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logo    For the Love of Sports


I  have often been perplexed by mankind's devotion to sports. Perhaps, in 400 BCE, when physical prowess was far more needed than it is today, such devotion made sense, but in today's world, it strikes me as absurd.

This devotion to professional sports teams is especially so. The people of Dallas, for instance, with whom I am most acquainted, consider it sacrilegious not to be a supporter of the Dallas Cowboys. Yet such devotion has little or no justification. The Dallas Cowboys have not played a game in Dallas for decades. The team does not train in Dallas; its facilities are not in Dallas; its players are not Dallas natives and, for the most part, do not live in Dallas. So why do the people of Dallas express such affection for the team?

This kind of devotion is analogous to being devoted to a corporation, for that is what professional sports teams are. The people of Detroit, for instance, might better express this kind of devotion to the Ford Motor Company than to the Detroit Lions. The Ford Motor Company's success is far more important to the residents of Detroit than the success of the Lions. Yet the Lions do seem to be far more important to the people of Detroit than the Ford Motor Company is, even though life is no different in Detroit the day after a game, regardless of who won, than it was the day before.

Our secondary schools, colleges, and universities also express a similar absurd devotion to sports. It is well known that many of these institutions are devoted to teams, many of whose players never even graduate. Isn't it absurd for educational institutions to be more devoted to their sports teams than to their graduation rates, and even more importantly, to the quality of the educations their students receive?

But there is something even more revealing. The Winter Olympics have just begun in Torino, Italy. I, like many others, watched some last night. After about half an hour, I was bored into somnolence. The repetition of activities can be likened to watching a person walking on a treadmill. Every athlete in each category makes the same moves that all the others make. Having seen one ski jump, haven't we seen them all?

Even worse, every four years the event is repeated, with all the same events made up of all the same actions. It can be likened to Hollywood's making just one movie over and over again, only changing the actors each time. Wouldn't that make a wonderful world of entertainment? The plot never changes; only the protagonists do. That sums up sporting events. And the plot is even trite.

Some anthropologist-sociologist needs to study this phenomenon. In learning about the root of this stupid behavior, we, perhaps, would have the grounds for understanding why human beings can commit the same stupid errors over and over again, such as exploitation, crime, and even war. (2/12/2006)