Professional sport has sold its soul

By RICHARD BOOCK - Sunday Star Times

OPINION: Respected journalist David Walsh made a comment the other day that's worth considering. Relax, the comment won't make much difference unless someone invents a time-machine but it deserves a moment of reflection, nonetheless. Walsh, whose investigations are best known for raising serious questions about the deeds of cyclist Lance Armstrong, took time out during a recent book promotion to slam the concept of professional sport and everything for which it stood.

"It's a big thing to say, but I believe it," said Walsh, while discussing his latest literary offering, le sale tour (the dirty tour).

"I believe professional sport doesn't work. I believe that the reasons we love sport get undermined when people start doing it for money; big money."

Professionalism wasn't only failing the institution of sport, he maintained, it was also failing the participants and most of all, the fans.

"As fans, the reason we started loving sport is generally because we played a little ourselves.

"We liked the selflessness; we liked the sportsmanship; we liked the fact that we could sometimes play a match and lose, and think afterwards that it was one of the most enjoyable games we'd played. We liked the fact that [losing] had been a relatively minor disappointment.

And that it didn't stop us behaving properly or doing the right thing on the pitch, or congratulating our conquerors. And a lot of that stuff has been absolutely destroyed by professional sport."

He's right you know. Professional sport has sold its soul to the devil in so many ways that it's now unrecognisable as the virtuous and constructive pastime it was once considered. A near-spiritual sporting ethos has been swapped for an unquenchable business avarice, never to be reversed.

Business needs sport to deoderise its money-making objectives, and sport needs business's money. Or at least it thinks it does.

It is a match made in hell. Profit now comes before everything else, including loyalty, trust and honesty, not to mention responsibility.

Sobering, isn't it, that while professional rugby prepares to expand its "Super" competition, traditional provincial identities such as Counties Manukau are being threatened with extinction, the New Zealand Maori team has suffered funding cuts and teams can no longer "afford" to tour?

Talk about knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The priority of profit has changed sport. American franchises routinely relocate out of state for mere financial reasons. Last year the Seattle Supersonics National Basketball Association side moved to Oklahoma. The Vancouver Grizzlies, a 1995 expansion team, are now firmly ensconced in Memphis. Never in New Zealand? Only a few months ago the Otago Highlanders took a home game to Palmerston North, purely for the dosh.

Having found itself chasing the dollar above all else, sport has been forced to abandon its founding principles. Inappropriate associations with liquor companies and the gambling industry are justified on the basis of the balance sheet. Television rights deals lead to absurd decisions, such as playing mid-winter rugby tests in the South Island at night. Inflated ticket prices create a class system among fans.

Professionalism hasn't looked after the participants well, either. Quite the opposite. Today's sporting elite, often plucked from high school after showing promise as teeny-boppers, are far worse off than those from the amateur era. Despite the money. Poor social skills, an inability to think on their feet and a staggering apathy towards formal education: minders of all descriptions are needed to point them in the right direction.

Not only that, but, because of the financial pressures, competitors are now openly encouraged to pursue a result through fair means or foul. Socially unacceptable behaviors such as cheating, lying and opportunistic violence have been repackaged as mental toughness and determination. Some say it's just a reflection of current community values. Others would argue it's a driver of them.

Sport is in danger of becoming more of a threat to its participants than an assistance. It's already been noted that the attributes exhibited by elite athletes are almost exactly the same as the weaknesses shown by those with addictive personalities: an obsessive approach, dedication, desire; a one-track mind.

Throw in a few hundred thousand dollars a year to sweeten the deal and the concept of being unsuccessful soon becomes untenable.

It's true, there are those who will maintain that professional sport is a part of the broader entertainment and business industry, and is merely guided by the same rules and regulations, or lack thereof. In other words, the last cry of the truly deluded.

I have a question for these apologists. Why then isn't sport included in the entertainment and business sections of the mainstream media? Why does it get its own category? What's different about it?

The answer, of course, is that sport isn't meant to be either business or entertainment. It was always something to participate in before it was ever something to be watched. And the association with business has always been an unholy one, given the opposing philosophies involved. Business will always represent the principle of winning at all costs, after all. That's what it's all about. Sport, on the other hand, must always understand the need to lose.

The potted story is that professional sport helps business disguise its lack of social conscience. That's why it's so desirable. That's why it commands such a high rate of investment. It's just another a Trojan horse through which high-paying sponsors can win over the hearts and minds of consumers and in the same breath pretend to care about the community. It is the embodiment of materialism and David Walsh is right. The price has been too high.

rboock@xtra.co.nz