Not everyone likes all sports, and not everyone likes sports in general, but an overwhelming majority of the population enjoys sports. The problem is: the credibility of sports is going down the drain.

Some scandals have been worse than others. Going back quite a way you find the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The 1919 team had eight players who were paid to lose World Series games on purpose. The eight players received lifetime bans from participating in Major League Baseball.

There were of course the college football programs that paid players to come to their university to play football. While this practice ran rampant in the 1980s, it was SMU who got caught and took one of the harshest punishments in NCAA history, the death penalty.

But nowadays things have become complicated with drugs, betting, stealing signals and just plain stealing.

It all started with the Mark Mcgwire controversy after he broke Roger Maris’ single-season homerun record. McGwire admitted to using androstenedione, a muscle-enhancement product that was available over the counter. While it was not an actual steroid or even a banned substance, McGwire’s career has been tarnished ever since.

And now with Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco and numerous others being named in steroid use, baseball has lost its luster.

It’s hard watching games, seeing someone who gets paid millions of dollars and still can’t manage to work hard enough to become successful on his own.

Next on the list is the recent NBA referee who was caught by the FBI for betting on games that he officiated, making it so the outcomes of games worked in his favor.

As if it weren’t bad enough that players were cheating in order to make themselves individually better, the people who are in charge of rules during the games aren’t even upholding them.

Now the Patriots, the best team in the league over the past 10 years, has now been caught cheating, and this time it is the coach’s fault. The Patriots were taping the other teams’ signal caller to use in the next game against the opponent. Now there’s proof that they have done it many times before.

And even O.J. Simpson can’t stay out of legal trouble. If you’re that close to being convicted for allegedly killing your wife and you get off, you might just want to lay low for the rest of your life. But no, armed robbery works too. (Maybe).

So where did the integrity in sports go?

That’s a good question. It went away with multi-million dollar contracts and so much emphasis on being the best.

So when people begin to take sports for what they are, an amazing source of entertainment and a place to watch the best at what they do, then things can return to a little more legitimacy.