Dagens stora samtalsämne i USA

Vad handlar samtalet i USA om idag ? Obamas State of the Union-tal ? Vilka som ska bli presidentkandidater 2016 ? Överläggningarna i Davos ? USAs respektive EUs ekonomiska hälsa ?

Icke !

Jag käkade middag igår med några amerikanska vänner . Och det rådde inte minsta tvivel om vad de var mest upptagna av – trots att de båda är mycket politiskt intresserade. Också från borden intill oss på krogen Seven Fish i Key West var samtalsämnet nummer ett så långt jag kunde höra detta:

Har New England Patriots fuskat med sina fotbollar ?

Jag ska inte fördjupa mig i sakfrågan – jag vet att jag har läsare som vet mycket mer än jag om hur det går till i amerikansk fotboll – så jag nöjer mig med att citera en artikel i dagens Walls Street Journal:

So pervasive is cheating in professional sports that it has all but become part of the game. Some cheating has been on the grand scale. One thinks first of the use of steroids by baseball players, whose chemically aided achievements have bollixed up the statistical records on which baseball may almost be said to be based. Much earlier, in the 1950s, there was point shaving, arranged by gamblers, in college basketball, the great sports scandal of its day.

College football and, only a bit less, college basketball have long been riddled with cheating. The cheating has taken different forms, among them violations of recruiting, alumni slipping money to athletes, coaches helping to fix players’ course grades.

(—)

 If competition gave sports its pleasure, sportsmanship—utter fairness and generosity of gesture under the pressure of competition—is what gave sports its grandeur. Many young athletes today may not even have heard of sportsmanship, so far submerged is it in the consciousness of players and fans alike. Athletes may be bigger and stronger, fleeter and in many ways more sophisticated, but without sportsmanship they are diminished to being jocks, and jocks merely. Sad.

WSJ

Vad säger detta om USA idag ?