Speaking as an American living in the year 2003, I am concerned about the state of the sports world.

With sex scandals, murder and drug-use accusations almost every week, it is a wonder that so few Americans have become disillusioned by professional sporting events.

We can see this decay from the college basketball court, where players are killing each other, as in the case of Baylor University’s basketball team, to the personal lives of our most cherished NBA stars.

The question that we must be asking ourselves is not why this is happening.

The reasons are obvious – young men, many of them from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, are forced headlong into a world of money and are given a blank check to make “mistakes.”

This would destroy an average person’s life. The question that should be asked is this: Where is the outcry from many vocal Americas whose “morality” and Christian ethics are supreme?

It amazes me that moral pundits who are so quick to jump on presidents or to defame consensual gay marriage are silent about this plague of moral decay in the sports world.

Where are the pundits on “Good Morning America” railing on the NBA or NFL?

From what I have seen, they are busier worrying about a new Mel Gibson movie that they have not even seen, but are quick to pass judgment on.

I wonder if the leaders of communities around the nation would be so quick to judge homosexual marriages as wrong if that institution poured billions of dollars in jobs, construction costs and political donations to their communities, much like professional sports do.

This may explain why there are no politicians or religious leaders asking to boycott the Staples Center in Los Angeles over adultery, which is one of the cardinal sins of Christianity.

But why is there no one else ashamed of what sports have become?

We may not like it, but the world judges the United States by our athletes. Are these the men that we want to show to the world?

Is it that we believe that sports stars have their money and power through divine means and thus we cannot challenge them?

No, we the people give them their money and their blank check to poison the youth of America with their total lack of morality and any decency.

They owe us for every ticket we buy at the arenas to see them play, and they owe us for coming back again and again to see them play after every scandal and shameless deed.

We as Americans must stand up and hold athletes accountable for what they do. Whether athletes like it or not, they are our children’s role models and must act accordingly.

If they do not, it is not the right but the duty of Americans to ask why we continue to let professional sports circle the drain right in front of our eyes.

We need to stand up and make them take notice. But the underlying question to this whole issue is not what we have to do, since we already know that.

But why have we not done it sooner?

~ Chris Frederickson is an international business sophomore