Posted on Sun, Jun. 15, 2008

Mark Story: Congressional involvement improving sports

By Mark Story

Herald-Leader Sports Columnist

Mark Story

On Thursday, a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives will hold hearings on the future of Thoroughbred horse racing.

If you are like me, any time you hear that the U.S. Congress is neglecting the economy, matters of war and peace and energy policy (read gas prices) to hold hearings on sports, you have the same initial reaction:

Shouldn't they have more important things to do?

Yet — and you'd have thought Sean Hannity would join the ACLU before this sentence ever got written — recent congressional interventions in major sports controversies have largely been for the good.

In 2005, Congress called some of major-league baseball's biggest names to testify about steroid use.

Mark McGwire showed up “not to talk about the past;” Sammy Sosa suddenly lost the ability to speak English; Rafael Palmeiro gave a finger-wagging denial of his own steroid use that all but screamed “he doth protest too much.”

On a gut level, that one day did more to reveal what was really going on inside baseball than anything that had come before.

Had Congress not publicly shamed them into it, do you really think the perpetually feuding baseball owners and major-league players' union would have ever agreed on steroid testing?

Score one for the politicians.

College football is also better thanks to congressional intervention.

When federal legislators — including Kentucky U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell — complained that college football's Bowl Championship Series was unfairly excluding all schools outside the six major conferences, things soon changed.

The BCS added a fifth bowl game and a new formula for selecting teams that gave college football's smaller leagues some access to the big-money bowls.

Those changes gave us one of the more electrifying moments in American sports history — Boise State 43, Oklahoma 42 in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. They also made what is still an odious cartel at least a little bit fairer.

Score another for the politicians.

Of course, congressional interventions into sports issues would have more credibility if the legislators leading the charge did not often come off more as disappointed fans than disinterested arbitrators of the public good.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's drive to hold the NFL's feet to the fire on the New England Patriots and the Spygate controversy would seem more solid if:

1.) he were not an unabashed fan of a team (the Philadelphia Eagles) that lost a closely contested Super Bowl to New England;

2.) the senator had not received six-figure campaign contributions from employees of a cable company (Comcast) involved in a bitter legal dispute with the NFL regarding distribution of the NFL Network.

For that matter, McConnell is a big backer of University of Louisville sports, especially football.

You think his early complaints against the BCS were motivated by the fact that U of L was essentially locked out of the college football national championship chase in its pre-Big East days?

Now, public outcry after the death of Eight Belles in this year's Kentucky Derby has led to this week's horse racing hearings.

If Thursday's appearance by Thoroughbred luminaries before a sub-committee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee at last leads the horse racing industry to get serious about the issue of what, if any, race-day drugs should be legal to give to horses, then the politicians will be doing horse racing a favor.

Just on entertainment value alone, seeing the mouth that roars, Big Brown trainer Rick Dutrow Jr., explaining to the U.S. Congress his rationale in (legally) giving all his horses the steroid Winstrol will justify the hearing.

Should recent form hold, there's every reason to think that Congressional involvement will lead to betterment of the Thoroughbred racing industry.

When it's come to its recent incursions into sports, an institution with an 18.7-percent public approval rating actually has a winning record.