[fabsroman]

Billy,

Did you actually name the dog Moosebreath? I thought his name was Fitz or something to that effect.

I will agree that new faces are good for sports. Kind of like Freddie Adu in soccer. There was so much hype about him being great at such a young age and possibly being the next Pele. We'll have to wait and see about that one.

Then there is basketball with Len Bias. He was supposed to bring a spark to the NBA and he up and died from a cocaine overdose. However, Michael Jordan was in the same college graduating class as Len Bias and Michael Jordan turned out to be the big star. Kind of makes you wonder about what it would have been like had Len Bias lived and played against Jordan in the NBA. They should have actually played against each other in college because Jordan was a North Carolina Tarheel and Bias was a Maryland Terp (i.e., both teams were in the ACC conference).

Essentially, sports leagues try to promote the best thing they have going on. For instance, after the early 90's strike in baseball, a lot of fans were pissed off. About the only thing baseball had going for it was that Cal Ripken was on the verge of breaking Lou Gerig's record for the most consecutive games played of something around 3,000. Boy did Major League Baseball hype that stuff up after the strike was over. I won't even get into baseball's extremely lax steroid testing while the home run records were being broken left and right in the late 90's. I remember how wowed baseball fans were that the records were being broken. Now, there are several allegations that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were on the juice when they broke the records. How does their breaking the record compare to the record that Roger Merris held.

As I stated before, sports leagues have way too much money riding on their continued existance. That is why I think there is way too much corruption involved. Hence, the reason I tend to follow a lot less of it than I used to.