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Have Scandals Affected Your Enjoyment of Sports?

Maybe it's just me, but there seem to be more and more scandals in sports these days--baseball's signal stealing, doping in bicycling, deflated footballs, abusive behavior in gymnastics and swimming...ad nauseum. This has affected my enjoyment of sports. I now have a sense of distrust and my innocent enjoyment has been spoiled. I haven't watched the Tour de France since the Lance Armstrong scandal; I am losing interest in baseball, my favorite sport. What about you?
 

EclipseRedRing

I smell like a Christmas pudding
I have lost interest in sports over the last few years and scandals and loss of trust is just one reason. There is also the obscene wages and money involved, which does not sit well with me. Also, every sport seems, to me at least, to be less interesting and fun than it was twenty or thirty years ago, often precisely because of the vast sums of money. This could be of course just a symptom of my own advancing years. In recent months, I have realised how little I actually miss sports, and a good many other things, such as shopping, dining out, and a consumerism that I realise now was excessive. I have a new perspective on what is really important to me and it is not sport.
 
I have almost totally lost interest in football ("soccer") beyond checking for my hometown team's result on a Sunday morning. I cannot stand the cheating, spitting, diving, whining, arguing with the ref and corruption within FIFA and UEFA. How on earth Qatar gets the World Cup is beyond me.

Funnily though, the BBC has been replaying classic matches and I watched England v Scotland from Euro 96 - I was in a bar called JJ's in Jakarta watching it back then, and it was great to watch - players actually playing and not trying to con the ref.
 
I lost interest in the Olympics years ago because of the whole performance enhancing drugs thing.
What was once an enjoyment of the best of Human endeavour, turned into a farce for me. Crying shame.
 
Scandals? Nah.
Rule changes? Yes.
NFL is worthless
MLB I still watch and enjoy but I wish they would calm down trying to speed up the game.
PL and Bundesliga stay pretty consistent and I don’t follow the “politics” of the game.
 
Multi-millionaire primadonas posturing and posing. Nope.

Minor league baseball and hockey is much better, players busting to move up and others playing because they love the game. Local rec leagues can be pretty good too.
 
I gave up on the NFL a few years ago but the game isn't as fun as I remember it being when I look at the time period of Aikman, Young, Montana, Elway... MLB then became my favorite sport--but the lack of punishment for the Astros really left a bad taste in my mouth. The bickering going on between owners and players right now is really distasteful to the point I hope they don't play this year.

In general, I think it comes down to money in all sports. Players are obscenely wealthy, but complain the owners are wealthier. I don't see owners or players unions caring a lick for fans and our experience.
 
Yes.

Ive been reminded of it recently with the 30 for 30 documentaries on Lance and McGuire/Sosa.

Plus I’m a disillusioned Patriots fan who is tired of their on field and off field scandals.

Ultimately I guess my interest in sports has shifted.

I used to be a huge NFL, NASCAR, and Tour de France fan but now I mostly follow the CFL (Canadian football), curling and the Norwegian Eliteserien (soccer) - yes, I’m a weird individual 😂

I’m sure there are things I’ll learn about them that aren’t great but they aren’t popular enough in America for the talking heads to harp on constantly and I can selectively choose who to follow that talks about them on Twitter.

And while they are professional leagues they aren’t so prosperous to have some of the financial things we see in American sports.
 

never-stop-learning

Demoted To Moderator
Staff member
Rugby (mostly World Cup and Premiership), Formula 1 (don't really follow it, but I do enjoy watching it) and Baseball are about all I watch anymore - and Baseball is on my last nerve.

Too much money and too many 'prima donnas' on all sides of the sports equation: players, owners, media, politicians. The fans get completely lost in the shuffle.

Now, Get Off My Lawn. ;) 🤣
get-off-my-lawn-gif.gif
 

Doc4

Stumpy in cold weather
Staff member
For decades the athletes were paid a pittance and the owners got rich. Then the athletes started trying to get a larger slice of the pie ... I can get behind that.

But then the athletes started getting too much (I blame the GMs, willing to overpay in bidding wars). So what happened? Bigger pie, of course. And that came out of the fans' pockets.

Now the sport isn't football or basketball or hockey ... it's "let's see how much we can wring out of the fans".

No thanks.
 
I live in the Chicago are where there are professional and semi-professional teams for many different sports. I have been here for 20 years and have never seen any team play live in person. I will occasionally watch a college basketball or football game on TV, but rarely a professional team. Now that they are starting to pay college athletes, I will likely quit watching that as well. I do enjoy watching some of the Olympic contests.

I hate to see player strikes and players who want to make their sports political by protesting the National Anthem, demanding that certain flags be banned, etc. If they want to protest outside of their sport's arena, they have every right to do so, but when they are being paid to play, they should get off their butts and their knees and play ball.
 
I live in the Chicago are where there are professional and semi-professional teams for many different sports. I have been here for 20 years and have never seen any team play live in person. I will occasionally watch a college basketball or football game on TV, but rarely a professional team. Now that they are starting to pay college athletes, I will likely quit watching that as well. I do enjoy watching some of the Olympic contests.

I hate to see player strikes and players who want to make their sports political by protesting the National Anthem, demanding that certain flags be banned, etc. If they want to protest outside of their sport's arena, they have every right to do so, but when they are being paid to play, they should get off their butts and their knees and play ball.
I agree with players when they say they should be allowed to have a voice and opinion on political and social issues--just like we all do. However, I had to sign an HR policy at my company acknowledging political, religious, and social issues are generally forbidden during working hours. We will all decide if we like or dislike players bringing politics into sports, but once again, the wealthy are playing by a different set of rules than the rest of us who aren't allowed to push causes while on the clock. The only choice fans have is to vote with their wallet (and there certainly won't be consensus among fans about what's right or wrong when separating politics from entertainment).
 
Not really. I still enjoy sports as much as I ever did. If you think that sports were so pure and upstanding in the past and they arent anymore, well, Ive got news for you.
They have been stealing signs in baseball for the past 100 years. Beyond that, I tend to agree with the players who are saying the things that they are saying and I have no problem with them using their platform to advance whatever cause they believe in. No one complains when an athlete stands up for the troops but when one of them talks about BLM its like, "keep politics out of my sports!!!" Sorry but it doesnt work that way.
I used to be a big NASCAR fan years ago but kind of drifted away from it but with the stuff that they have done lately about social issues and taking a stand on that, its made me want to start waching NASCAR again and has turned me into a Bubba Wallace fan.
 

TexLaw

Fussy Evil Genius
The short answer is: yes, scandals have affected my enjoyment of major professional sports. However, scandals are only part of the reason why my interest and enjoyment has waned over the last twenty years or so. Other reasons include how exorbitantly expensive much of it has become and that sports has become much, much more flash over substance.

I still enjoy watching sports, but I follow almost nothing and have no emotional involvement that lasts beyond watching a game and, maybe, some fun talk a little while after it's over.

"If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'".

Another (or related) reason why I've lost interest. I don't abide by that slogan, and I don't typically care for those that do.

Now the sport isn't football or basketball or hockey ... it's "let's see how much we can wring out of the fans".

And you really feel it, too. I actually get a little bit of a kick out of hearing someone say that some team or sport owes them something. They didn't check the deal.

They have been stealing signs in baseball for the past 100 years.

Stealing signs always has been a part of the game and always has been legal. Using cameras to do it never has been legal.
 

TexLaw

Fussy Evil Genius
I wouldnt say that it has always been legal but it is definetly part of the gamesmanship of baseball.

The never has been a rule against stealing signs, but there are rules against stealing signs in certain ways (mechanical means, electronic means, etc.) No player or team has been sanctioned merely for stealing signs, just for doing it by outlawed means.

That's not to say that there hasn't been some chin music when a pitcher thought there was some sign stealing going on, but -that- is part of the gamesmanship of baseball.
 
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