Things Have Changed

Places to find bradley - bradleyonsports.blogspot.com, substack, suckeratthetable.com and any of your favorite podcast platforms

I'm bradley and it's my job to keep you from being the sucker at the table.

Sorry to report, I can't give you the skinny and scoop on the Swift - Kelce nuptials. They forgot to send me an invite. I'm sure it just got overlooked in all the chaos of planning it. Had they known most of my misspent youth was sitting in the blues at the Garden any Saturday night the Knicks were playing, or the NIT was in town, and they would've made sure to add me to the list. Maybe. I think. Probably not. 

So on to more important things. 

It wasn't so long ago that professional athletes used to have to keep an off season job to make ends meet. Some worked in banks or as investment counselors. Others chose physical labor because the pay was better. and they were already from hardscrabble backgrounds. Dodgers third baseman Billy Cox was a bartender back in his hometown during the offseason. Yogi Berra sold men's clothing at a big New Jersey clothing giant. The fact is, the salaries just weren't enough for an athlete to support a family. 

But television money changed all that. The 60's saw leagues signing lucrative deals with the networks, Later on in the century, cable TV became a thing and money started flowing from there as well. Sports was no longer a ragamuffin stepchild. 

What that meant was slowly, athletes became much more generously rewarded for their labors and talents.  And once baseball saw the reserve clause done away with and free agency began in earnest, sports was changed forever. The result? Today, athletes no longer need two jobs to survive. 

Truth be told, with NIL available to college and high school athletes, the need to  turn pro really doesn't even exist anymore. Now, a kid can tuck away enough into the bank before they graduate to make sure they never have to work a day in their life. While still at the University of Colorado, Shedeur Sanders actually drove up to spring practice in a Maserati. I'd have to look up what one of those goes for brand new. 

With their new found wealth, pro and college athletes can now afford to train all year round. Their seasons may end after six, eight or nine months, but the training starts the day they clean out their lockers. And it continues all the way through the season and beyond. 

So the real question is - now that they train all year, eat better, sleep better, and use nutritional standards to drive themselves to get the most they can out of what they physically have, has that made the gams they play any better? Does bigger, stronger, faster and better conditioned translate into the kind of money we have to pay to watch them play? My answer?

No.

In baseball, there hasn't been a .400 hitter since 1941. Even with travelling, no defense at all and three point shots, no one has scored 100 points in an NBA (or ABA) game since Wilt Chamberlain did it March 2, 1962. Football? Sure, lots of guys breaking records all over the place. But remember, they're mostly doing it in 16 and 17 game seasons. The records they're breaking with ease were set by players, who,, from 1946 to 1978, competed in 11, 12 and 14 game seasons.

So I  think it's important that athletes get paid better and don't have to work a second job just to play the sport they love. But I don't like what media has done to the prices and availability of watching games. The good old days weren't THAT good - but today? I'm not sure who had it better as a fan, my dad, or me.

I'm bradley and it's my job to keep you from being the sucker at the table. 

.