Good sportsmanship out in left field
by Chris Taylor, managing editor

     Sports are in bad shape this year. Good sportsmanship has become extinct.
     Most people do not know how to lose with grace, or win with it either for that matter.
     Often, when a team loses a game, it is not unusual to see the coach or players crying about how they were robbed because of bad officiating or some other excuse.
     Of course, you also have athletes who celebrate way too much anytime they do anything.
     How many times have you seen a football player dance around for a couple of minutes after he makes a tackle?
     Isn’t that what he gets paid to do?
     Why all the celebration?
     It seems that more emphasis has been placed on winning than anything else in sports.
Most of these celebrations appear to have no other purpose than to humiliate the opponent.
     A good example would be Terrell Owens’ behavior in the recent Dallas Cowboys game versus the San Francisco 49ers.
     After Owens scored, he ran out to the star on the 50-yard line and pointed to the sky.
     He did this twice in the game and was fined and suspended for one game.
     There are many people who criticized the Cowboys’ reaction to Owens’ unsportsman-like conduct.
     I’ve heard many people say that the Cowboys acted like classless bums. What does that make Owens?
     He started the whole thing, and he deserved what he got.
     Before you criticize, you should also put yourself in the Cowboys’ shoes.
     Say you’re playing a game of monopoly with a friend, and you lose. Then your friend starts jumping up and down, dancing and pointing his fingers to the sky.
     That friend will probably receive a swift kick in the groin or a good old-fashioned kidney punch.
     At the very least, you would learn not to play any more board games with that friend.
     The whole point behind sports is to have fun, not to utterly destroy and humiliate your opponent. That’s a good strategy for a war. It is not a good strategy for gaining respect and keeping friends.
     It seems that most people cannot make the distinction between the two.
     They have bought into all the clichés about sports being like a war. It’s not a war though; the penalty for losing a game will never be as high as that of losing a war.
     It’s time people realize that.