Also, I forgot to say:
I have personally seen these parents rip into their kids at different sporting events. It’s something of an epedemic in these parts. Even some of the coaches are louts. My son quit soccer after his coach attacked the other team’s coach (physically) on the field.
I am all ticked off because they just stopped coverage of the Miss. State / Kentucky SEC Championship game to cover G.W.'s press conference. They could have at least timed it so that it happened during half time. What is wrong with these people! Good grief already. 
I no longer watch any sports other than professional golf. The PGA and WPGA tour golfers are self employed and either win enough to last, find a sponsor to help them for a while, or take up a different line of work. Unfortunately, the amount of money involved what with TV advertising etc. might threaten even that setup.
As for the rest, the athletes, pro and amateur are a bunch of spoiled brats who have been coddled from the time it was discovered that they had good physical skills; team owners are rapacious scam artists who are out to get the public to build them palacial arenas to carry on their business interests; college presidents and boards of regents try avoid all responsibility for the conduct of the athletic department; and on and on. To paraphrase comdian Fred Allen in a remark obout the TV business, “The whole atmosphere is as if someone had dropped a loaded privy into the air conditioning.”
As a high school English teacher who really cannot even begin to understand the appeal of sports, I have to say that I could not even begin to be half as effective as I am if it were not for sports in my school. For a sizable portion or my regulars (ie., at-risk, inner city kids with indifferent academic skills and no academic interest, who nevertheless deserve the education they don’t think they will ever need) sports are the only thing that makes them feel contected to the school and to the larger community. Provided you have an administration and coaches who back you up, no-pass, no-play works wonders on a sizaqble subset of kids who simply cannot be motivated by the intrinsic rewards of academia–and believe me, that’s not from lack of trying on our parts. Hopefully they will see that light at some point in the future and come to understand that all that essay writing and math homework bullshit they had to do was, in fact, of great benefit, but we have to teach them now, and sports make that possible. Fully half our football team would be very scary street thugs if it weren’t for football: you won’t see me bashing it.