Sport "is in trouble as never before, not just because it’s been getting all kinds of stuff wrong, but because the people who watch the stuff are beginning -- just beginning -- to replace their sense of passionate engagement with a shrugging indifference," opined Simon Barnes of THE SPECTATOR.
Sport "depends for its existence on a willing suspension of disbelief." It "doesn’t work unless you set aside your knowledge that it is an entirely trivial pursuit." You "have to believe it matters, at least until the final whistle." You "have to believe the athletes dedicate every moment of their lives to bring us the joys of partisanship, drama and the wild pursuit of excellence." You have to believe it is real -- and that is "a matter of trust."
But trust "is a fragile thing." Sporting trust "has taken a hammering." As a result, "the world’s sporting faith is starting to wear thin." It is always the way: "you think you’ve got something that will last for all eternity, no matter how you treat the people you have in your sway." And then "you get up one morning and wonder why half the people have walked away." And it is "beginning to happen to sport." Every week there is "another blow: another story that tells the world that sport is not to be trusted, that sport is full of phonies who don’t make the slightest attempt to live by the principles they preach and don’t even care much about sport." This week adidas "announced that it was ending its sponsorship" of the IAAF. Investigations into the IAAF "found corruption, not just in terms of dodgy finances, but also in covering up positive dope tests and, as a bonus, taking money to do so." And no, it is not enough to say "let’s make it a free-for-all and may the best pharmacist win." Spectators "want sport performed by undoped athletes." People "want sport they can believe in." Sport "is increasingly run not by sports people but by business people -- but sport is not exactly a business." Sure, "it makes money, but then so does religion." There "are things other than commerce going on here." If you "run a church entirely to make money, you will do OK, at least at the start." But soon enough "you’ll excite understandable doubts in the church’s followers." And "they’ll stop following." Money "is not the root of all evil in sport." The evil "enters when you decide that money is more important than anything else" (THE SPECTATOR, 1/27).
