While it is often misquoted, the statement is actually, that the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. Money itself is inert, but obsessing about it is what usually causes the problems. And we have seen evidence of this unfold so rapidly in the last 24 hours.
This site is not about moralising, though I do like to think that it is moral. And yesterday’s events and what will follow them is as sure as an indictment of professional sport as you are like to find. Now some will say that, in order for any sport to succeed these days, large amounts of money have, of necessity, to be involved, and I won’t argue with that. But it is a turism that, the moment money enters the scene, it ceases to be a SPORT and becomes a BUSINESS. The participants still involve themselves AS sportspeople and, to them, the GAME is the most important thing. But the fact remains that the sport has been bought.
I’m not suggesting a solution here; I don’t think there is one. But it’s very sad to see what happens when the business becomes more important than the sport. Our own motorcycle racing, at every level now, is beholden to the sponsors without whose money it could simply not go on. Does it make it any less a sport at the grass-roots level? I’d like to think it doesn’t.
And then this morning I watch the news and it says that the Indian Permier League cricket series presently underway on the sub-continent, is under investigation with suggestions that the whole business has been set up as a gigantic money-laundering scheme. Now I don’t know about you, but the whole premise of a multi-million dollar sporting event, paying hundreds of millions of dollars to star players and to winning teams seems to be something of an obscenity in a country where close to one BILLION people live in abject poverty for all of their lives.
The love of money.