Feb. 15, 2007

Captain’s Log: Being a good sport
Capt. Jon Moffett
jrm001@marietta.edu

Greetings and salutations to the avid readers of the fine piece of journalistic prowess I like to call my own. Today’s edition will feature something a little different. With all that has been going on in the world of sports recently, I think that it’s only fitting that I shed some light on one issue. There are two names in sports that seem to always find their way in your newspapers, on your editions of SportsCenter, and your casual talk with one another. Those two names: Terrell Owens, and Barry Bonds.

No one is more of a critic of these two then me. I despise both of them. As far as Terrell Owens goes, I think he’s the biggest waste of talent in the NFL, yes, even more than Dandy Randy Moss. Mr. Owens just loves to complain about how he’s not getting the ball enough, yet he led the NFL in touchdown receptions with 13. He forgets to mention that he also led the league with dropped passes.

In the case of Barry Bonds, the man is my equivalent of cancer. Barry Bonds is slowly poisoning the entire game of baseball. The man is so full of juice that he makes oranges jealous, yet we’re supposed to cheer him? He’s going after the most prestigious record in all of sports, and we hate him for it. He doesn’t respect the game of baseball, and he’s gone on record saying he only plays for the paycheck.

That being said, there is something positive about these two. They are needed. The NFL needs Terrell Owens. Major League Baseball needs Barry Bonds. Let’s face it; everyone can agree that if these two men weren’t in their respective sports, they wouldn’t be nearly as popular as they are. We need to hate someone. Does that mean that Owens and Bonds are terrible people outside of the locker room? It’d be speculation to assume so. But we don’t care about that. We see them on TV and we love to watch them talk, or not talk, and we eat it up. There’s no way that you’d sit there and watch yet another segment on ‘Them Cowboys if it weren’t for the chance of seeing T.O. doing something to get attention. And we may not want Barry Bonds to break the homerun record, but I guarantee most of us will watch it, just to say we did.

And with every homerun Bonds hits, or every antic that Owens comes up with, we’ll grow to hate them even more. And we’ll love every second of it.