newjerseynewsroom.com

BY EVAN WEINER

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

Most people alive today have probably never heard of H. L. Mencken, an American satirist and a newspaper writer in the first half of the 20th century. Mencken often lampooned American society and values.

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public," he once wrote. Mencken could have easily being poking fun or picking a scab of the American sports fans. Major League Baseball has suspended two players, Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon, and three minor league players for taking "banned" substances. Sacramento Kings devotees were jolted on Thursday by the news that the franchise was moving to Virginia Beach, Virginia although at this point no one in the Tidewater area of Virginia seems to be able to confirm that the team really is heading to that area. National Hockey League fans are staring at a Sept. 15 deadline of an owners-led lockout of the players and an increasing threat that the 2012-13 season will not start on time. The National Football League is going with replacement officials and has locked out the regular referees, and there seems to be not solution in sight in that dispute.

The college football season is starting with people wanting to put the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal and the Penn State cover up behind them and to get back to the normal “rah rah” of Saturday afternoon college football where everybody makes money except for the ones putting their lives on the line playing football, a brutal sport. Sure there is the tradeoff of being in a position to get an education in exchange for the blood, sweat and tears of winning one for the alma mater.

Nigeria and Kenya are both holding top level government findings into why their Olympic teams didn't win more medals at the recently concluded London Summer Olympics. There also seems to be self-congratulations and slaps on the back for a job well done by the London Olympic committee organizations that are echoed in the media which is not bringing up questions concerning the true cost of the two week spectacle in a country, the United Kingdom, which has been hard hit by the recession.

The National Football league is going into the season with a lawsuit still pending against the league from one of the New Orleans Saints suspended players Jonathan Vilma from the so-called "bountygate" days. The term refers to the scandal in which Saints players allegedly threw money on the table and paid players for taking out other teams’ star players.

New Orleans is without Coach Sean Payton, assistant coach Joe Vitt and Vilma, but owner Tom Benson hasn't returned any money to anyone for whatever happened. In fact, Benson has been rewarded with sweetheart lease contracts by the state which allowed him to recently purchase the National Basketball Association's New Orleans Hornets. Benson will get all sorts of tax breaks and benefits from the noted fiscal conservative Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who probably believes Benson built his empire without any government help. Meanwhile, Benson has put his suspended Saints general manager Mickey Loomis in charge of his basketball team.

The capper this week though is Lance Armstrong throwing in the towel and not bothering anymore to fight charges that he used "banned" substances during the years he won the Tour de France bike race.

The question of sports legitimacy is never raised.

All of these leagues that are enforcing drug bans seem to be very comfortable with the "they are cheating" defense which was made very popular in 2005 by International Olympics Committee President Dr. Jacques Rogge just prior to the 2006 Turin Winter Games. Dr. Rogge simply told Italian police not to bother enforcing drug laws in Turin and that the IOC would take care of matters since using illegal substances really didn't break the law but was at best cheating.

The International Olympic Committee is now taking medals away from some athletes who got to the podium because of failed drug tests. But the IOC is not refunding any money to ticket holders, broadcasting partners, or marketing partners, even though it can be argued that the competition was tainted by drug use and the results of the competition were thrown out.