What happened to the sports page?

Chief Justice Earl Warren once told me that in reading the newspaper, he always read the sports page first to read about mans' accomplishments, and then the front page to read about their failures. (In those days, little attention was paid to women in sports.) I also grew up reading the sports page and to this day read it first.

But today, the sports page is filled with the same issues that plague humankind, except on a smaller scale. Litigation has crept onto the forefront of the sports page. Thus, sports-page reading includes lawsuits involving player injuries; punishment for alleged substance, physical and sexual abuse; player rights to the use of their likeness; challenges to professional and college regulatory actions; and antitrust violations. Athletes now claim workers' compensation and disability remedies.

In addition, we read about colleges giving athletes passing grades in classes that don't exist; colleges ignoring or facilitating improper payments to athletes; the use of banned performance enhancing drugs by prominent athletes; racial taunts and riots at soccer games; point shaving on cricket matches; strikes in major sports; union organizing of college athletes; child and spousal abuse by prominent athletes; crimes, including murder, by athletes (a radio commentator often announces the "athlete crime of the week"); alleged cheating by prominent coaches; inappropriate conduct by professional team owners; participants in Paralympics who were not disabled, and more.

Perhaps in the past, unsavory acts took place in sports. But such events rarely were reported. Maybe sports reporters tried to protect the athlete as well as the fan, but there was little sports litigation. We were able to admire our heroes, oblivious to their warts. We knew all was not perfect, but gave it little thought or joked about it. I recall as a young boy selling football programs at the Coliseum and yelling out as a sales pitch at USC games, "names, numbers and salaries of all the players."

In those days, the structure of sports may have been unfair, but it seemed healthier and more pleasurable. Most professional athletes were underpaid, but presumably happy to be playing a game for pay (that is more fun than answering interrogatories). The price of admission to events was reasonable for most, unlike the cost of a ticket to Staples Center today. With all the TV timeouts, a football game drags on for hours, even though the actual cumulative time of all the plays is but a few minutes. Unlike in the past, there are now specialists for practically everything - offense, defense and special teams in football, and set-up pitchers and closers in baseball. We could root for a team whose players stayed on the team for years, or in the case of college, stayed four years. Today, we root not for the players, but for a city or, in reality, for an owner, and we see college athletes stay in school for a year or so.

In the past, college athletes in major sports graduated and entered into fields such as law, medicine and business. No longer. They now aspire to be professionals, and if they do not make it, their opportunities are narrow.

As you walk around a university campus, you will note that much of the construction is of fancy new athletic facilities. The college athletes in the major sports generate substantial income for the colleges and the NCAA, but often only get in return a lousy education, if any at all.

College coaches are highly paid - even higher than the highest paid state officials - and there are myriad highly paid assistant coaches. The great John Wooden made little more than a chemistry professor and, to my recollection, he had one or two assistant coaches. He was paid $6,000 in his first season and $40,500 in his final season. The current UCLA basketball coach reportedly earns several million dollars a year. Even in non-income producing sports, public universities give away valuable scholarships and financial aid to foreign and out-of-state athletes - just for the hardly noticed glory of winning a championship.

Sportsmanship has disappeared. Some years ago, a German Davis Cup tennis player cost his country the cup by volunteering that his racket had tipped the ball before the ball went out. In a recent Olympics, a player refused to acknowledge that a ball tipped his racket on a crucial point. In any junior or collegiate tennis match, the disputes over line calls are frequent - something that rarely occurred in my competitive days.

Some of the sports with the greatest athleticism have declined in interest. Track and field, which involves the most basic and historic skills of speed, strength and jumping has virtually disappeared, except at the Olympics. Tennis was popular, but now we do not even care about the Davis Cup. Boxing was popular when Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali were world champions. Now, we can name few champions - there being a number recognized for each weight class. (This is a sport, the purpose of which is to inflict a concussion. Gov. Pat Brown urged it be outlawed.) Now we have such "sports" as skateboarding or X Games, ultimate fighting, and vehicle races. Even poker is on sports cable channels.

I still fervently follow sports, but with less joy than I did as a child. Maybe this is part of the aging process, or maybe the nature of sports is changing.

Richard M. Mosk is an associate justice of the California Court of Appeal.