Hobbies And Interests
Colleges, Conferences and Cash
There is controversy with the National College Athletic Association conferences and "conference jumping." Are the NCAA and the big schools maneuvering for the big advertising bucks? Are schools seeking to exploit talented student athletes by maneuvering around the rules prohibiting sales pitches using these athletes' names in promotion? The competing priorities among academics, sports and money are always fertile ground for a whole range of sports arguments.
Salaries and Strikes
The struggles between unions and management used to be between powerful local bosses and workers facing subsistence wages and dangerous conditions. The world of professional sports, however, involves cosmopolitan owners and celebrity players, with disputes over salaries in the millions. Fans are not on the sidelines in these controversies. Some fans say that people making that much money don't need to employ union tactics. Other fans say that the professional life of an athlete can be very short, and the owners are making fortunes while the players do all the work.
Drugging and Doping
Performance enhancement is not just the use of anabolic steroids. While prohibition of steroid use is not terribly controversial, other performance enhancement methods have made the line very fuzzy between nutritional supplementation, training methods and "doping." The addition of naturally occurring substances, such as amino acids and vitamins, doesn't seem very different to some from the addition of a little testosterone, also naturally occurring. If an athlete trains for a run at 16,000 feet above sea level, she accomplishes exactly the same thing as another athlete who is blood doping, or adding her own pre-stored red blood cells to her circulatory system.
Sales and Sex
Women have been shaking up sports culture ever since the fight for Title IX to get equal treatment from collegiate sports programs. Some people continue to challenge sexism in sports on a different front: promotion and advertising. Young, nubile and scantily clad women no longer just parade the boxing rounds around the ring, they are now used as ball girls during tennis matches. Cheer leading can be risque, and sports advertising aims sexually objectifying messages at the young male demographic. Some people say, that's life, what's the harm? Other people say things need to change, that women shouldn't be exploited as sex objects.