Media IX/Sports

Owners of sports teams complain about the money they have to pay their atheletes. Some of the athletes demand twenty or thirty million dollars a year and get it. This much money for playing a game and it does not even include advertising endorsments. The owners complain, but they keep on paying it because they know it is not going to come out of their pocket. They raise ticket prices, concession prices, parking fees and they raise what they charge for advertising on the radio and tv. Advertising is the real hidden cost to the fan, (and even the non-fan). When it costs millions of dollars to get a half-minute ad on the superbowl, where do you think the money for that comes from? Right out of the consumers pocket. It does not matter whether you ever watched a sport or not, when you buy a product advertised on a televised sporting event, you are paying for that ad and inderectly paying the athlete's salary and the team owner's profit. The players are also at fault. They demand these huge salaries and many of them are mediocre players, but the market is there, the owners do not care and they get their money. These players are the ones that are set up in front of the world to be heros and role models for our children. Again, the problem is the media who gives them all of the air time and print.The nastier and more despicable they behave, the more coverage they recieve.The stars that dress or act atrociously, cause fights, take drugs, get drunk, rape or impregnate various women, brag about being homosexual and do any other deviant act are the ones that get the most publicity. These are the athletes that the media holds out to our youth as role models, as people to emulate. We do have some good, clean, Christian athletes out there too. However when you hear of them in the media the story is different. We and our children are told that these athletes are old fashioned, out of date, stupid, bigoted, racist, homophobic and any other vile thing that can be said about them. When the late Reggie White, one of the greatest defensive ends that ever played football, addressed the Wisconsin state assembly and senate, he made his views of homosexuality and other sins known. Prior to that he had been a Wisconsin hero. After that there was never another good word about him in print or on radio or tv. He was brated, laughed at, belittled and made fun of. It had always been known that he was a Christian pastor but he just went about his business so it never became a problem. What a warped view of the world to give our youngsters: Dennis Rodman a hero and Reggie White denigrated. All of this has caused a warped sense of values in all of American society. When you stand in a grocery store and watch a family of five, mother, father and three youngsters, one barely out of diapers, come up to the check out stand in their team jackets, (costing in excess of one hundred and fifty dollars each), and pay for their groceries with food stamps, you know something is wrong. Why should the taxpayers pay for this family's food and the family spend their money on these clothes that go to pay the players and team owners. There is no reason for it, but America has become numb to such goings on. Sports should be put back where they belong. They should be for participation as a learning and fitness tool. Spectator sports are fine but should not get all of the citizen and media attention that they do. All of this is merely to dull America's senses to the real troubles and the fasciunist takeover that is going on right under everyone's noses. Wake up people and smell the rotteness that is America today.