Rough Sports Week

This has got to be the worst all-round week for sports that I can fathom, much less remember. Baseball has to watch as Barry marches over Aaron's HR record, embarrassed by the fact that the real story is steroids. Football obviously has to deal now with Michael Vick - not to mention that Pacman Jones, who already is suspended for about 17 crimes, caused a bit of a flit the other night when he was turned away trying to enter a club. Desperate for even MORE trouble, I suppose. And now we find out that an NBA ref is being ivestigated about betting on games he was calling. All the above coupled with the fact that college basketball and football aren't the same since all the best players leave early makes me feel sorry for the young bucks coming up today. All they hear about is 'roids, thug life in the NBA and arrest after arrest from the NFL. I know of no youngster who pays attention to college ball; why bother - the good players are gone in a year anyways.

I feel incredibly lucky about the sports era I grew up in. In football, we had Steelers/Cowboys, Cowboys/Skins. We saw Joe Montana, Walter Payton and LT. Basketball we had Celtics/Lakers, Bird/Magic and then MJ. Baseball...well, baseball kinda sucked but at least it wasn't smeared by the spectra of steroids. College football we had Herschel and Barry's Sooners and Joe Pa. The best of course was college basketball - when I was coming up the ACC, already the greatest league ever, was at the door of a decade of unprecedented glory. Ralph/MJ/Worthy/Williams/Laettner, on and on and on; Wednesday night league games in February with half a dozen future NBA all-stars/hall of famers. Hell, even in hockey we got to see Gretzky come up as well as the Miracle on Ice. We saw Cal beat the band, Buckner's gaffe and Laettner's shot.

When I was a young buck we played all three sports. When it was football season we played football, and the same went for basketball and baseball season. It didn't matter how great a player you were in one sport, you played all three. Nowadays we open up the papers and read about kids being recruited for basketball in the 6th grade; LITERALLY choosing their college before they pick their high school and then settling in for going from one AAU Tourney to another for the rest of their youth. Unreal and a bit sad. But hell, at least that's a kid even playing a sport, what with all the distractions for a kid now. Internet, video games, blah blah blah. We didn't have all this other stuff, all we ever heard when we were boys was "go outside!" And let's be honest - there wasn't anything else to do.

All this has gnawed at me for a long time, makes me wonder what kind of sports world my nephew and godsons are gonna grow up in and, judging by this week, it's gonna be pretty awful. Oh there will be great players, great athletes, but it will all be marred by this stuff on the sidelines along with an incredible lack of continuity. There will be a lot of jerseys sold, but will any kid love and try to emulate Jeff Lamp or Larry Bird the way I once did? I don't know. Looks like I'll start buying violins and trumpets instead of baseball gloves and nylon nets.