From what I hear, a lot of people hate Jay Mariotti. The Chicago barnacle and mainstay on Around The Horn is ridiculed routinely for being a stuck-up blowhard who doesn’t apply the shoe leather to ask the people he rips their opinion on the opinions he’s about to spew. He’s also so narrow-mindedly pessimistic that I, one of the most cynical misanthropes in the world, sometimes looks at the headlines on his Fanhouse columns (I’m not going to read his stuff before I write what I think about Mariotti – I call it the Mariotti Way) and think, “God, don’t be so negative!” In other words, he’s a blogger.
But when thinking about an end-of-the-year essay to describe this crazy-ass decade we’ve just been through, I finally gave in and read Mariotti’s article about the “Decade of Deceit.” And you know what? When looking back on ten years through a jaundiced eye and bile forming in your mouth, you can do a hell of a lot worse than read Jay Mariotti. Last month, Time ran a cover story that called the oh-ohs (by the way, what’s with the fascination of naming this decade? Can we all agree that the next decade will be called “the teens?”) the “Decade from Hell.” With all the crap we went through as humans these past ten years, that sounds just about right. And it was just as frustrating and disappointing in sports.
This was the Decade of Technology. We saw advances everywhere, especially on our TV screens. The zero-zeros saw the coming of high definition as the American standard of watching television. It also introduced a plethora of graphics that supposedly helped us watch the game better. But for every first-down line, an innovation that now is indispensible for viewing football, there was, say, a ruler measuring how far off first base a runner was, indicating a possibility he was going to steal. And for the kids, there was Scooter, a talking baseball that was put down by the end of the 2006 season. All of this helped us keep track of the details of the game, the matchups of the game, the storylines we were told to follow during the game – all the things surrounding the game, just not the game itself.
It also sparked the ascendancy of the Internet as the preeminent source of sports information. I am not the only one who starts his day logging onto ESPN.com. Old media planted their flags in cyberspace. Meanwhile, a proliferation of “new media” blogs/dispensaries of sports information, like Deadspin and The Big Lead, quickly gained traction and eyeballs for extending their scope to the private lives of athletes and liberally deploying cutting, tabloid-style wit in their stories. It also gave this particular “columnist” a chance to finally feel he’s a productive member of society.
Also, this year saw the metastasizing of Twitter; players (or their agents or handlers or the friend who’s sitting next to them and wants to screw around) send pithy messages to their followers as a means of making the common man feel he has a direct line to his hero. You just can’t talk to him unless he wants to reply to your tweets. With the way technology is changing these days, Twitter is either the start of a new method of player-fan interaction or a good idea that will be topped by something unforeseen. But Twitter will not be around in the way that we know it now.
Speaking of the Worldwide Leader, we were overwhelmed by the growing dominance of ESPN in the ‘00’s. Using its leverage to buy properties and extend its brand to the Internet, the network this decade has been able to dictate how we watch sports and which talking heads we’re supposed to listen to. Their analysts are always former players, most of them recently retired so that young men (their coveted demographic) can identify them and will stop to listen to what they say, even when a lot of it is a bunch of hot air. They also became the leader of using not-unattractive women as sideline reporters. Most importantly, they have decided to embrace the “E” part of their name, striking lengthy business relationships with the leagues and people they cover in a myriad of ventures, from coverage of “Bowl Week” to every single athlete appearing on one of their SportsCenter commercials. This isn’t just broadcasting sports; it has been rightly described (by new media bloggers, mostly) as promotion, to the point of glossing over unseemly aspects of a sports league or the problems of its players.
Why do it? Well, you can call the past ten years the Decade of Greed, but isn’t every decade the Decade of Greed? The rate of sports and athletes getting more and more money leaped exponentially. It all began with Alex Rodriguez signing a 10-year, $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers in 2000, and it ended with his new team, the New York Yankees buying
You can also call it the Decade of Violence. The Malice at the Palace, where Ron Artest and fans interacted in a way a hell of a lot different than the phone number-giving he does now, marked a new low in in-game incivility. Brawls continued – and were encouraged by fans – in hockey and baseball. Regular rough play on the field led to increased concern over the effects of concussions. The death of Dale Earnhardt marked a tipping point in NASCAR, one in which the safety policies instituted after his fatal crash in Daytona in 2001 may be a reason for its popularity today. And that only covers violence on the field during play; RIP Darrent Williams, Fred Lane, Sean Taylor, and Nick Adenhart. And yet, as we lament the increasing erosion of civility in society as seen through the prism of sport, we cheer in anticipation for the first sign of a brawl on the baseball diamond, believe fighting is an integral part of hockey, and have made mixed martial arts the hottest sport in the world.
But I’ve got to go back to Mariotti; you could also call it the Decade of Lying – and since it was often used during controversy, this could also be the Decade of Scandal. Tiger Woods is where Kobe Bryant was: trying to repair his once-pristine image after an almost-unfathomable charge (though Kobe’s allegation he raped a woman, since dismissed, is slightly different than Woods’s outing as a carouser). Kobe’s back, though a lot of fans will never forgive him for at least cheating on his wife and destroying his reputation as a family man.
And how are we going to deal with the consequences of the Steroid Era in Major League Baseball, named by SI.com’s Lee Jenkins as the biggest story of the decade? Everyone remembers that congressional hearing at the start of March Madness in 2005, where Rafael Palmeiro used his finger to emphasize that he didn’t use drugs, where Sammy Sosa suddenly needed to use an interpreter, and where the Bunyan-like slugger Mark McGwire never looked smaller when he was evading answering questions about his use of performance-enhancing drugs by being taking the looking-forward route: “I’m not here to talk about the past.”
Rodriguez lied to us about taking drugs, too; the guy who can’t give a straight face when fibbing was adamant when he told Kate Couric on 60 Minutes that he never took drugs in December 2007. After Sports Illustrated found out his name was on a list of players testing positive for banned substances – a list that was supposed to remain forever anonymous; another symptom of the depths journalism had to go to in order to stay relevant this decade? – A-Rod finally told the truth about his drug days with the Rangers earlier this decade to Peter Gammons of ESPN.
When he finally confessed, I couldn’t help but think of Barry Bonds, and even Lance Armstrong. We all know Bonds took drugs; I believe Armstrong took drugs. (I mean, come on. He won seven straight Tours de France, his doctor most of those years has been involved with PED’s, and he’s acted like a boor and a mobster in stifling any allegations that he has used. By the way, why do people like him so much? He dumped the wife who stayed by his side while he was battling for his life for Sheryl Crow.) But at least they have enough smarts and/or pride to not get caught. A-Rod looked human when coming clean about being dirty, but he also looked a bit pathetic.
While many people got caught and were punished for using drugs – Manny Ramirez, Rashard Lewis, Shawne Merriman and, greatest of all, Marion Jones – lying and controversy spilled over into other areas of embarrassment. Inscrutable Bill Belichick and the Nixon-like ways he videotaped he opponents, leading to “Spygate”. Michael Vick and his dog-fighting ring. The hundreds of college athletes that have been busted for everything from DUI’s to assault. Even the BcS. However, I want to reserve special enmity for the Washington Nationals and the Oklahoma City Thunder, both teams that were stolen from the good people of Montreal and Seattle this decade. Particular contempt should be heaped on the Thunder and Chairman Clay Bennett, who, after Starbucks founder Howard Schultz sold him the SuperSonics, said, and I quote, “I am absolutely committed to the teams (he includes the Seattle Storm, which he later sold) and committed to keeping them in the Seattle region.” Later, e-mails revealed that Bennett and his gang of liars had no intention of keeping the Sonics where they belong at all. The relocation of teams and the ensuing emotional loss to the cities left behind is the most underreported story in the modern age in sports because it does more than even a favorite player’s tarnished image to damage a fan’s love of sport permanently.
So yeah, in retrospect, this decade sucked. This year was particularly repugnant. So let’s hope it can only go up from here. Then again, I have to name-check Mariotti one final time. With the acceleration in useless technology, further media consolidation, the ability to know every little mistake an athlete has made and disseminate that information for everyone to see, and the increasing corrosiveness with which money and scandal affects the sports fan, why can’t the next decade get worse?
Happy New Year and Happy New Decade, everybody!