Sports and Politics

Thanks to President Barrack Obama I get to combine my love for sports and politics into one post (yay). Yesterday, President Obama filled out the first ever presidential college basketball bracket. The whole nation watched as he filled up his wall sized bracket, and while I don't agree with many of his picks I still view it as an important event.

When you break it down, you will find that politics and sports are very tightly fused. From the moment Obama took office he promised to address amny sports related issues. He promised he would take action to lobby for a college playoff system and guarenteed to help build more public sports facilities. He even decided to turn a room in the white house into a basketball court. Obama though is not the only President to have a profound love for sports. Gerald Ford was an All American center at University of Michigan, Dwite Eisenhower was a linebacker at Army, George H. Bush was a pitcher at Yale, Ronald Reagan played football for Eureka College, and Teddy Roosevelt was a boxer. Even George W. Bush played baseball until he decided that he was a better cheerleader. Not a surprise of course.

Lately policits has been getting very involved with managing professional sports. The most recognizable situation of this is the on going Barry Bonds and Roger Clemmens investigations. After baseball realized that steriods and other performance enhancers were destroying the game they had congress step in and hold grand jurys to find out who had been using steriods. Bonds and Clemmens were the two most notable people who many considered have led to the court. For this reason federal investigations are going on and both men face up to 5 years in prison for 14 counts of perjury. To me this is an example of congress overstepping their boundaries. The MLB should have implimented harsher drug testing in the first place and it should not be for congress to clean up their mess. Besides congress has more important things to do. Perhaps they shoul deal with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and then worry about baseball.

Another example of congress getting involved in professional sports is the spy gate scandal. Last year in the NFL the NEw England Patriots were found to have illegally filmed their opponent's practices. This led to so much controversy, that senator Arlin SPector stepped in. Although the NFL had already punished the Patriots, he felt this punishment was inadequite. He conducted his own investigation and found absolutly no more evidence than had been presented. Once again I'm sure there were other things Senator Spector could have been doing that would be much more beneficial.

Overall sports and politics will always be very closely tied together. This in my opinion can be good and bad. Let me know how you feel on the matter