I have been a sports fan all my life. It was a wonderful time during the years I was growing up in Baltimore with the Baltimore Colts and Orioles. Those franchises had tremendous success and were well loved during those years. The press and the fans around town respected those teams and the players, coaches and managers on those teams. Great players like John Unitas, Brooks Robinson, Gino Marchetti, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken Jr., Bert Jones, Raymond Berry, Art Donovan, Mike Curtis, Ted Hendricks, Bubba Smith, Jim Palmer, Al Bumbry, Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan, Mike Boddicker and on and on and on. Coaches and managers like Don Shula and Earl Weaver. I can name other guys like John Dutton and Mike Barnes and Lydell Mitchell and John Lowenstein and Gary Roenicke and on and on... because they all might not have been national household names but they were Baltimore guys on Baltimore teams. Teams that won consistently and comprised of players that were characters and had character.
Ah, I would be remiss not to mention those final Irsay-Colts years. Although those final Irsay-Colts years were a circus and fans were upset about the perennial losing, mismanagement and general insanity, it still seemed ok to be a sports fan. Particularly a Baltimore sports fan. In many ways I found the Irsay-Colts comical and it was ok to complain and laugh at the circumstances. I was in my late teens and early twenties in those years. My friends and I took advantage of how bad the Irsay-Colts were by going to Memorial Stadium and getting game day tickets from scalpers for less than half of face value.
I still am a sports fan - I think. I still love Baltimore sports with the Ravens and the Orioles. I still watch as many Orioles games as possible and peak for the scores of the games I don't watch all during baseball season. I mean - it's a long season and I do have a lot of other things to do. However during football season we come together as a family and watch the games each week. You can do a lot of living and dieing during a Ravens game and it is fun.
Something is changing though. Or maybe it's better to say that many things are changing. Perhaps it is easier to remember the halcyon years of youth and what it was like to be a fan? Was sports more right-sized then? Was there less of a spotlight on sports? Was there less of a spotlight on the players? Were the players of yester-year more upstanding or were we in the dark about them because the media either didn't report what they knew or didn't know themselves? Was the expense of being a fan less? Both economically and to our souls? Was there less greed as it related to sports? Were the leagues and the owners less greedy about the franchises? Choosing to run leagues and franchises as a sideline and pleased with ending in the black and not the red? Did players understand they were being paid to play games and their incomes should reflect that fact? Having to supplement their incomes with off season jobs and endorsements.
For me it is all of those things. In many ways I can barely stomach being a sports fan anymore. I want to have fun and cheer the teams and players and coaches. I want to enjoy the competitions and the strategy. Not just the Baltimore based teams but including college athletics and other sports more then football and baseball. But it is becoming more and more difficult to overlook the slimy mess that sports has become.
How is it ok for an average NFL ticket price to be roughly $166? How could I justify taking my family - including daughter and her family? Over $1300 for 8 people. Approximately what I pay for a beach rental for my family for a week. Over $600 for a family of 4 to attend a NFL game. That is just the average ticket price and does not include parking, food or incidentals. How can I truly celebrate a football day with my family? It seems impossible because it feels irresponsible to me to spend so much money for a few hours. Particularly when I can find so many other things to use the money for.
The only thing I can account for all of this is greed. Greed by the leagues and the owners and the players. The money is astounding to me. Not just ticket sales. It is in television and advertising and merchandising and whatever else you can think of. Yet we keep paying. I can't really blame the leagues and the owners and the players because the market seems infinite. The leagues and the owners and the players are never going to say - "oh, that's enough money, let's hold the line right here." They will continue to take as long as we continue to be willing to give it to them.
How can we cheer for and celebrate the players? I want to be careful and not include and denigrate all of the players in major college and professional sports. The majority of players are good, responsible and moral. Those players outnumber by far the few players that are in the headlines for behavior that boggles the mind. I also know that there are people that break the law, commit murders, rape, abuse women, abuse drugs and alcohol, abuse power, cheat, lie and any other kind of thing you can imagine in all walks of life. However it seems to me that the percentages of the whole compared to the rest of society are extraordinarily lopsided with athletes involved in this behavior. What leads to this? Is it the world of entitlement they come from that makes them think they can do whatever they want with impunity? Is it a peculiar mental twist in athletes? Some mental twist that seperates them from the rest of society similar to the athletic gifts they have the rest of us don't have?
Last year I attended 2 Ravens games. At both games the team chose to introduce the defense during the pre-game ramp up to the game. These introductions are intended to be exciting and to bring energy to the stadium. The players enjoy it and the fans have an opportunity to heartily support the players. The volume and intensity goes up as each player is introduced. Terrell Suggs is one of those players. This is a man that abuses women. Court records bear that out. But forget the court records because they don't tell the whole story. Because of celebrity and money Terrell Suggs has been able to both keep these transgressions tamped down and he has settled out of court when necessary. He has been able to pay off his accuser. I found it amazingly uncomfortable to cheer for Terrell Suggs. I didn't do it and I won't ever do it. It makes me wonder about the over 60 thousand other people on those days? Did they forget what Suggs really is? Are they willing to overlook what he is because he can help the Ravens win a football game? Are the women willing to overlook his abusiveness?
When did sports become more important then... well just about anything? I grew up during the Vietnam war. Sports never seemed more important then the Vietnam war. Socially as a population it seemed like we understood the value level of something like sports and where it ranked compared to a war. However in the last 20 years I have lost track of the number of wars the United States has been involved in. During all of these years it has seemed to me that sports has shared as much news time and social awareness as anything. Including the various wars. Wars where people have been losing their lives. Not just U.S. sodiers losing their lives but including women and children. Innocent people killed during wars our country has been involved in. Or genocide or civil wars in places like Kosovo or Uganda or anywhere that doesn't benefit our thinking.
I feel complicit in overlooking all of the things that I believe to be of importance by continuing to be a sports fan and root for these teams and players. I chip away at my own integrity and standards. I am not sure that I will keep on being a sports fan. I have some hope somewhere in my brain that the leagues and owners and players and media will wake up one day and say - "hey, let's fix some of these things". More likely there will be more and more people like me that just stop paying attention. Eventually we will stop going to the games, watching on TV, spending our money. We will realize that there is a whole world of other things to pay attention to. We don't really have to pay attention to what really amounts to a distraction. Do we?
