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muchuckwagon
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Like it or not, professional sports are a business, a big business. At the end of the day, athletes are nothing more than employees of their respected team. They are not part of management or the ownership group....let me repeat myself, they are employees but we call them athletes which holds a special place in our society/culture.
Players are paid and paid very well to take the field and execute the game plan. Posada is going to earn $13 million this year, he can't hit his weight and yet recently he refused to take the field. In layman's terms, he refused to work. In the real world he would have been fired....no need for overpaid and unproductive employees on the payroll. If the Yankees had the stones to release Posada, I doubt many, if any, teams would have lined up to pay $13 million for a 40 year old catcher who is struggling at the plate.
There is a buzz around the fact the Lakers didn't consult Kobe before hiring Mike Brown. Who cares? Kobe doesn't own the team, I believe that would be Jerry Buss who will sign Mike Brown's paycheck....right? So why should Kobe be consulting on the hiring process? He is paid very well and expected to perform at an elite level regardless of the coach.
The ego that exists in professional sports today has gone unchecked long enough that it has become detrimental to the product on the field/court and image that is marketed to fans of a "game". We cheer for uniforms, rarely in the age of free agency do we cheer for individual players. People are life long fans or teams, not players.
Perhaps, it is just the media trying to make a story out of nothing to fill air-time. I have lost track of how many times in the last three or four months that I heard an "expert" on ESPN radio declare a player or a player's accomplishment one of the greatest in the history of their sport. Really, if that is true then 2011 will be view by history was the golden age of sports.
When you add it all up - selfish athletes, inflated ticket prices, talk of lockouts - you begin to alienate fans and start to shine the light on the ugly side of sports - MONEY. Once the causal fan starts to view the sport as a business the appeal and magic with sports becomes lost.
Players are paid and paid very well to take the field and execute the game plan. Posada is going to earn $13 million this year, he can't hit his weight and yet recently he refused to take the field. In layman's terms, he refused to work. In the real world he would have been fired....no need for overpaid and unproductive employees on the payroll. If the Yankees had the stones to release Posada, I doubt many, if any, teams would have lined up to pay $13 million for a 40 year old catcher who is struggling at the plate.
There is a buzz around the fact the Lakers didn't consult Kobe before hiring Mike Brown. Who cares? Kobe doesn't own the team, I believe that would be Jerry Buss who will sign Mike Brown's paycheck....right? So why should Kobe be consulting on the hiring process? He is paid very well and expected to perform at an elite level regardless of the coach.
The ego that exists in professional sports today has gone unchecked long enough that it has become detrimental to the product on the field/court and image that is marketed to fans of a "game". We cheer for uniforms, rarely in the age of free agency do we cheer for individual players. People are life long fans or teams, not players.
Perhaps, it is just the media trying to make a story out of nothing to fill air-time. I have lost track of how many times in the last three or four months that I heard an "expert" on ESPN radio declare a player or a player's accomplishment one of the greatest in the history of their sport. Really, if that is true then 2011 will be view by history was the golden age of sports.
When you add it all up - selfish athletes, inflated ticket prices, talk of lockouts - you begin to alienate fans and start to shine the light on the ugly side of sports - MONEY. Once the causal fan starts to view the sport as a business the appeal and magic with sports becomes lost.
