Washington File

I quite following professional sports when players started making more money per game than I earn per year. They don't need my support. I'll leave that to the beer-bellies that stream onto the streets following a "Big Game", chanting "We're Number 1". (Like they really had something to do with it)
As long as people are willing to pay the price at the gate, and support the high salaries, the doping will continue.
Professional Sports is not "Sport", it's "Entertainment".

Want to stop athletes, politicians and others from lying?

It's up to us.

Don't vote for them.

Don't watch them.

Don't buy their stuff.

You answered your own questions when you wrote "Pro sport is a big-ticket item". Big money corrupts, and the biggest money corrupts the most.
On the positive side, there are notable exceptions. Steve Nash, Mkembi Mtumbo and Tim Horton are the only 3 that come to mind immediately from the sports world but Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet show that its even possible for business people to be heroes.
Despite these few examples, I long ago gave up on looking for inspiration from pro sports (and the Olympics for the same reason) years ago. Heroes are where you find them. Romeo Dallaire, Stephen Lewis, David Suzuki, these are the kind of people we Canadians should be pointing out to our children to look up to.
We could also point out that Steve Nash is a hero in spite of being a top pro athlete, not because of it. That makes him all the more remarkable.

I stopped watching amateur & professional sports years ago when I realised there was no longer any hope of seeing players who were undoped. The level of lying is so high, I just stopped watching.

It's the same as watching politicians - I no longer believe any of them either.

It's gone so far, I threw my TV set away about 8 years ago. What an incredibly freeing act that was! I just stopped watching TV and all my grumbles went away. Since I already know it's all faked up, doped up, and fixed, I just can't be bothered.

I don't miss it.

hey Henry,

maybe you can look into getting the BBC to stop lying as well...

Hey now,
you academics aren't suggesting that we take doping out of professional:
medicine
politics
music
art
literature
and film making,
now are you?

"Make them stop lying." Wow! This is gonna be great! "h" is gonna get super-pertinant with regard to these very early, 21st century woes that we all feel! And that may kill us all!!

Not!

I'm with the others who have been drawn by the title of your article, but very disappointed by the content.

"Make them stop lying" is a rallying call more pressingly neeeded to be applied to all those in politics, the Media, multi-nationals, religions, etc..., than it is currently needed to be applied to atheletes who are, as was rightly pointed out, mere "entertainers!"

Please, "h," you are a jounalist! Won't YOU please "make them stop lying?"

And by them I mean the people whose lies truely affect us! Bary Bonds doesn't cause global warming, jihads, massive lay-offs, nor start wars!

Please, "h," won't you make the people who actually do these terrible things stop lying about them. You can do this by hammering away at them with questions that must be answered. When they don't answer, everyone will know that they are lying. But you must make sure that it is known that your question was not answered! And you can do this by NOT MOVING ON!!!! untill the question is answered!

And so... by all that you hold dear as a journalist... will you please "make them stop lying?" It's the ONLY THING we really want from you!

It really is up to all of you in the media.

After all, it's not like I'll ever have a chance to get to the truth like you do!

I don't have a press pass!

By the way, ya know all those journalists from all over the place who are following Barry Bonds from ball-park to ball-park, I hear they are fed very well for free! I hear it's buffets with roast beef, or is it roast ham, or turkey, or ALL of the above with ALL the fixens! And the booze is ALL-you-can-drink and free too! That's what I hear.

There are arguments on both sides of the Bonds home run debate. Some claim innocent until proven guilty; others like Bob Costas just point out the obvious freakish physical growth of Barry as well as the statistics. Actually, his stats are even more freaky and damning than his appearance.

For me, the issue is not even one of honesty (although who wouldn't agree with Champ on that count). It is a matter of trying to have it both ways. You can't try to sell the game as a healthy pursuit for kids and for family entertainment while turning a blind eye to steroid abuse. If you want to see home runs hit in superhuman numbers at all costs, then you just can't at the same time sell the sport to kids. Those commercials for boys' and girls' clubs of America by baseball players are about as hypocritical as they come when you consider how MLB has reneged on their social responsibilities. The fact that THEY make money from this wholesome image should automatically commit them to a more rigorous testing process.

Three weeks ago I caught my friend (who is a diehard cycling fan, with the Tour his annual highlight) offguard when I asked him, "What's the drug of choice this year?"

Sadly my humourous poke has come true.

I also agree with BNL...when I saw the title I thought for sure it was one of 3 or 4 of the current Bush scandals.

With all the money and privelege that's heaped on athletes, pro or not, I'm not surprised that so many fall into corruption. It only gets worse when they're also made into celebrities, vehicles for advertising, and sometimes even symbol's of their country's politics. Consider the artificially high place they get in society, plus the squads of agents, parents living through them, personal doctors and coaches, sponsors, groupies, gamblers, and the rest of the "entourage" that follow these guys around - no wonder sportsmanship doesn't stand a chance!

The problem is that doping is a part of the culture in many sports. Players feel pressured to dope, because if they don't, they a) won't get paid as much, or b) won't make the team.

In many sports, this doping culture filters all the way down to college sports. I had a friend who gave up on his baseball scholarship after 2 years because he was being pressured by his coach to dope.

As such, to rid the sport of doping (or at least make it trustworthy), its going to take management that's serious about clamping down on doping. We need commissioners who are willing to say: "I admit doping is a problem in my league, I admit that many records have been broken by doping players, I am now naming doping as unacceptable, and will be introducing a tough anti-doping program across the league."

Once pro-players realize they can't get away with doping, it will eventually filter down to our college and highschool players too.

It may be small consolation, but at least they are being forced to lie as opposed to the free pass that the press / society previously accorded to celebrities / people of authority in the past.

Sports are to be played, as in game, as in fun, recreation. However. I've noticed that in all sports the most funding goes to the elites of the sport to the detriment of everyone else playing. When money rules the outcome don't expect reason to be a part of equation. Sports are just another example of the common malaise of our society.

Frankly I've given up on the Tour de Farce, as a whole. I've never watched NBA, nor MLB, and never will. I'll watch F1 where the cars have to be driven by guys who know what they're doing. At least the drivers aren't cheating, I hope.

Sadly, it starts at the top. We see dishonest politicians, and accept them by not demanding impeachment, as in the case of the Prez. So why should we treat athletes any differently? Are we going to be tougher on them than on the people in charge of our tax dollars? Not bloody likely!

What really tickles my funny bone is the suggestion elsewhere that the sport of cycling be dropped from the Olympics until it cleans up its act. Is this to say that the Olympics are CLEAN!?!?!?

We should all realize that in any sort of competition, the stakes can often be high, and when there are many competitors, some if not many, will try to gain an edge on the rest. The latest scandals to hit the Tour and the other professional sports should really be no surprise to anyone. If you were truly surprised, it's time to wake up from your Pollyanna dream world.

If these scandals really bother you, stop watching televised events, stop attending the games and stop buying the merchandise. Ultimately, it is we the consumer that drives this behaviour because we need to see winners and want to associate with winning teams.

Rather than watch a sport, do something for yourself and participate in a sport, you'll feel better for it and these scandals won't trouble you nearly as much.

It should be well noted that the vast MAJORITY of athletes are clean, hard-working individuals that are highly involved in the community. But all it takes is a few high profile cases and people beleive that entire sports are tainted. This is just another case of how powerful the media can be in public influence.

What about the Bush guys who seem to make a habit of lying to Congress, Grand Juries and the public viz.Gonzales and Mueller, Libby, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et al.?

When I saw Henry's title I was sure he was set to blast the Bushie-American press partnership,or the Harper-Canadian press partnership including the CBC for the endless litany of lies they've been imposing on us.

The do not want us to know or accept the nasty truth which is that the international violence that has caused our governments to lock down our free and democratic western nations is due largely to the actions of our governments using military might to support international corporate interests in eastern nations. It's common knowledge that the attacks on Saddam and the Taliban followed failed business dealings with those two American business partners.

But it's amazingly disappointing how our tolerance of lies has grown. Perhaps it's the corporate culture most westerners live in that has cranked up our immunity levels. Corporate speak, like political rhetoric uses positive cliches like: "moving forward, "having said that", "on balance", and other distracting phrases to: distance, disown, and disconnect from their past lies. Bush, like other tyrants is a master of this method of lying.

I thought this time Henry you would stick your neck out and speak the real truth.

Steve
Hamilton.

The only possible solution to this problem is to have two versions of every tournament, the clean competition and the all drug competition. It's the only way to determine exactly what we fans prefer, a competition limited by the natural abilities of the human body or the unnatural, superhuman competition created through science. And it shouldn't be limited to just chemical enhancement either, if someone figures out how to graft a human head onto a horse for the MegaMan Marathon, well, so be it. Imagine, in Canada we would have curlers with 60 feet long arms who could just reach out and drop the rock on target. If the money is there, the fame and so on, we as fans should sucker these people into seeing how far they will actually go. Or we could just turn off the TV and go play sports ourselves.

Many the capitalist well tell you greed is good...I beg to differ. What do you expect when you give millions of dollars to under-educated muscle heads for chasing balls on a field...responsible behaviour???

Pro athletes are among the luckiest people on the planet. They get to play a sport that they have pretty much always been a star in for vast sums of money, get paid to stay in tip top physical shape, spend summers golfing or whatever and usually retire before they’re 40. Sounds like a sweet deal to me and in a world where being an “almost professional” counts for basically nothing, I can certainly understand the pressure to perform. Now considering that motivation, it’s also a safe bet that top athletes didn’t spend much of their early years debating ethics, delving into great works of literature or science, writing short stories, travelling the world or exploring art. It is also unlikely that an NBA center grew up in an exclusive Vermont neighborhood and went to private schools.

So, in essence, we have a class of people who have exercised their bodies probably at the expense of at least some of their brains, play games for a living instead of actually doing anything much as a part of the society, are paid large sums of money and are treated like media gods when successful. When you add all of that up, I find it incredibly bizarre that we would expect a group of people like that to somehow be these moral pillars of society to be emulated and admired. Debating moral quandaries is just not what pro athletes do.

If we want to pay to watch a group of 7 foot expert ball throwers run around a court every week then so be it but let’s not expect much of these people beyond that. After all, if someone is lying about doping or gambling or whatever then it is simply because the general public chooses not to deal with reality and come to grips with the idea that when the proverbial “dumb jock” is (or may be) turned into a demigod millionaire overnight he just might be tempted to engage in less than above board activities.

Money trumps integrity.

Professional sports biggest concern is loss of public interest. Loss of interest leads to lower advertising, TV and gambling revenues the real drivers of this business. Substance abuse is easy to rationalize from a player and even the corporate perspective as even "bad" publicity is better than no publicity.

The majority of fans have limited engagement in professional sports. They are interested in what ever is marketed or televised principally. Substance abuse is just sports noise in the end. Fans truly interested in the integrity of sports are just too few to influence.

I think the phrase "the product" says it all.
Bill.

Perhaps the dismissal of Vegas was a bit hasty. if you put the sports books in charge of organized professional sport, they'd probably take the necessary steps to deal with anyone (crooked refs, 'roid users, etc.) who might interfere with the marketability of their product. People won't bet if they figure the contests are rigged, so it would actually be in the bookies' interests to keep things clean. And, perhaps, offenders wouldn't get off with wussy suspensions - so I've heard ;)

We all know the tour de dope is a farce, as is hockey, baseball, football and soccor. Hell's bells, North American football has been a doper's paradise since the very beginning: it's always easier to play through the pain when you're higher than a kite and can't feel a damn thing. Why bother wondering or worrying whether your team gets in, it's no secret that the MVP on every team in every sport is the team pharmacist.

the monsters who take the field on game day are barely human anymore: they are the end products of training, doping, genetic engineering and God knows what all else. My question is why anyone would take pro sports seriously anymore when the abuses are so obvious to anyone who can look past the hype. Pro sports is a trillion dollar business - look at the Olympics - so sports associations and governing bodies may as well make all the performance enhancers legal for use and drop the idiotic hypocrisy once and for all. We can then sit back, relax, and enjoy the spectacle of impossibly huge athlete's perform for our amusement. No matter if they burn out young: there is so much money to be made that we'll have a never ending supply of genetic freaks and mutations willing to take a shot at the limelight. I say go for it!

When I saw your title, I thought you would offer some insight to the current goings-on with Alberto Gonzales.

Oh, well.

I understand the Spanish have a saying, nothing truly evil will last a century. Meaning,of course, such contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Ok, so let's even ignore all that and just discuss monetary. With the ever escalating demands of all these people, ordinary workers are simply priced out of attendance. There's only so much corporate tax writeoff out there, even that is a limited commodity.
Is not the whole professional sport system poised for a fall?