when sports were just games :: essays research papers

When Sports were just GamesI grew up in front of the T.V. watching bone-crunching hits and massive collection plate runs in old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. I saw the last game the Browns played there and I started bawling like a blubbering idiot when they left wing the field. Back then sports were much more simple. The games were played for fun. There were no high-school kids bringing down the quality of NBA games, There werent any greedy me-first 19 year olds trying to sue their way into the NFL. Nor were there any teams spending 190 one thousand thousand horses to buy a World Series like the Yankees. and when the 1995 NFL season ended I was finally introduced to the most horrid part of sports... economics.Economics ruined my favourite(a) game and economics had taken away my favorite team. The Browns werent just my team, they were Clevelands team. They were taken from us because Art Modell couldnt force the taxpayers to pulp him a stadium. He had enough money to help Clevela nd build a football game stadium we could be proud of, but hed rather make money. Never mind the rich tradition of football we have in Cleveland. Never mind the fact that we were a playoff team the year before. The new stadium was going to cost him money. Thats when I recognise that allegiances and loyalty dont matter to owners or players. The only thing that matters to guys like Modell is the almighty dollar. Football is not the only sports that has been ruined by late economic changes. Baseball has had its own struggles with economics. It starts with the large gaps between large and small market teams. While some small market teams like the Florida Marlins, Oakland As and the Kansas City Royals have been able to perform well, most like the Devil Rays and Pirates stink. The most telling statistic that shows this gap is that the Yankees have a 190 million dollar payroll. That is a full 40 million above the team in second. The team with the lowest payroll is the Tampa Bay Devil Ra ys at 20 million dollars. That is a full 5.2 million dollars less than Alex Rodriguez One player makes more than 25 players It is also $170 million dollars lower than the Yankees. So what does baseballs Commissioner, Bud Selig, do about this problem? He doesnt propose some sort of salary cap like the NFL, he says that the MLB needs contraction.