Sports Scandals

I like sports. As a child I played many of them and I still follow a few closely, but I must say that the news about sport and athletes has changed. There is less news and talk about the games and players exploits on field and more about their off the field peccadilloes. And the internet Age has changed the speed of transmission of the naughty things athletes do in private.

Things once whispered over a backyard fence now can go around the world in the click of a mouse as the mediums love to gossip about the athletes personal relationships and decisions off the field. It is a shame, and probably why so many sports fans have or are losing interest in competitions on the field because they are weary about the scandals the mediums love to focus on. From scandals about spousal abuse by athletes, to steroid overuse, cheating athletes (on the field and at home in the bedroom), disclosures of non politically correct views or unconventional sexual roles the athlete may assume (he or she is gay or bi sexual)..whatever is salacious is writing about as much as the scores and events of the games themselves.

For example, the dark secrets of sports' most fiercely private public man, golfer legend Tiger Woods, were his own until that fateful post Thanksgiving crash with a fire hydrant as he fled his golf club enraged wife who sought vengeance for Woods string of tangles with mistresses. The gossip about Woods is everywhere, often on unlikely sites, such as the front page of a major serious daily newspaper. And printing and speaking about his private life has somehow made his sport achievements less impressive to watchers.

Style has trumped substance for Woods and many others in sports. Some former fans of the sport now are fans of seeing how the athletes are discredited fro doing what they fans can and still do themselves in private. The joy many get in watching the hero fall is an aberration as curious as any sports contest itself. I wonder why so many fans want to see their heroes discredited and chased from the playing fields. Maybe it is to show that they are simply athletes plain and simple, and that nothing about them is heroic. Bringing the star to a lower level might make the fan feel a simpatico with the athletes on display.

Do we love shaking our finger at public figures when we can? I wonder if their fall from it a greater thrill to see that is their rise to glory?