I do find it disturbing that we now should accept corporate names on sports buildings that at one time had names of honorable people. “Respect” is a word people often claim a desire for, yet we as a society have marched onward to very little symbols of respect anywhere in the public realm. No examples to our youth of what respect for people is exists as it did at one time. Basketball is attempting to have their pros wear “decent” clothing to seem more “respectful”.

Baseball is fast losing it’s respect as a sport of “true” athletes due to issues with steroid use. Football is the modern day gladiators and I don’t think anyone cares what is done in that sport to increase the strength of players. Sports are so deep in commercialism that steroid use was being winked at in the name of the bottom-line. Money. Corporate sponsorship is about money, nothing else.

Is this what we want in our sporting events? A focus on money? What happened to the Olympic spirit of human performance for the sake of achieving what humanity was capable of? Yes, I grew up when the Olympics was not done by professionals. But I think that support to athletes makes for better performance due to increases in training time and mental focus. Yet I also am offended by the commercials everywhere I look in professional sports. Marketing continues to find new ways to saturate our minds.

More money for sports via commercialism has it’s perks of course. But is it worth it? A new game called Beachgolff® is coming to the shores of America soon. Am I looking for sponsors to help financially? Yes. Am I going to let them influence the sport as it develops? Do I have a choice? How much influence in sport comes from advertisers?

Reduced to the finest point in conclusion; spectators will continue watching sports to see human performance as we always have. And corporations will continue to muscle in wherever they can.

(S)andy
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.