$ports

Corruption in FIFA? That’s "unpossible".

In what was probably the least-surprising sports corruption story in the history of news, FIFA has been clamped down as several higher-level folks were arrested after investigations revealed two decades of corruption, two decades of bribes, two decades of dirty money getting tossed around. The only shocking thing about all this was just how many ridiculous millions were laundered. Although the murmurs have been prevalent for as long as I can remember (even occurring in The Simpsons a year before the arrests were made) now we finally see action being performed to try to stop the corrupt bleeding. The straw that broke the camel’s back was Qatar.

Nothing against Qatar, but the country suffers incredibly awful summers, yet still won the bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Right then and there, the public started realizing that something was going on. Before you know it, investigations started popping up left and right. Two major investigations remain ongoing; one involving the bribes that have occurred in the last 20+ years, and the other is about potential tampering concerning the upcoming sights of the World Cup, as well as the previous one.

I’ll stop the summarizing and just deliver the truth: money ruins sports. Money is important to run the blood of these leagues, but ultimately poisons and tampers with the beautiful games themselves. Money prevents sports from improving, and sometimes creates ugly incidents. When businesses mixes with art, things like this happen---just look at the current state of Hollywood and its entourage of movies. I’m not shocked, I’m hardly surprised. Unfortunately though, when there is too much money involved, things like the FIFA disaster will occur.

The issue with overwhelming money doesn’t just affect FIFA, but FIFA (and soccer in general) is easily the biggest victim of being too successful. 5 of the 10 highest-revenue sports leagues in the world are soccer leagues. Then of course there’s the World Cup. The World Cup is hands-down, no-questions-asked, the biggest sporting event in the universe. Over a BILLION people were set to watch the Germany/Argentina World Cup final last year, and over 26 million people watched it on the United States alone---and that’s with no dog in the fight. Not even Game 7 of the 2014 World Series drew that high a number. No matter where the World Cup goes, money will most definitely follow. So of course money will slide under the table through hundreds of hands, it’s inevitable. All major successful businesses have their sneaky and corrupt practices---no Top 100 company did it completely the right way.

Money not only affects the potential for corruption and dirty money, it also hampers the quality of sports. We can go sport to sport, league to league and you can see all the examples. Length of seasons are far too long in most of the American leagues. Major League Baseball would be perfect if each season ran 100 games, but the prospect of missing out on 31-55 million dollars after losing 30 home games would send owners into a heart attack frenzy. So even if the league would look and breathe better with a far shorter season, money disallows this from ever happening.

The NBA’s playoffs is a ridiculous 3 months long, which is why it can never truly draw the madness of College Basketball’s March Madness (How chaotic would it be if the 16 teams compete in a series of winner-take-all games? I know, will never happen). It’s already an overdrawn 82 games because of money, when it would do much better as a 60-game league. However, that’s at least 10 million lost with the home games and the food/merchandise/parking sales that follow. NHL falls in the same trap, even though this league has suffered far too many recent lockouts to do anything drastic.







Of course, then there’s the NCAA. We all know about their shenanigans. Wayyyyyy too well…





Boise State’s football team in a memorable stretch (2006-2012) had an 86-8 record. How many championship games did they participate in? None. Why? Because it’s Boise State, not a popular national school. Then there was Ohio State undeservedly finding its way into the Top 4 College Football Playoff in 2014-2015—even though the #5 and maybe even the #6 seed played better. Ohio State is one of the three largest universities in the United States every single year, so of course it’s going to sneak in to the playoffs. The money spoke louder than the talent.

Bottom Line: The FIFA scandal is sad, and will cast a shadow over the Beautiful Game. But truth be told, money casts a shadow above all our favorite sports and the leagues that run them. It’s just a facet of life, money rules all. The $$$ is a necessary evil, because without it, we wouldn’t have sports teams to root for in general. The NFL and MLB, the two most successful leagues in the world, combine for nearly $20 billion in revenue.

Money has wrecked sports for over a century, from the Black Sox Scandal to the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals, to all the lockouts, franchise eliminations/adjustments and strikes in between. But we love these games far too much in order for instances like the FIFA bribes to bring us down—and to be honest as long as it’s not our team/country, the pain will go away rather quickly. We love sports too much to truly be upset over the nonsense that happens in all the sports leagues (Look at the NFL lately for crying out loud).

We will never achieve perfection or pure parity (or pure sanctity) from any of our beloved sports, nor will we be immune to corruptions in the future. Like death and taxes, baseball, soccer, football, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, boxing and all the hidden mayhem that follows is expected and anticipated even if its not always good news. FIFA is the worst offender but you would be silly in thinking that this could never happen to your favorite sport, your favorite league, or even your favorite team. Even my Tampa Bay Rays have also done some shady things to cut corners.





At the end of the day though, our love for sports triumphs against all-----including money.