yet another year exposing the ubiquity of drugs in professional sports, and yet we can describe it only as "scandalous." It's time for the merits of drug use in sport to be reevaluated.