What’s bugging me about sports this week? The All-American Basketball Alliance

Imagine a professional sporting league where only white males are allowed to compete. A league where differences aren’t accepted. Now imagine this league existing in the year 2010.

It’s not a joke people. The All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA) is a league that prohibits blacks, people born outside of the United States and women from joining. Players also must have two white parents to be considered eligible for the league.

Commissioner Don Lewis is hoping 12 teams will tip off as early as June of this year. Lewis claims the league isn’t racist and that he swears he really does like “people of color.”

You decided to start a basketball league that only lets white males play and you aren’t just a tiny bit racist? No? Not even a little bit?

Lewis went on in the article, published by the Augusta Chronicle, ironically the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to talk about how AABA will focus on “fundamental” basketball as opposed to “street ball played by people of color,” and that “people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now.”

Never mind how racist that statement is. Never mind the fact that not all “people of color” or non-Americans play “street ball.” Or that not all white people play “fundamental basketball.” I guess we can forget about all of that. We can also forget about the fact that people like Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe and the sprinters who won first and second place in the 1968 Summer Olympic Games fought for decades to get fair treatment in athletics.

There is just so much wrong with this ridiculous idea and the people involved. Who are these people to decide who can and cannot participate in athletic events?

Part of the reason people love sports is because of the variety of people who compete. Anyone from any type of background can play a sport and compete professionally if they have enough talent and drive. That is one of the characteristics that make sports great. People can play soccer using sticks as a goal or a rolled up sock as a baseball and develop their game enough to play professionally.

Foreigners from other countries can move to the United States to play the sport they love in premier athletic stadiums around the world, with some of the highest quality equipment ever invented. Americans can move to Europe to play in a professional league, if they can no longer play in their home country.

Sports in the year 2010 transcend race, religion, and socio-economic status.

Sports in the year 2010 are about fans from all different types of backgrounds agreeing on at least one thing: the team or sport they love. Fans and players from all different childhoods, experiences and outlooks on life are encouraged and filled with hope because of athletics.

I hope Don Lewis and the AABA fails miserably, so they are reminded of what sports are actually about and that racism, as well as bigotry, will not be tolerated in the sporting community.