Recently sports broadcasters and writers have been up in arms over the coverage that the new York Post has given to A-Rod, saying that it is changing, or will change, how sports and sports stars will be covered in the future. While all of these sports journalists say that they have never seen a professional athlete covered as if they were a celebrity, a-la Paris Hilton, they are really just kidding themselves.

Athletes have been scrutinized by mainstream media before, these sports journalists just didn't see the small steps that have lead to the mjaor coverage A-Rod is recieving now.

For example, when current Arizona Cardinals quarterback, Matt Leinart, was playing at college ball at USC, he underwent some serious scrutinity from Hollywood media. Mind you he did bring on a lot of it himeself by attending parties, hanging out with celebrities, and supposedly dating Paris Hilton, but what did he expect, he was in Hollywood and the press there loved him!

It's not just mainstream media, for some reason it's big sports news that Reggie Bush is dating Kim Kardashian, and whenever Ben Roethlisberger starts dating someone new, the Pittsburgh media is all over it.

Tom Brady has also attracted heavy mainstream media attention for his habit of dating movie stars and supermodels, but he wasn't ambushed by GQ to do a photospread, he volunteered for it.

Slowly over the years athletes have been treated more and more like celebrities, and with good reason; sports is big business in North America, and professional athletes are paid large sums of money to attract fans to games. You could compare A-Rod to Brad Pitt, both get paid large sums of money to attract bigger audiences. 

If fans want to know what A-Rod is doing in Canada (obviously going to a strip club because it is true what they say about strip clubs in Canada, just ask guy who was at SuperBowl XL in Detroit and headed across the border to Windsor), then the media will try their best to give it to them.

All I have to say is that professional sports journalists everywhere should have seen this coming from a mile away. So watch out professional athletes everywhere, you could be next!