What is Going on Here?

As I was skimming through Yahoo! Sports I couldn’t help but notice how depressing most of the headlines were in the NFL section:

Bears' Benson plans to fight charges

Steelers draft pick Mendenhall robbed

Falcons' Boley charged with battery against wife

Redskins draft pick Davis oversleeps

Ex-Lion Porcher gets community service

Ram recounts ugly history

What on Earth is happening? Has everyone completely lost it? Or is this our fault? By our fault I mean the fans. Do we only want to see when bad things happen? Why can we not be satisfied to hear when sports is filled with good guys? I searched high and low on the Yahoo! Sports site and found one feel-good story:

The amazing story behind Antonio Cromartie

In fact, the writer was apparently so interested in the San Diego Chargers corner that he has two other recent articles about him. Yeah, find a good guy and give him plenty of press – I like it.

I checked NFL.com also. Sure enough, the dismal stories littered the home page. Yeah, they had draft analysis (again!) and some training camp notes, but the human interest stories were 99% bad news.

Undaunted, I went to Fox Sports on MSN to try to find some more good news. They had all of the same bad news along with another piece on the Marvin Harrison shooting incident. They did, however, have the story about Denver Broncos QB Jay Cutler revealing that he has Type 1 diabetes. At least this could inspire others that have the disease so this counted as a not-so-gloomy story. Of course, they had to bring us back down with a article about the ten worst franchises in sports.

By the way, ESPN.com was just as dismal. I had to dig rather deeply to find a “feel good” video for this post, and it is over a week old.

So is it just me or are a lot of athletes causing trouble or having bad luck lately? Or was my earlier assumption correct – fans want to read the “bad” stories?



Today in Sports History:

1982 – Gaylord Perry of the Seattle Mariners becomes 15th pitcher to win 300 games

1986 – Real Madrid wins the 15th UEFA Cup Championship