"The origin and meaning of the phrase may be somewhat in doubt but it still holds its sway in our minds....The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton...but if a similar phrase is to be constructed in the future it may read....American liberty and freedoms were lost on the playing fields of ESPN."
The above paragraph is from a December of 2015 post that was titled...On The Playing Fields Of ESPN. At the time I was addressing the idolatry that we have made of sport. I typed up the paragraph below....read it through....and then just filed it away with no intention of using it in a post....for I thought that I may have been overdoing this topic lately...but then yesterday a probable high draft pick playing in a bowl game....played the first half....achieved a record of some sort....then decided on his own not to play in the second half. His team lost by a point. Sport is just one area that America has totally collapsed. Here is that long paragraph...
We were sitting around the fire in the living room of our son and daughter-in-law's home....Christmas evening....and I opened my laptop just to check the news....and there on Fox was a headline about the Pitt bowl game which I had forgotten about....although I lived for such things fifty years ago. Curious....I read the article. The game made the news because of a record six overtimes. I have no idea what an overtime consists of nowadays. Here is the reason for this post which I will only leave up for a short time. Three years ago as Pitt was going to a bowl game....their star quarterback opted not to play....where he could get hurt and cost him money on a pro contract. The next year Pitt was again going to a bowl game and their quarterback decided to change college teams which made him ineligible for the bowl game. This year Pitt was again headed to a bowl game but the first string QB was hurt. The second string QB had decided to change teams....so he could not play....and the third string QB also decided to change teams....so he could not play. A fourth string walk-on played in the game. Switch over to Penn State for a minute. They are in the play-offs and before the first big game....the second string QB....who they utilize a fair amount of the time....decided to leave for another team.
Addendum: The standard had been that athletes in the military academies had to wait two years before they could play professionally. Roger Staubach is the most well-known example of this. The Obama administration made a slight change in that if the athlete could get accepted into a reserve status, then he could go directly to his sport. In 2018 Trump's Department of Defense changed that back to the original rule...."Our military academies exist to develop future officers who enhance the readiness and the lethality of our military services," Trump then ordered the DoD to allow athletes to play immediately....because they have such a short window. Biden's DoD put it back to what it originally was.
