October 1 , 1998

Sherman Walters
Staff Writer

Greed is becoming more than a trend in the world of professional sports.  It has now risen to the level of a nuisance.  The fans no longer fit into the equation of what makes  a successful sports franchise.

The NBA is currently involved in a labor dispute between owners and players because team owners claim that some of the teams aren’t making a considerable profit due to the continuous inflation of players’ salaries.

Now, talks between the two have come to a halt, and the 1998-99 season looks to be a no-show for both sides.

Who is really losing out here? The owners obviously aren’t worried about the thought of tossing the season away.  Maybe it’s the players who have bank accounts with more zeros than 98 percent of Americans will ever see in their own accounts.

Nah.  Probably not.

Or just maybe it’s the loyal fans that hand over their hard earned dollars for season tickets to support thef owners, players and, of course, their agents.

Four years ago, baseball fans were disappointed, to say the least, when they were deprived of one of America’s trademarks, baseball in October.

When play finally resumed, the fans weren’t as quick to open their wallets to the ungrateful owners and players who had been ignoring their requests to stop the bickering and return to the stadiums to play.  This was surprising, considering that the fans had long been the biggest supporters of the game.

Now, thanks to the birth of our new heroes, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, baseball has become our favorite pastime once again.

This experience should have served as an example to other professional leagues.  But, once again, the almighty dollar has become the initiative, and the fans are only a brief afterthought.

I recently attended a Carolina Panthers game at Erickson Stadium in Charlotte.  The cost of the tickets alone was close to $100.

For a full-time college student, that was  almost a full week’s paycheck.  There’s no question that attending a sporting event is no longer a family activity.  For a family of four, the game would have cost over $200.

College athletics are quickly following suit.  But, fortunately, students are able to attend any athletic event for no cost.  Not true. Included in the price of tuition is an activity fee which covers all athletic event attendance whether you choose to attend these events or not.

For a small school such as Appalachian, the cost of attending our events is reasonable.  This is not the case for schools with larger athletic programs.  Carolina and Duke charge as much as $30 for tickets. These are top notch athletic programs, but the players aren’t paid.What costs are they incurring in order to charge such prices?

We love our sports in America, and that has been taken advantage of by both professional and college programs.  If we didn’t, networks wouldn’t sign multimillion dollar deals to carry a season’s worth of games.