Word on the Street
Sports used to be about the celebration of the human form. Every four years, all the Greeks would take a break from warring with each other to oil themselves up and see how fast, how strong, and how borderline Brokeback they were. Over the next couple thousand years, with the introduction of the long ball, million dollar paydays, and Drew Rosenhaus, professional sporting events officially shit the bed. Contrasting the great warriors of antiquity, battling for the prominence of their fathers and homeland, signaling their virility to the masses, today's athlete are whores for the cameras while trying to see how many needles he can fit in his ass, eyeballs, and toe webbing.
The once great sports of our society have followed our cultural lead down the toilet, leaving us with little to hold on to. Football, once a sport played by angry overgrown adolescents merely for the joy of beating the piss out of one another, is now the sport of overgrown children with huge bank accounts and inferiority complexes. Back in the '50's and '60's, NFL players had square jobs, practicing after work simply to get the bruises necessary to impress the chicks at the bar. Now NFL players flash their bankroll, bedding the entire universe with the cashing of their paycheck.
Basketball is no better. Bill Russell must be pissed. The great rivalries of old are now replaced by million dollar crybabies who whine about their boo-boos, only to come back in the second half to drop 50 points. The media hyped pissing contests on SportsCenter make me sick, constantly pushing the next "Great One" into primadonna status (Greztky is THE "Great One", and the man never once opened his mouth that I'm aware of). But the personalities are only part of the problem. The last three minutes of NBA basketball shows the entire game, sight unseen. The NBA should shorten regulation play to 12 minutes, get all the players off their asses. Besides, I refuse to watch any sport that ZBT can be competitive at on any level.
Even the once great American pastime is under attack. Loved for its simplicity, its pace, its ability to play with a massive lip in, baseball now cannot outrun its steroid pumped shadow. Americans voted, and the all-around player was voted out for the bomb hitting juicehead. The game is slowly moving away from McGuire-mania, but the stain will remain for years to come.
The albatross of steroid use makes what was an embarrassing shit storm into an embarrassing shit storm under neon lights. While athletes fervently deny getting "that extra edge", Rafael Palmero and Barry Bonds have record seasons despite their trials with ED. Lance Armstrong, despite winning 7 Tour de France victories in a row, is now in the eyes of millions of Europeans a filthy American cheater, as even the whisper of a rumor brings the heat of speculation.
Just like the Delphic Oracle, I will throw out a prophecy of my own. As Americans become jaded with the Professional Sporting mess our culture created, we will look for the next big thing. Running Man, once an Arnold movie gem, will become reality as a cynical populace turns to extreme violence to satisfy its blood lust. We will devolve to a society of feral animals, killing to survive, eventually resurrecting the Olympiad to signal our prowess and some semblance of civilization. We will again revere the fastest, the strongest as Kings. For halftime, I have scheduled a public whipping of Drew Rosenhaus. BYOB.
