Winning Is The Only Thing By Randy Roberts And James S. Olson

“Winning Is the Only Thing” by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson. This book touches on the impact that the period after the second world war had upon the sports industry as a whole, and the issues that plagued the sporting industry. How the sports industry changed exponentially during the post war era, how these games were meant to be fun for the people playing them the core reason people played sports not for money or glory but to have fun. How sports went from something to be enjoyed by the people to forget that hardships of their daily lives to something that would take over their lives and something that they would put their personal stake upon. How it went from something to have fun with to something that would consume people’s lives in …show more content…
They try to show this by showing examples such as the period where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in sports by being the first African American man to play in the Major Leagues, and the massive impact that this had on all sports thereafter not just baseball. And in boxing where even when a black boxer faced a white boxer for some reason the black boxer was deemed weaker and inferior to the white boxer such as in the fight of Jack Johnson and Timmy Burns where “scientists” had determined that blacks had weaker midsections than whites and that Burns should assault Johnson 's midsection. But when a black boxer was proven to be especially good at the sport he was somehow he was heartless and stupid, only meant to cause physical pain. On the other side the spectrum with the Olympic games right after WWII when the soviets deemed the games to be a bourgeoisie display of capitalist decadence. So much so that when the United States offered to feed other teams the soviets deemed it as the capitalists trying to make quick profit. During the olympics many players stopped seeing these events as them having fun and representing their country in the games but as their sworn duty to not make their country seem weak in the eyes of the international community. And notable happenings like the basketball scandals of 1951 where players were given preferential treatment at the collegiate level such as paying players, student players in college teams are not allowed to be paid since it is amatuer sports rather than professional sports. Their evidence points out in plain words how sports changed drastically in a very short amount of time where it became a focal point of american culture