Earl Warren, former chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, told readers of Sports Illustrated in a 1968 interview: “I always turn to the sports pages first” because they record “people’s accomplishments; the front page nothing but man’s failures.”
How would Chief Justice Warren read newspapers today?
As we know only too well, sports have now migrated to the proverbial front page. And what is uniquely characteristic of the current problem with sports, both professional and amateur, is how widespread it is, casting its shadow over a multitude of different sporting activities at the same time.
The doping in cycling is so rampant that critics are calling for the Tour de France to be shut down for a few years. The National Hockey League shut itself down a few years ago when player greed locked horns with union intransigence. A steroid cloud hangs over an entire era of Major League baseball, while referee gambling haunts the National Basketball Association, and criminal activity plagues the National Football League.
Olympic athletes now perform in what is called “The Chemical Olympics.”