FEBRUARY 7, 2006
One
winner one loser. One team going to Disneyland, or whatever silly thing they say after the game, and one team going into the showers as defeated gladiators. Cant be too sorry for any of them as the average salary is over a million dollars a year for each of the Super Bowl combatants- simply reflective of where we place our priorities.
Athletics are a good, healthy, and important segment of our entire culture and society. Yet, I have always wondered why supreme athletes are not strong environmental advocates.
I first started to think about this when in 1984 I learned that the Olympic Athletes from Mexico City came to Los Angeles to train because the air in Mexico City was so polluted; and that was when we had the worst air in the nation. Was there an athletic boycott of diesel spewing buses in Mexico City by the athletes? Of course not. How about the tri-athletes who must swim 2.5 miles in often polluted waters, ride a bike 106 miles and then finish with a 26.5 mile marathon? Where is their collective bargaining with the people who put on the events to avoid states, cities, and regions where the air and water quality is lousy?
I once inquired of the great volleyball player Singin Smith why beach volleyball players are not fighting for environmental causes and his response was typical, I guess we are training or competing all the time and we don't have much time for that kind of stuff. One might think that clean air and water would be of prime concern for the professional athlete.
Would it not be of great value to have every competitive athlete who requires clean air to work at maximum efficiencies to petition their congress person for a strengthening of the clean air act on purely athletic grounds?
How about the Super Bowl teams selecting the site to play their games based on the quality of the air next time? If that were the criterion of selection the young athlete at home would begin to model this behavior.
--Peter