Out-Punting Our Coverage
March 19, 2013
Any traveler to the Atlantic coast of any Central American country will witness firsthand the arrogance of the human race.
Strewn along almost every shore is the waste of nations outliving their means. Plastic in all shapes and colors, from products of all types – bottles, toys, sandals, tools.
Island nations to the east, unable to cope with the volume of their waste, cast it off covertly under cover of night. Oceangoing vessels large and small heave it overboard.
My wife puts it this way: “We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves.” Humans have fantastic abilities to create, but we do so without conscience, without caring enough about consequences.
This clearly applies to the world’s waste problem – from cast-off containers to used cars to computers made obsolete in a matter of months. We keep producing more and more, without plans for the waste of producing new products or the waste created by making existing things obsolete.
In the Pacific Ocean, a mass of trash the size of Texas is circulating as if there were a drain. But there isn’t one. No easy answer to flush human waste – the excrement of our greed – to some other place where it will do no harm.
In Chinese cities today the air, water and land are toxic – much as it was in developing US cities around 1900 – as China takes its turn to poison its people in the name of progress.
That we can do something doesn’t mean we should do it. In sports terms, the human race has out-punted its coverage, and the consequences are far more dire than a punt return for a touchdown.
Bet On It
May 22, 2018
In 1991, Michigan became the first state in the nation to pass legislation to prohibit a state-sponsored lottery from including games based on the results of sporting events. A bill introduced by Representative Keith Muxlow of Brown City passed both the Michigan House and Senate without a dissenting vote and was signed by Governor Engler Dec. 18, 1991.
The effort was assisted by the Michigan Coalition to Ban Legalized Sports Betting, a broad-based group of athletic, educational, religious and civic organizations which then turned its attention to helping pass federal legislation needed to fully protect Michigan’s professional and amateur sporting events from the influences of gambling in other states.
The federal legislation that resulted, on the books for 25 years, was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 14, 2018.
There are currently eight bills pending in the Michigan Legislature that would expand gambling in the state of Michigan, including several that would legalize sports betting or fantasy sports wagering and allow the Michigan Lottery to handle those bets.
It is impossible to know all the consequences – positive and negative – of expanding legalized gambling in our society generally and on sports particularly. However, we can imagine that as every decision and action of players, coaches and officials influences statistics and determines winners and losers of both contests and wagers, fans will become increasingly cynical of individual and team performances where sports betting is allowed.
And, more than ever, school-based sports will stand apart from the charade or corruption of sports on all other levels by all other sponsors. You can bet on it.