What has happened to sportsmanship in the world today? My co-host Ken Costlow posted a video earlier this week on Facebook about a Junior College baseball game between Weatherford College and North Central Texas College where a pitcher ran off the mound and tackled a player after said player hit a home run off of the aforementioned pitcher due to trash talk between the two players escalated.
Incidents like this have become commonplace in not just minor leagues, high schools, and colleges. There seems to be a prevalence occurring in pro sports as well. When I was a kid, I played little league baseball, JV basketball, and Tennis, and at no time that I can remember tempers flared enough to where fisticuffs broke out. When a team did better than you and beat you, you took it, accepted it, and acknowledged the other team as the better unit.
In today's sports world it's becoming the norm to trash talk, rub it in the face of the losing team, and declare yourselves #1 without having won anything but one single game. It is no longer the norm to be humble and show respect to your opponent, no matter how inferior you may THINK they are to your team. This is a lost art, and though there are instances where sportsmanship still shows up, in today's hype and media frenzy over sports, the lack of sportsmanship has become the norm.
Today's players should take a page out of the past when players like Walter Payton, among others, showed respect to their opponents. Now, don't get me wrong, while Walter was a great role model for sportsmanship, he loved to run over people and do whatever it took to win, but he did not show disrespect to his opponents after the fact, he always was humble, earning the respect of other players and teams. Why do you think the annual Walter Peyton award is named after him? Walter was one of the most respected players in NFL history and he showed it both on and off the field.
Let me name a few players that come to mind...
Juju Smith-Shuster, Antonio Brown, Terell Owens, Deon Sanders, Albert Haynesworth, Dennis Rodman, Marty McSorley, Pedro Martinez (Don Zimmer), Mike Tyson(Holyfield's ear?), Ndamukong Suh (STOMP!!), Tonya Harding!!!, Bill Romanowski (spitball), and this is just a partial list.
Today it seems like players want the spotlight, and they don't care who they run over along the way. It has become a virus and I blame media attention, the high visibility of modern sports, and yes... the MONEY...
Now for a guy that hosts a weekly sports show that advertises smack talk each week, it seems odd that I would be saying these things. Smack talk has its place in sports, but not to extremes, there is a bit of levity that needs to be in place. You have to pick and choose your time and place to exude it and there are times when you should just walk away and act like you have been there before...
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