Government's Recent Interest in Professional Sports

Unless you have been living under a rock the last couple of months, you have heard a lot about the Mitchell Report on steroid use in professional baseball.  You have also heard about the Congressional Hearings on Major League Baseball that have begun  and will continue to take place over the coming weeks.   

And then there is Senator Arlen Specter and Congress’s interest in the NFL’s destruction of tapes shot by the New England Patriots during the signal-stealing scandal discovered in a game against the Jets.

But with all of this news circulating, no one is asking the most logical question of all.  Since when has the federal government taken control of professional sports in America?

There are already NFL and MLB Commissioners in place to govern the nation’s professional leagues.  Already testing policies have been implemented, fines and suspensions handed down, and other thorough investigations done by the NFL and MLB into the steroid use and the "Spygate" tapes.

Do the NFL and MLB really need government intervention?  Do we, as citizens and sports fans, want to see federal authorities take control of these organizations?

Let’s just look at some quick facts.

3,943 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq in a war that is nearly four years old and still shows no signs of ending.  

There was a net loss of 17,000 jobs last month, home foreclosures have jumped 90 percent in the past year, and our economy slowed to a 1 percent growth rate last quarter—all clearly signaling the very real threat of a major recession.

Healthcare costs continue to rise at an average rate of 7 percent per year, while last year workers’ wages rose only 3.7 percent with an inflation rate of 2.6 percent, indicating a real wage increase of just 1.1 percent.

Our fourth graders' test scores ranked 12th in the world.  The test scores of our eighth graders ranked 14th, showing an obvious decline in the quality of our education system.

There are over 12 million illegal immigrants in America at this moment.

These are just a few of the many serious issues that our country currently faces.

Surely and unequivocally Congress and the Senate have more important things to worry about than what happened to Bill Belichick’s tapes and who is lying, Roger Clemens or Brian McNamee.

As a sports fan, I am concerned about government’s recent interest in professional sports.  As a citizen I am utterly disturbed by the fact that my government is spending time worrying about professional sports when there are far more important problems they need to be addressing.