Realists know what sports fanatics refuse to accept: ever since the media – or at least a large percentage of it – stopped self-censoring bad news regarding athletes, their teams and organizations, the news from the sports world grows increasingly darker.

The latest awful news was the depraved actions of Sayreville high school football players, followed a few days later (on Sunday) by the staging of the initial Formula One Russian Grand Prix, in Sochi, Russia, despite Putin’s aggressive movements into the Ukraine shortly after his Olympics concluded and his repressive human rights laws.

Given my involvement with high school and international sports as a journalist and PR practitioner, I was not surprised because of my theory of sports: “The higher the level of the leagues, the lower the level of caring about right and wrong.”

School and legal officials will deal with the depraved actions of the Sayreville football players. However, the decision to hold the Formula One race in Sochi is nothing more than what always drives the international sports scene – the events and money above all, even if it means staging them in totalitarian countries like Nazi Germany, China and Russia.

The actions of the Olympic and Formula One governing bodies are strikingly similar: Leading American sports officials, including a high U.S. Olympic member and politicians urged the United States Olympic Committee to boycott the 1936 Nazi Olympics. The USOC refused.

According to the New York Times of October 13, a senior motor sports official urged the Sochi race be cancelled because of Putin’s actions. This too was refused by the Formula One czar Bernie Ecclestone, who once said that Hitler was “able to get things done” and Putin is “a first-class man,” who could run Europe or America, according to the Times’ John F. Burns.

Meanwhile, Major League Baseball smugingly congratulates itself for “cleaning up” the steroid problem that it helped create by its decades of lax actions. The National Football League continues to wrap itself around the flag and give lip service to its Breast Cancer Awareness program, while trying to get the public to forget the NFL’s awful disciplinary record regarding spousal abuse and its long denial of brain injuries to players while celebrating the “big hits.”

There is nothing but continuing lip service from the entities that can force change, the sponsors, whose money fuels the growth of all things sports, including the evils it sprouts.

The unending sponsorships despite the appalling news about sports that never ceases is good news for our business, ad agencies, networks and the media but bad news for humanity.

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Arthur Solomon, a former senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, is a frequent contributor to PR and sports business publications. He can be reached at [email protected].