Bob Ryan: Entertaiment hijacks sport

Bob Ryan, a columnist in the Boston Globe, recently wrote a column about how entertainment was taking over sport. (Not that this is a new phenom -- sports entertainment has been around for a while.) He received over 300 responses, most of them agreeing with him. Some samples:

"Made me think of Bruins and Celtics breaks in the '40s and '50s when I would read a paper, study a program, or talk about the game during intermission. I won't go with today's flow."

"I was at a Bruins game at the Fleet last year when there was an apparent `Jumbotron malfunction' for a period or so. The crowd came alive with that thing shut down. I'll admit it; it reminded me of days of old in the Garden, and it was great."

"Everything is choreographed, nothing spontaneous. Every time there is a timeout, some fool runs onto the court. It's like a three-ring circus."

"I won't even attend hockey or basketball games anymore . . . They're nothing more than rock concerts with athletic intermissions."

"Can you imagine John Kiley playing any other song than `Hallelujah Chorus' as Carlton Fisk ran those bases in Game 6? I shudder to think what the DJs who seem to select music at today's ventures would have chosen: `Who let the Dogs Out,' or some similar inane offering."

"The Jumbotron is just for exhibitionists. Eventually, women will strip on it and men will reveal themselves."

(Update Feb. 16: Jon Cudo writes a good response defending entertainment in sports on GameOps.com.)