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Show Dave Wigham Clipper Sports Professional Athletes Like Cattle No matter which way you look at it a professional athlete is for the most part nothing more than a piece of cattle. Some merchandise that can go as quick as it came. THE MAJORITY of professional athletes have no say in where they live or play. They are pawns in a big chess game played by the people in the front office. Sure there are some people who are somewhat secure in their place of employment but even those so called superstars are subject to change without notice. No one is immune. I REMEMBER years ago when George McGinnis was a great player and whichever team he played on wasn't about to let him go, but then age set in and he became expendable. Kareem Adul Jabar is probably the greatest to play the sport and the Lakers weren't about to let him go, but all of a sudden the talk is that he's getting too old so his name is being dangled in front of everyone to see what takers there are. THE BIGGEST name nowadays seems to be Magic Johnson of the Lakers. The guy signed a 25 year contract with the owner. But, if some rich guy was to offer the Lakers an arm and a leg, that they wouldn't separate themselves from the Magic man. No one is expendable in the professional basketball world. The guys in the front office have so much power over the lives of young athletes that it's almost scary. They can decide where a family lives and raise a family. They determine how much money the guy is worth paying. Then in a wink of an eye they can end the guys career and send him packing down the road. THE GUYS up front sit back and determine if a college kid, about 22 years old or so, can make it in their league. The league is more like a little click than anything else. With one vote this college guy can be in some foreign land, making one-tenth of what he could in the NBA. They toy with guys during the season. They bring a player in and sign him to a ten-day contract to see what he can do. Who are they kidding, kid-ding, if the guy couldn't play why would they waste ten days to watch him ride the bench. I RECALL two year's ago the big joke around town was to become a player with a ten-day contract for the Jazz. All-in-all about five players came through twon on this type of arrangement and not one of them got to play more than two minutes in any game. Yet that's plenty of time for the guys in the frong office to tell them they .aren't good enough to play in their league. They pay the guy, but they really put him in a bind, because they just wasted ten days of his time. It seems the front office people do what they want to do and they tell everyone it's for the good of the team. They want their players to be part of the community com-munity and to get people to like them, but they still have no hesitation about getting rid of them anywhere, any-where, anytime they want too if they feel ti helps the team. Ron Boone proved this fact. I'M NOT down on the Jazz front office people anymore than the rest of the league, it just seems like the entire league asks for loyalty from their players; yet feel they owe their players nothing in return. Sure, they say it's just a business like any other business, but in some cases that's not true. There aren't many other jobs in the world like this one. Does a doctor read in the papers that he has just been transferred to another hospital for three nurses and an orderly to be named later. How about a plumber plum-ber who hears on the six p.m. news that he's heading to New York in exchange for an accountant. MOST PEOPLE choose the city they want to live in, but professional athletes simply go where they're told to go. 1 know it's tough to feel sorry for a guy who makes all that money playing ball, but the bottom line is the players are human and deserve to be treated as such. People see them in the limelight, someone better off than you or I, but we have something they don't, freedom. We can choose which team to play for, which city to have our kids grow up in and we can choose when and if we want to move. The athletes can't. ALTHOUGH athletes do have a unique lifestyle, controlled by the people in the front office, we can only hope they are sensible to their feelings. The Jazz people are trying to bring a winner to Utah and they aren't afraid to step on toes. There isn't a player in the league who can honestly say the following season he will be back in the same uniform. We can say that. |