How We Play the Game

Published December 4, 2012

An ever-cascading series of sports stories have left me sad. College athletic conferences changing and rearranging to pull in teams from bigger markets so they can command bigger TV revenues. Colleges pulling out of conferences in which they’ve developed long-standing rivalries, even paying 50 million dollars as a penalty for dropping out. Athletic Directors firing coaches who play by the rules and win enough to go to bowl games but not enough to crack the elite top 25 and get the big bucks. And universities are tarnished and diminished due to admitting kids who are academically unqualified but who can punt, pass or kick; then bending, breaking and ignoring rules and ethics to keep them in school long enough to win games, build bigger and bigger facilities and attract larger alumni donations.

But it doesn’t stop there. The pros are full of juiced, ill-behaved, players making obscene amounts of money willing to wreck their bodies to make the big bucks and be admired like gods.  I just read an interesting blog by The Southeast Sports Guy about the prevalence of steroid use in baseball. The world of sports is all about money.

I’ve been a huge sports fan most of my life. My greatest Christmas present was tickets to the old Dixie Classic, itself cancelled because of big time gambling that threatened players and the game. Score me as one fan who is disgusted and has lost interest. I keep repeating the great prose the legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote in his wonderful poem, “Alumnus Football.”

"For when the One Great Scorer comes

To mark against your name,

He writes - not that you won or lost -

But how you played the Game."

What must the Great Scorer be writing about how we play the game?