Biggest Sports business Story of the Past Decade

Biggest Sports business Story of the Past Decade

The biggest sports business story of the past decade has to be the findings of performance-enhancing drugs use in sports. This has become a major issue in current sports history mainly because of the high profiled athletes who have been busted. Baseball has been hit the hardest lately with the huge scandal. Baseball legends such as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte have been tied up in this huge performance enhancing scandal. Performance-enhancing drugs have become such a big issue because players who don’t use the drugs believe it is unfair. This could be true if it is true that it actually helps the athlete do better. This proof has yet to be proven by scientist and at this time is just speculation.

Baseball is not the only organization to be hit with the performance-enhancing scandal. According to Sports Illustrated (Shore 2008) the first record of performance enhancement drugs occurred with Arthur Linton in 1886. It was said that he died during a race from trimethyl, a stimulant. Performance-enhancing drugs also made appearances in professional wrestling in 1988 with Vince McMahon of the WWE and most recently with pro wrestler, Chris Beniot who killed his entire family including himself. It was said that his testosterone levels was 10 times the normal levels. And lets not forget the impact performance-enhancing drugs had on the track and field sport. Olympic track and field champions Marion Jones and Ben Johnson was both stripped of their gold medals and record book for the use of steroids.

Performance-enhancing drugs have started an epidemic in sports worldwide. With organizations really cracking down on the issue, it is causing great embarrassments to sports in general. We have witnessed our sports icons fall at the mercy of steroids and stripped of their championships and titles. It posses a question to how many athletes out there have used or are using these unethical drugs to win titles. Does these performance-enhancing drugs really make athletes faster, stronger, jump higher, swim faster etc or is it just killing them, making them bigger or go bald?


References:

CNBC video, “The Biggest Plays in Sports Business”:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1368367744

SHPIGEL, B. (2009, December 27). Always in the Spotlight, for Good and Ill. New
York Times, p. 11. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=47119495&site=ehost-live

Shore, R. (2008). How we got Here: a timeline of performance-enhancing drugs in
sports. Sports Illustrated, Retrieved from http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/magazine/03/11/steroid.timeline/index.html