Salt on ... Thursday??

Well, Salt would like to apologize for the delay in our usual column, but truthfully the sporting landscape has been incredibly bereft of topical subjects to write about.










Ah.
Well.
See, this is the deal.
Salt on Monday, tries to find that niche where the sporting world is taking itself too seriously, or engaging in a round of ‘piling on’. Unfortunately this week has been jammed with the denizens of the Sporting universe behaving in an unconscionable manner. ( But enough about the Staal brothers … )


I don’t know if Michael Vick did or did not engage in dog fighting – a brutal, brutal example of cruelty to animals – but I do know that Mr. Vick won’t have to worry about wins and losses for a little while. The Federal Government has indicted Vick. Yeah, that’s right, the G-Men slapped papers on Mike. That means this isn’t a case where you can distract Boss Hogg and Sherriff Coltrane with some short/shorts and slip out the back door. These are the guys who recently added Lord Black of Crossharbour to their win totals.

Federal Prosecution operates at about a 95% success rate in the U.S.A., so I don’t think that Mike Vick will be thinking about much else beside how to get the hell off of these charges.

That said, I find it interesting that the Vick episode is getting far more press coverage than the NBA scandal, where one ref is on the verge of being arrested by the F.B.I. for his involvement in 'fixing' the professional games that he was officiating. Now, I get that the NBA earns its share of bad publicity due to the actions and prima donna attitude of many of it’s stars, but did you ever, ever, ever think that the name and face that would threaten the very viability of the Association would be a 5’7” dude of Irish descent?

And make no mistake the NBA is in big trouble here. While match fixing may be a semi regular event in Europe and Asia, here in the puritanical West, we prefer our sporting cheats to fly under the radar. We watch sports because we don’t know what is going to happen, and when we think we do know what will happen, we contribute to the billion dollar sports betting underworld – because sport betting is illegal in North America don’t you know (well, outside of Vegas and Atlantic City). So while the horrendous exploits of a prime NFL star should be taking up a lot of headline space, so too should what just might be the beginning of the end of the NBA as we know it.

But somehow, Mike Vick is selling waaaaay more papers. (and more page views … )