The sports I grew up watching were a lot tougher and a lot more competitive. Now I have nothing against sportsmanship but what I have been seeing lately is utterly ridiculous.

In the NFL you are not allowed to hit anybody without giving the NFL a rebate, in the NBA you are not allowed to have any emotion without hurting your team by getting a technical foul.

I watched Lebron James go back to Cleveland and make jokes with his former teammates after an off-season where he basically called them all garbage. He chose to leave a team that won over 60 games to play with his two friends and a bunch of players that wouldn’t make it on the bus if this was an And 1 try out.

It is ridiculous. I see players in football and basketball knock each other down and then rush to pick up the player they just knocked down. “WHERE THEY DO THAT AT?” I sit back and think of the “Bad Boy” Pistons or the Pat Riley Knicks or Heat teams and imagine them picking up a player they just knocked down. YEAH RIGHT!

I sit back and wonder what Buddy Ryan would have said if Andre Watters or Wes Hopkins would have picked up a wide receiver they just knocked down! That would have been an offense comparable to Colonel Nathan Jessup ordering the code red on William Santiago.

I know why Sports have become this way. It’s an amalgamation of free agency, corporate sponsorships, and athletes becoming businesses themselves. When Tom Brady said he hates the Jets I got excited and thought “that’s the way it is suppose to be”. Stop being politically correct and telling people what they want to hear! Tell your opponent you hate them and then do your best to defeat them.

I guarantee if sports stopped being so soft, the contest would mean more to the athletes and we as fans would get better contests. More players should be like Tom Brady and hate their opponent. Then again Tom Brady wears Uggs so he is also soft. Oh well!

Jimmy Williams