Growing MLB trend

Do you remember the in the movie “Major League 2″ when the players show up to the field one day and the outfield wall is covered in ads for plumbers, electricians, and local eating establishments?  The players felt as if they had been sent back down to the minors.  Unfortunatley for them it doesn’t seem like MLB is to far from that.  I guess it started with Sportscenter anchors saying, “He goes shopping at the gap” when a player would hit the ball to the right or left center field gap.  That spurred The Gap (clothing store) to place their ads up on the walls in what baseball fans called the gap.  Now the trend has taken over baseball with countless amounts of businesses being represented.  Its not just the walls that are being taken away from.  Scoreboards, pitch counts, big screens, and the only real reason it seemed that the Atlanta Braves put up the screen that circles around the stadium is so that they could benefit from more advertising dollars.  Hopefully soon we’ll see an end to the madness, but so far the dollars are beating out the purity of the game at the major league level. 

Miami Football

Once again the University of Miami football team has, dropped the ball.  This being the first time since I can remember that the ‘Canes aren’t in the top 25 should be the perfect time for this storied college program to rebuild its reputation. To bad that they put football games ahead of educating their student athletes between right and wrong on the football field but more importantly in society.  The ‘Canes should have paid attention to the actions taken by the Florida International University officials.  The school has announced that two players will be dismissed from the team, but i Maybe some of the 13 U0fM players deserve only the one game suspension dealt out by the ACC commish, but swinging a helmet and running around stomping players that are already on the ground is grounds for dismissal from the team.

USA not #1

At the end of last month the United States Ryder Cup team lost their for the third straight time and 5 of the last 6 competitions.  Some aren’t suprised with the results even though we are home to Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.  But we should be upset.  It would appear that in almost every sport we are producing some of the greatest ’stars’ in the sports, but not any winning teams.  Our basketball team is probably the best example of this drop-off.  Coming in third in the FIBA Mens World Championship behind Greece and Spain after finishing third in the 2004 Olympics.  After winning the gold in the 2000 Olympics our record over the past 14 Olympics was 109-2.  Thats not just a drop-off its more of a collapse.  And in America’s favorite pastime the trend continues.  Not even advancing to the semi’s in the 1st World Baseball Classic.  I’m not saying that we should have won this event, but the LEAST we could have done was to beat Canada.  This is a problem and maybe we should begin entering the champions of each respective league into this competetions.  Teams like the Patriots and White Sox who have a team first mentality instead of star studded teams who are only worried about their own playing time.