1980s: Sports and Games

Professional and major collegiate sports continued to expand in popularity during the decade, and they continued to be lavishly paid for by television programmers eager to attract an audience. Television became critical to sports, for it provided the money that made huge salaries possible or, in the college world, allowed major football and basketball programs to build state-of-the-art facilities for their athletes. Televised sports received a big boost through the 1980s with the growing popularity of the ESPN cable-television station, which played an important role in popularizing a variety of sports. Even the Olympics fell under the spell of TV money; ABC paid a record $225 million to broadcast the 1984 Los Angeles summer games.

Not everyone appreciated the role that TV played in sports. One critic claimed that TV "helps make money-grubbing freaks of its heroes. It even modifies and distorts the way sports are played." Athletes no longer stuck with a team for years; instead, they jumped from team to team as they received offers for more money. The fact that many pro and college athletes were involved in drug-use scandals in the decade also helped ruin the image of the athlete as a role model.

Pro baseball in the 1980s suffered through a number of problems, including a player's strike, allegations of drug use, and the Pete Rose (1941–) betting scandal that saw the former Cincinnati Reds star banned from the game. The National Football League (NFL) was also plagued with two strikes in the 1980s. A more notable story in football was the end of the domination of the season-capping Super Bowl by American Football Conference (AFC) teams. Beginning in 1985, National Football Conference (NFC) teams dominated the game, thanks to strong performances by the Washington Redskins, San Francisco 49ers, Chicago Bears, and New York Giants—and to the almost yearly Super Bowl collapse of the Denver Broncos, who lost the Super Bowl in 1987, 1988, and 1990.

Professional basketball recovered from its slump in the 1970s thanks to the spirited play of rising stars Larry Bird (1956–) of the Boston Celtics and Earvin "Magic" Johnson (1959–) of the Los Angeles Lakers. Johnson led the Lakers to eight championship series in the decade, and the team won five of them. Challenging the Lakers for dominance were the Celtics and, late in the decade, the "bad boy" Detroit Pistons, led by point guard Isiah Thomas (1961–). College basketball became a national obsession in the 1980s, thanks in large part to the popularity of the championship playoff series known as "March Madness."

Pro hockey featured the amazing Wayne Gretzky—"the Great One." He electrified the National Hockey League, leading his Edmonton Oilers to four Stanley Cups. Meanwhile, the World Wrestling Federation exploded in popularity, as did such games as Trivial Pursuit, Rubik's Cube, and the video game Pac-Man.