by Barry Stagg
April 1997
AMATEURS
The terrible stench of criminality that has enveloped professional hockey in the last few months has caused many to take a cold, hard look at professional sports in general. The whole ethos of maintaining what are virtual hot houses for the development of young talent for sports teams must be questioned. Junior hockey teams, college football and minor league baseball are all examples of development systems where owners who are essentially in the entertainment business are attempting to develop talent with as little attention paid as possible to personal matters.
It is probably no surprise that the owners of professional hockey teams have only a secondary concern with the personal development and personal welfare of their players. After all it is the production on the ice surface that counts. Coupled with the necessary weeding out process that must go on in the minor league system this means that management must focus on talent and the ability to rise to the major league level. Character, honesty and morality are factors that are uninteresting to the developer of professional talent. These items must be considered only to the extent that the particular player must conform to the basic minimum behavioral standards of society. That is to say that if a player such as Chicago's Bob Probert develops a severe cocaine addiction and is getting out of control, then and only then, the owners must do something about it. The focus even then is on getting the player back into physical shape to perform and wrestling the legal problems to a standstill so that the player is not banned from travelling around with the team.
It seems that the whole professional sports scene is becoming something that is beginning to turn the stomachs of a lot of fans. Obscene salaries, obscene profits, boorish behaviour by players and owners alike and a brazenly selfish 'Hollywood attitude' on the part of the participants has turned the tide against the adulation and credit that used to flow to professional sports players. How many times do you have to endure the moronic off-field theatrics of certain players before you decide that the offending player's sport is a lot less interesting than it used to be. When the fans think like this then interest in the sport dies down, advertising revenues dry-up and sports teams start to go out of business.
The firm foundation of all sports is amateurism. People play sports for the physical enjoyment of the game and out of that hobby a preoccupation with the professional version of the sport develops. Amateur sport has traditionally fostered what has been called sportsmanship but which really embodies honesty and a willingness to defer to your fellow participants. For instance the classic amateur would be expected to acknowledge an error on his part without actually being found out. That is the honour system in golf for instance where a player who accidently touches his ball while in an obscured position on the course is honour-bound to take the penalties that go with that. There are plenty of examples, mostly antiquated, of this sort of behaviour. They are antiquated because they seem to no longer exist in the sport that we read about on the sports pages daily. These principles have not died, they have simply been submerged in the overall cacophony of professional sports boosterism and selfishness.
Perhaps a rapid downward spiral of the professional sports industries in a manner akin to a stock market crash might be a good thing for sports generally. Baseball, hockey, football and basketball will not die. Professional leagues will continue to exist on a smaller scale and interest in the sport of these games will grow. There will be less interest in the barbarism that professional sports has selfishly fostered over these past few decades. Honest amateurs are needed.
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.