Sports

I asked the question on Twitter and FB after reading this article (actually, after seeing several articles on various sports related issues), just how much happier would we all be without sports?

I never got any responses, though I did have a great conversation about the topic with my teaching assistant, Sam.

I posit that while initially we all might not be happier, I think without a doubt we'd all be much more productive.

I recall in the lat 1980's my father declaring, after the Vikings blew yet another late lead on a team and lost, "Why does a person waste three hours on a Sunday watching the Vikings when they could be outside getting something done?"

Only thanks to 24 hour a day sports networks, we now just don't devote 3 hours on a Sunday.  We now have 3 hours (actually a good 5 hours at least if you watch Monday Night Countdown and the post game shows) to devote to Monday Night Football.  We now have Thursday night football thanks to the NFL Network (there goes another 5 hours).  And there are now 3 games televised every single Sunday (noon, 3, and the night game on Football Night in America).

And that doesn't take into account any college football or any other sport you might follow.  And that doesn't take into account any of the god-awful sports radio shows that have cropped up in the past 15 years.

But I think that soon once people got over the loss of their beloved sports, I honestly think happiness would set in.

And I don't say this as someone who has an ax to grind.  I am a coach (albeit just 8th grade football but I've spent 14 years coaching various levels and also played football and baseball in school), former athlete, and once crazed sports fan.

I'm just wondering how much better off we'd be without sports, since they seem to go beyond their chief function: entertainment.

When I asked Sam the question, "What good are sports really?" he thought long and hard.  Though he loves them and would miss them dearly, he didn't have a good answer than the single word, "entertainment."

Yes, sometimes they can make you feel part of a team (and quite often they can also make you feel like you aren't part of a team - just ask anyone who has ever played a sport and they'll tell you the same thing), sometimes they can teach you the lesson that hard work pays off (but again, ever play on a team where an athlete is so gifted they never have to work at it but (and I'm not saying that this isn't right) they get to play over people who work a hundred times harder than that athlete because they are just that talented?), sometimes they can teach you how to handle pressure (but for anyone, like me, who ever took a ride after a game with their father who talked about the glory days and how your team isn't playing hard enough . . . well, that's a totally different kind of pressure . . . and one's kids shouldn't have to learn to handle), and sometimes they can teach friendship and compassion (I think of a former player whose mother was murdered and much - if not all - of his former teammates came back one weekend to help search for her body).

Is that it?

I often hear people say "Well, sports keep kids off the street."  If sports is all that is keeping our kids from lives of crime, then we're screwed.  I often hear people say, "Well, sports prepare you for the real world." If this is true, what kind of real world do you live in?  I wouldn't tolerate a boss screaming at me or kicking a trash can over or throwing a clipboard at me after a meeting.  I'd quite or file a law suit.
I hear others say "Well, they can bring a family together."  And I agree.  Our 8th graders get a ton of support from their parents.  And that's great, but, again, if sports is the only thing keeping our families tightly knit, then we as a culture are screwed.

Okay, enough ranting.  On to the stories I've stumbled across that made this question even arise.

From the world of Pop-Warner football: A group of 10 and 11 year olds run a bounty for injury players and hard hits.  Or is it hard hits that injure players?

The dark side of sports is that it allows parents to live vicariously through their kids to recapture some of their old 'glory days.'  Why else would such a silly (really a barbaric) thing like a bounty ever occur?

Another dark side is that winning is important.  I can't tell you how often (and I've been guilty of this in the past too) get caught up in winning, even at the elementary school level.  I recall one parent actually telling my wife at a 6th grade basketball tournament when the team reached the championship game: "This is a tournament, coach.  It's not about equal playing time."  Really?  That is dumb.  Let's just see how that team does this year as seniors to see how important earning that 6th grade championship really was.  In high school we pretty much lost at just about everything.  We might have had a few winning records in girls basketball, hockey, and baseball, but we all lost relatively early in the playoffs, yet at my 20th year reunion this summer, I saw plenty of successful people enjoying their lives.  I didn't see anyone seriously harmed over not going to state in any sport.

Another issue about athletics, and one that I'm seeing more and more of now is severe injuries.  I know at least three players in the past four years who have changed sports or weren't allowed to play because of concussion issues.  This editorial, "Football is Doomed," raises some interesting discussion point.  Are we at a point in athletics because of a devotion to weight lifting, training, and 12 month out of the year sports that we are now producing athletes that are far stronger, faster, and thicker than ever before that we are actually ruining many of the sports we love?

When you have NFL players choosing to not allow their kids to actually play football for safety reasons, well . . . that speaks volumes to me.