There is frequent talk of what exactly the term “sports” represents. Dictionary.com defines the noun as first “an athletic activity requiring physical prowess”. This is the commonly understood definition of sports. As children, our parents support sports because it makes you grow faster, stronger, and keeps you in shape. It also provides a way for kids to blow off their creative energies that is not destructive. This fits well into a subsequent definition for sports, “a diversion or recreation”. It works much this way for children.
Proponents for youth sports commonly suggest that sports provide a medium for children to learn leadership, teamwork, seniority, and accountability. And, it does. Perhaps not to the degree that people think, but it does. For the kid, it is mainly about the game, and that it is fun.
So, eventually kids grow up and become adults. Adults either follow professional and collegiate teams, or try to play in communal leagues. Eventually, sports become something that is held down by large segments of the populace. The stereotyped reaction to sports is that is a waste of time. It takes over the entire calendar. The professional players are paid too much and we have inappropriately distributed the wealth in our society. We are supposed to outgrow the games of our youth, and grow up to enjoying bridge, book clubs, and 60 minutes. However, what we don’t realize is that these arguments are either faulty, or our own fault.
Sports are a measure of leisure time. We take our leisure time to watch them. It is said that the mark of a civilization’s progression towards full development is how much leisure time that civilization has. In this country, we spend much of our time watching sports. Other countries have more leisure time than the United States (Western European countries come to mind), but dedicate less time than Americans to sports. They also have fewer professional level sports to follow than Americans. Americans watch more sports per minute of free time than almost anyone else. This country has provided a type of sport for pretty much any person. This is in response to demand by the customers through the cable subscriptions, sports gear, and attendance in stadiums. We have created the sports machine that is such a large part of the American entertainment system, the same one we argue about.
From a basic humanistic, contributory perspective, are football players paid too much? Yes, they are. Teachers contribute more to the world. Firemen contribute more. So do judges, doctors, and even bus drivers. But, the same people who would support these conclusions buy tickets to games, and season passes to the NFL Network. We support the industry. Most of the salary caps for sports and the percentage of profit the players get is determined based of off a percentage of the previous year’s team profit. We directly provide the players high salaries. This brings me back to the third given definition of sports, that of the diversion.
In general, the majority of the population of this country, never mind the world, does not enjoy their occupation. For most of those that do, there is some other pressure that makes them unhappy with their status in life. By bills, family problems, or perhaps physical or mental issues, most people are made somewhat unhappy. There are very few people that would qualify themselves as truly happy. Diversions are things that make people happy. They escape their dysfunctional world and become part of something else. This was the function of reading and cinema. Sports as entertainment represent a diversion. It is a way for people to get out of their daily lives and enjoy something else. It is a diversion from problems. Athletics can serve a purpose to make people in society productive and content to move about their lives. In Roman times, there is the famous example of the gladiators. That was the sport of the time, and showed the confluence of the primitive shows of strength and such contests as diversionary entertainment. To soothe the anger of the population at hard times, emperors would call games and give out food while gladiators killed each other to roaring crowds. Barbaric as it was, sports served a purpose for that society too.
Sports also ties into something that is so interesting in human culture: competition. Humans have forever loved competition. For hundreds of years, we have loved games and competition. Soccer and baseball have been around for hundreds of years. Card playing has been popular for centuries. Going back to cavemen times, there would be boulder throwing and club hitting as contests of strength.
America has embraced the spirit of competition, but taken it to an almost more ruthless level than the Romans. Our daily work is competition based. Instead of embracing the talents of others around us, we instead fight to get up the next rung in the ladder. There is less cooperation, and more cutthroat tactics. That is the free market system we have created. This aspect of our lives continues into the free time we possess. We love watching sports. From this, we have created more ways of having competition. Thus, fantasy sports were born.
There is no better way of showing how much sports has integrated with society that the example of fantasy sports. We created a way of competing based on a game of competition. And this new form of playing a game has exploded so that everyone and his brother now play fantasy sports in some form. The internet has made this even more popular, and diversified the type of sports followed.
It should now be accepted that sports are staying, are nothing more than distractions to our current lives, and symbols of our culture. However, it should also be accepted that there is nothing wrong with this. Athletics, like academics, are one pinnacle of human evolution and dedication. Athletics, sports, can show the best of the human race, and that is something that should be celebrated. We all love seeing the best win, and also, seeing that underdog overcome all challenges.
Perhaps those who fervently argue against the existence and success of professional sports should focus a bit more on the cutthroat policies of the general workplace, and making sure that the next generation takes the best parts of sports and applies those to their lives instead of the negative ones.
Bliss
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