By
Kamy Shaygan
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Fine. I will admit it. I'm into Mandy Moore.
Now that I'm admitting things, I might as well let everyone know what is wrong with the current world of professional sports.
Don't get me wrong now. I love sports more than us guys love those U of A shorts - well, just believe me - I love sports.
A few nights ago one of my buddies and I were watching an NBA video about the greatest moments of the NBA All-Star weekend.
The video showed the charming rivalry between Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas and even showed, yes, the hick from French Lick, Larry Bird.
Bird was commenting on how bad he wanted to win the 3-point shoot-out and then the video showed his performance - I mean the dude was into it.
He was draining threes with this look on his face that meant not only business, but sheer excellence.
The video was topped off by Thomas crying his eyes out in his mother's arms after he had won the All-Star Game MVP honors in 1990.
I'll be honest... again. It was hard not to shed a tear during this video and not because it was sad or had a charming ending, but because we, as fans, will never see that level of play again.
The purity of sports was not only in existence back then, but was at a high.
Let's compare then to now.
Shawn Kemp, who is an overweight, lazy and above-average player in the NBA, is getting paid $71 million during the next four seasons to play for the Portland Trailblazers.
That, alone is corrupting the game of basketball.
It is blatantly obvious that professional athletes are extremely overpaid, but that's just ridiculous.
The only time you see a player crying in the NBA now is when a high school player is drafted out of high school, crying in the arms of his agent because they both know the millions are on the way.
You can talk for hours about why the talent pool in the NBA is nowhere near as pure as it was 10 years ago, but lets move on down the list of other professional sports.
Take a look at baseball.
Oh my, oh my, where has our national past time gone?
When I think of baseball as pure, I think of Kurt Gibson ripping the game winning home run of Dennis Eckersley in the 1988 World Series.
Now when I think of baseball, I envision a superstar player showing zero loyalty to the team that drafted him.
All that superstar player cares about is signing the contract ensuring he'll never work another day in his life.
It doesn't matter what team that contract comes from, as long as there are a ton of zeroes in the salary box.
The only thing remaining pure in baseball are those old commercials for Tom Eunanski's baseball training videos, endorsed by a 1987 Fred McGriff.
So what is it that is corrupting professional sports?
It is the solid combination of serious money and zero loyalty.
Until salaries are cut and loyalty is formed, we might as well flip the tube to ESPN Classic and watch what purity was all about.
