"Whittlin'" Willie Simpkins, Master of Ceremonies and Retired Cartographer

Sometimes I just enjoy creating nicknames for nonexistent people.  Really makes you wish there was such a person, eh?  

I'm supposed to be memorizing lines right now, per the n.u.f.a.n. ensemble 7 plays in 7 days festival this monday that I was randomly roped into.  But I'm much more amused by my new, quasi-newsprint-but-not-html-savvy-enough-to-make-it-look-like-newsprint blog.  Ta-dah.

Because I must temper my newfound enthusiasm for browser-embedded text-editing with the knowledge of awake-ness in the short term, I will make this inaugural posting brief, yet dutifully poignant.

I cannot be the only sports news savvy web trawler to be fascinated by the overwhelming news of ethics these days in sports.  The ongoing persona-non-grata Barry Bonds, the boorish Michael Vick, Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson (both nicknames strangely reminiscent of Atari 2600), 'Roids in Golf, and the breaking NBA referee betting scandal are all wonderful news to the avid sports fan.  My question is: Has it always been like this?  I don't think that in the sixties Arnold Palmer was juicing to drive five-hundred yards whilst tutoring a litter of pit bulls and stockpiling assault rifles.  Or maybe he was.  Maybe the news media was giving him the ol' Roosevelt treatment because of his status as reigning golf demigod.  Granted my choice of athlete is a bit silly, but even his contemporaries' issues (Wilt Chamberlain, Dick Butkus) never ranged beyond the basic verbal gaffe or sexual indiscretion.  It makes me wonder what we'd be able to know if our current Internet media capabilities were applied to that time, or previous eras.  God help me if I knew more about Babe Ruth or Johnny Weissmuller.

Whatever the hypotheticals, I need to focus on what makes sports, well, sports.  I'm watching these men (or ladies...I find women's basketball mildly entertaining) not as a moral Miss America, but because I want to be entertained by the game.  I must admit, to this point (sans Barry) I find a lot of the ethical stuff just as entertaining.  It's only when the "good" guys screw up, the Rafael Palmieros whom you'd think would never sully the sport, that the fleeting gossip fun ends.  It's fun to give a Nelson "Ha Ha!" to the guys you already hate, but it breaks your heart to see how deep the ethics issue in sports truly runs.