Third, sports are ultimately irrelevant. I always love watching people watch the Olympics because it ultimately boils down to;
Who can throw the sphere the furthest.
Who can twirl the prettiest on the rink.
Who can do the most flippy-things in the air.
None of it…
Cures cancer
Boosts economic growth
Promotes freedom and liberty
Alas, this is why everybody knows who got traded to New York, but doesn’t know what the national debt is as a percent of GDP.
14 comments:
True, but they provide honest employment for many.
think you've got a real rant here on pro sports with the avg fan droping at least $1,000 on season tickets and most likely making only $50,000. looks to me like pro sports is becoming yet another scheme to line the pockets of the rich from that of the poor.
True, but professional sports/Olympics provide a lot of gainful employment for the supporting industries.
taxpayers fund all this crap while making billionaires more money. if people care so much about their sports, let them pay for it subsidy free. the already outrageous price of tickets etc will really hit home for the nether apes (as bar bar calls them) when they actually have to pay for their own hobby without other peoples money.
it is also the moronic sports fan who insists on watching every game possible that raise cable and internet rates for everyone else. beyond the bread and circus element sports are a total societal screw job. play, don't watch.
Goes to show you how much entertainment matters instead of "depressing" real world matters.
I'm a big Beantown fan from Winnipeg.
Have been since Bobby Orr.
At times in my life I've wondered why I should care about overpaid athletes chasing a black piece of rubber around the ice or whether or not David Ortiz can hit a moonshot.
When the Red Sox won the World Series three times, the Patriots won the Super Bowl three times and the Celtics won recently and back in the day and when the Bruins won three years ago after thirty years of waiting...
Every time that happened I called my Dad.
Maybe they don't cure cancer but I am sure that they have indirectly or directly led to a fair amount of advancements in orthopedic surgery and other sports related medical treatments that would otherwise have been too expensive to proceed with by an average Joe that didn't need his knee to work perfect after an injury vs. a world class athlete that the team wants back on the field/ice/court as soon as possible.
Pro athletics have done a lot more for humanity than video games but you won't hear me tell you to stop wasting your valuable time playing them.
It is entertainment and if I want to use it to escape real life for 3 hours and root for a team that I am emotionally invested in for whatever reason I am, how is that different than you escaping into Call of Duty?
Also I play all the sports that I watch for leisure. Watching the pro's play is like studying another language to me in that I learn new moves or at least try to emulate what I see that would make me a better player.
I do agree that teams shouldn't be subsidized by local/state governments but I don't blame the owners for abusing it. I blame the voters and the politicians that keep giving the billionaires handouts.
Sports fandom is a substitute good with an enormous ROI. All you need to do is show up at the bar on game night and you are in. You will be part of a vibrant social scene, temporarily possess a sense of achievement, bond with strangers through meaningless statistics, and feel part of something meaningful. Fans realized early on that hard work and effort rarely pay off. Even computer games require that you spend time and effort playing them, sports fans just need to drink beer and cheer. Did anything in your life ever give you as much satisfaction for as little effort as sports night does for these guys? They won’t cure cancer boost the economy or enhance liberty but neither will anyone on a blog. I have no interest in sports and their obsessed fans but envy their happiness in something so trivial. It’s not real but they don’t care, they are enjoying the decline.
So very true.
Professional sports are nothing but a distraction for the masses to keep them from noticing the ass reaming they are getting in life.
They are a wonderful scam for the boss class, cheaper than a secret police force and associated government organs to keep people in line. People just sedate themselves into irrelevancy when you combine sports and the boob tube. Sure once in a while they'll have a two bit booze fueled after game riot where some proles get their cars and businesses thrashed but that's it. Cheap at twice the price if you want the proles stupid and out of the way.
Black Coffee
I'd say these men matter very much, otherwise the wealthy and government would not go to the extremes they do to keep them distracted and boozed up. History shows these men, if organized and lead they can overthrow governments. The Romans feared this particular group to such a extent they invented "bread circus" to keep them focused on something else than their poverty caused by the wealthy.
True, but professional sports/Olympics provide a lot of gainful employment for the supporting industries.
While pro sports probably bring in more market-based revenue than they consume in taxpayer subsidies (I don't have any hard statistics at hand to back this up), the same cannot be said for Olympic games. These cost the public sector much more than they bring in in terms of revenue or subsidies.
You can't just dislike something in this day and age, it has to be evil somehow too. You don't like sports....good for you.
If you want to drive a sports guy nuts tell him that he's no different than the nerds who line up to see the next Star Wars movie with the only difference being that at least the sci-fi nuts actually know that they're nerds living in a fantasy world.
I'm not a sports guy. Over the course of my life my opinion has gone from cynically despising sports, like what you demonstrated in the post, to grudgingly neutral. But I have to say: Bigtime case of horse you rode in on.
Professional sports will never cure cancer. Neither will video games, blogging, playing musical instruments, classical dancing, or anything else the ROK base will stamp with approval as a worthwhile use of one's leisure time.
But maybe I'm biased. I grew up in Nike's backyard and personally saw how much economic productivity it brought to the town I grew up in. Productivity that were it not for sports wouldn't be possible.
Post a Comment