There are rabid fans in every country around the world, those ready to defend the honor of "their" team, "their" champions. They act as though their devotion could actually impact the outcome of professional athletic competitions. Very few question why the sports industry continues to pay their athletes millions upon millions of dollars to hit a ball with a stick, or kick a ball into a net, when there are crazed, adoring fans that practically foam at the mouth while watching their stars in action. I absolutely question these payouts, this obsession with athletes.
The biggest issue I have with professional sports is the idea that these glorified entertainers are paid obscene amounts of money to play games, while there are members of our society providing essential services at minimum wage rates: namely, anyone who grows and harvests food. We MUST have food to eat to survive; we certainly do NOT need professional athletes.
Some might argue that these competitions provide an essential outlet for our natural urges, that we can only exist living on top of each other in such dense human concentrations because we have sports to watch. (Again, like the spy shows and movies, it is a cathartic experience.) Give the masses a well-matched championship "fight" and they can cheer and celebrate their brains out, ready to go back to their workaday lives come Monday morning.
I still don't see much stock in sports, though. Sure, for kids and teenagers it can be a healthy outlet, a great place to learn about working in teams, seeing what comes from discipline, and it's a great workout. Our brains function at a higher capacity when we exercise regularly. But that should be enough.
Also, sports should not come before the arts programs in our schools, yet time and again the arts continue to suffer. Music calms us, develops the mind; sports bring out our more base natures. Hormonal teenagers need the arts to calm them, not just sports to act out their angst.
Getting back to the idea of champions--I find it intriguing how sports fans feel the need to identify themselves with these athletes. Are they truly happy cheering for this stranger's success? When studying human history, we observe a few key people rising to power, sometimes out of obscurity. Did we really want these people to succeed and support them because we believed in them, or were we as individuals too scared to reach for the stars ourselves?
Perhaps this is circular: we don't believe that the average person can really make it, so we focus our efforts supporting the few who seem to have "the right stuff." Only a few make it to the top, so we don't even bother trying to be spectacular. Thus the elite few remain few in numbers, from one generation to the next.
Here's another point of view: Maybe there are so few true champions because there are only that many truly great people out there. I, for one, do not believe this. We all have star material in our makeup, but for whatever reason, only some of us pursue and develop that material. And I attribute that attitude to society only being able to handle a handful of stars.
What would we do if at some point in our existence we all became equals? Revel in our magnificence, share lots of love in perfectly matched tennis matches? Or be miserable because our former acts of measuring self-worth--through comparison--are now pointless? But imagining what this situation would be like is like trying to imagine nine dimensions, when we can only comprehend three. In other words... another blog entry :)
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