I wish I could experience...

Being a major sports fan, I wish I born around the 1950s to have experienced the “Golden Era” of sports such as basketball and boxing. Today, I’m constantly reminded whether it be by my father or social media, that the “old days” was the prime of most athletics with numerous elite athletes competing against each other in their respective sports. Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Joe Frazier anchoring boxing. To basketball players like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen going up against teams like the “Bad Boy” Pistons with Dennis Rodman and Isiah Thomas and the Utah Jazz with players like John Stockton and Karl Malone.

Those rivalries were simply legendary and we haven’t seen anything similar to that since. Sure there will be the occasional future hall of famers playing at the same time like today in basketball like Lebron James and Kobe Bryant, but we won’t be able to see that caliber of an entire league for many years to come.

Because of the society back in the 1900s, sports were about more than just athletics and seeing who was physically stronger and faster than the other. It was also about a sense of pride. The athletes were the pioneers of their sport and wanted to leave a lasting imprint in it for decades even centuries to come. They did so not only by what they had achieved on the court, field or in the ring, but with what they did in public. Arguably one of the most influential and groundbreaking events to ever happen in the world of politics was Muhammad Ali refusing to take part in the war of Vietnam in the 1960s. What he did moved mountains and showed people that they were more than just athletes, they were people capable of making their own choices and having their own opinions. On a lower scale, it is similar to what Lebron James said to Fox News reporter Laura Ingraham that he will not, “shut up and dribble” which was what she told him on live television, degrading his opinions because all she saw him as was an athlete with no concious over what is going on in the world. The Golden Era of sports layed out the stepping stones for generations of young athletes today and made sports what into what it really is today.