Lets get this out of the way right off the bat; sports are irrelevant. They don’t matter. Nothing about them matters. When you watch a pre-season game, the announcer of that game will continually jabber something along the lines of, “folks, the play has been a bit spotty today, but you can’t blame the competitors for their lack of motivation because these games don’t count yet.” Well, what does that mean? Aren’t all games, at their core, exhibitions? I mean, if Reggie Bush doesn’t get into the endzone again this Sunday, he’s not going to be executed. As much as die-hard fans want to believe it; football is not a life and death experience. This isn’t to say it’s not important—200 million sportsfans in 100 countries can’t all be wrong—because it is. But it’s definitely not substantial enough to deflect our gaze from things that are truly important; crime, education and the disenfranchisement of minorities to name a few things. Except that it does deflect our gaze. Apparently, Americans just aren’t multi-taskers. It would be impossible for us to enjoy sports and fix cultural and societal ills, so why even try?
All right, time to get down from my soapbox because I’m not purposefully writing an indictment of sport. Americans tend to deify athletes. We allow them to be paid too much while giving back nothing beyond entertainment. But this isn’t their fault, you know. There is another way to look at this. Sports aren’t of vital importance, and we can all agree on this. If we can all also agree that we place too much stock in teams that have nothing to do with ourselves beyond a shared tax base (and geographical proximity). Well, if we can all agree on all that garbage, saying sports aren't important, yet they retain this importance from so many of those same people then isn't it possible that sports actually are vitally important. Perception is reality, right. I mean, these people still care. Perhap, sports aren’t on par with food or water, but they’re close. Maybe sports are like the In-N-Out Burger of our diets. They aren’t necessary, but it’s no fun to live in a world without them. However, there’s much more to this analogy than simply saying, “It’s obvious, we like sports because they’re fun.” This is, most definitely, true. However, the same can be said about everything in life. Why do we love Casablanca? Because it’s a great movie, right? Is that the whole story though? Isn’t Casablanca a meditation on what the cost of doing the right thing is? What is the right thing anyways? And I know a lot of enjoyment can be sapped from things by intellectualizing them, but its one key to overcoming those people who would say we don’t need sporting ideals. It’s a way to say, “Hey, us pseudo-intellectuals love sports too.” These are the same intellectuals who decry teachers as the poor underpaid while neglecting to notice the sheer human excellence involved in the making of an athlete while glossing over the fact of the matter; way more people are qualified to be teachers than are qualified to be professional athletes.
Still, in the wake of tragedies like the Sean Taylor shooting I’m forced to wonder why we, as a society, place sports on such a pedestal. And this question quickly becomes even more elemental; why do I continue to place them on a pedestal? Like every thing that interests me, this argument comes back to me. But it’s the same for all of us. How do sports enrich your life? In my life, I tend to use sport as a prism through which I see the rest of the world. They allow me to create a worldview and they form my interactions with the world around me because almost everyone else has knowledge of sport to almost the same extent. This cannot be overstated. The fact that it allows me to see myself and to understand others is a reason for them to remain important. But there’s another even more important point to keep in mind. Sports are fun. They’re better than movies or theater because there is an objective winner, but they’re better than science because, played at their highest level, they are more art than science. Sometimes, an In-N-Out Burger is really a whole lot better than anything else.
