With the NFL draft being this past weekend and the circus that surrounded that, and with the Donald Sterling controversy, I thought I would veer from the normal format to ask the question what is a sports story? Sports and life collide quite frequently, and there are a plethora of life lessons we all learn from sports. But not everybody who plays sports is a good person.
The national media, especially ESPN, has an agenda. And they work very hard to push that agenda down the general public’s throat. Take, for example, the Michael Sam situation. A late seventh round pick got more attention than the first pick of the draft for one reason: he’s gay. And ESPN has been talking about nothing but Michael Sam since he was drafted. Can you name another seventh round pick? Probably not. Michael Sam’s PR person is brilliant, and ESPN is lapping it up like It is the biggest story ever in the history of sports. If you say anything to the contrary, you are labeled a homophobe.
Michael Sam was good enough to get drafted, and that is that. As long as he is not doing something illegal or life threatening, why should we care what he does with his free time. Our society has become so obsessed with “reality”programming, that most people lap it up. I am a huge Texas Rangers fans, but I don’t really care to know what Adrian Beltre had for dinner last night or who JP Arencibia is dating. It doesn’t matter to me. Maybe I am in the minority on this, but I don’t care. If you are a professional athlete and you are performing on the field, that is about all I ask of you.
On the Donald Sterling story, I find it laughable that the media and the NBA is “outraged” that a scummy racist said something scummy and racist. And now they are talking about taking his business away from him. Last I checked, being a scum bag was not illegal. I personally find racism repulsive and disgusting, but it is not against the law to say something racist in you’re own private home.
The truth is, Donald Sterling was most likely set up by someone, and so was Michael Sam. People running sports networks wanted to get that kiss on camera, I guarantee it. In fact, I would be shocked if that was not discussed with Michael Sam by the NFL Network and ESPN prior to him getting picked. Entertainment has no clue how middle America thinks, nor do they care. That is why they play down someone like Tim Tebow while raising up Michael Sam. Their agenda is more important than anything else. They pick and choose (very carefully, I might add) when to be outraged and when to hold someone up as a hero.
I like to come to my own opinions, and my opinion is that Donald Sterling is a dirt bag and Michael Sam is a football player. The fact that he is gay has absolutely nothing to do with football, and in my opinion, he has not done anything heroic. If he just wanted to be treated the same as everyone else, he is as far from that as he could be. The truth is, people who are rich and famous will do anything to stay rich and famous, even celebrate a gay athlete solely for the purpose of ratings.
I love sports, I just wish so called sports networks would actually stick to talking about sports, because that is what most Americans want to hear about. There is a reason Tim Tebow was popular with most fans and not with the media. Because the media is told what to cover and fans actually watch sports for the love of the games. Maybe one day we will have an actual sports network that once again covers sports.
