A Plea From The Heart

I know it will be dismissed by those who think they know better but when we look back to 2009 from many years hence, I am confident that I will be proved right.

As Gladys Knight once said, “These will become the good old days for our children“.

One of my favourites TV channels is the Sports channel NASN – The North American Sport Network. They broadcast sports 24 hours a day 7 days a week; Everything from Ice Hockey, Baseball, Basketball and American Football to Lacrosse, NASCAR and anything else they can find.

But it is not the Sport on the station that has been exercising me lately. No it is one of their adverts.

It is an advert from the body who control College Sports in the USA. They are the NCAA – The National Collegiate Athletic Association, and they are one of the most successful Sports bodies in the world..

The advert tells us that there are 380,000 NCAA Student Athletes and most of them will go Pro in something other than Sports.

WATCH THE ADVERT HERE

So what has this got to do with what I am saying? Well watching a variety of Television channels over the past few months, I am now more convinced than ever that Sport is becoming too important and something needs to be done.

The big sporting news recently was that Christino Ronoldo of Manchester United was being sold to Real Madrid for a world record 80 million pounds. Now I really don’t know whether this transfer will go through but I think if it does, it will perfectly illustrate what I think is going wrong.

How can a single player be worth £80M? If things continue to go along at the same pace, how much will the Christiano Ronoldo of 2030 be worth?

Now I hear those who say he is worth whatever someone is prepared to pay for him, and in most cases I agree. However when that becomes silly then the authorities need to take a stand.

Let’s clear this up here and now, I have nothing against Real Madrid, Christino Ronoldo or Manchester United, but in my opinion something is wrong.

The Premier League season ended recently and one would have hoped that we would have a break from football for a few weeks before it all started again for the 2009/10 season. Not a bit of it! We have the U20 European Championships, The Confederation Cup, plus still to come the pre- season tournaments.

Of course next year it will be the World Cup in South Africa.

Take Cricket, one of my favourite sports of years gone by. Test matches were something to look forward to… rather like we are looking forward to the Ashes this summer, but now there seems to be a Test match somewhere in the world every week. Add to this the 20Twenty tournaments and the 50 Over World Cup and you will see that there is simply too much Cricket being played. In my opinion it is becoming meaningless except for a few series such as the Ashes.

Of course, television is one of the problems; now that there are hundreds of channels, broadcasters need something to put on them and Sport has proved to be a winner. But how far should they be allowed to go? What effect is this having?

Well I think it is perfectly illustrated by the fact that The NCAA find it necessary to run that advert.

Sport is taking over our lives and I think something needs to be done about it. Kids are being made to believe that there is nothing but Sport and they are not being warned that only a tiny number of individuals will ever get to the top.

There is a place for Sport and I have to admit I love most Sports, but this weekend will perfectly illustrate what is wrong.

F1, Cricket Finals, Golf, Football U21s, Confederation Cup, Rugby Union with the Lions, plus all the other Major Sports and non-sports that are out there.

Some days the National News is dominated by Sports stories and the Terrestial TV channels are on occasions dominated by Sports. All of that is in addition to the Sports Channels.

So what can be done about it?

Well in my opinion, Sport should not be allowed to dominate the world. There is a place for Sport but it should not be to the exclusion of everything else.

SKY, who I think could become a wonderful organisation has, I’m afraid become too big and the situation that they are allowed to be a broadcaster and the gate keeper of the most significant Digital platform in the UK and probably the world outside of the USA, is quite incredible.

For many many years I was a subscriber to SKY and even worked for them back in the day when Basketball was one of their Sports, but I had to give up my subscription when, in my opinion, it became too expensive.

It’s OK, I know I am in a minority, but, as a family, we set a limit on how much we were going to pay for television and when that limit was passed, that was it!.

I do not know who is going to be responsible for making a change, but I do know that change is needed.

Sport, at all levels is truly wonderful but there are other truly wonderful things in life and maybe some more of that should be made available to the television audience.

Later

Mike S
19 06 09