A few days ago on one of the several forums I haunt on a daily basis I came across a thread someone had started about NFL predictions. This particular forum isn't dedicated to sports, it's definitely more of a gathering site for intellectuals, which brings along with it a severe over-representation of angry and physically uncoordinated people who wouldn't have survived the stone age and made the jump into the early neolithic.
At any rate, several people posted their predictions, most of whom used the word "we" when referring to their favorite team, as in, "If the Falcons can shore up the D and find a solid replacement for Tony Gonzalez, I think we can win a lot of games."
The thread was then overran by guys whose most vigorous acts of reproduction are accompanied only by the Lieutenant Uhura poster tacked to the ceiling above their beds.
By some sort of list here are their complaints about sports fans and sports in general. This obviously isn't limited to the people on the forum I referred to; you've run across them many times in your life.
1. "You're not on the team, you have no vested interest, and you probably never played professional sports in your life. It's stupid that you say "we."
True enough: I'm not on the team, I have no money invested, and I never played pro sports. But here's the deal: I started rooting for the Oakland Raiders some three and a half decades ago. Back then, John Madden was the coach, Kenny Stabler was the quarterback. John Madden is now a sportscaster and Kenny Stabler's liver filed an irreconcilable differences petition against him several years after he left Oakland. The point is that neither are with the team anymore. But you know who's still here? Me. Me and millions of other fans who watch no matter how dismal the chances are and how disgraced we are among our rival NFL fans. To call them peers only adds to the weirdness of sports-fandom and frankly the idea that I have anything in common with Kansas City Chiefs fans only reinforces my confidence in a black oblivion once my heart stops beating.
Fans buy tickets, buy merchandise, fill the stadiums. We watch the games on TV and enough of us buy the shit that the sponsors are hawking during the 5,000 fucking commercials that happen during each game so that the owners of the teams can pay players to show up and destroy their bodies every Sunday. The NFL and other sports leagues around the world survive because of TV revenues. If somehow the world's sports fans got together and decided to not buy a single thing on any TV commercial shown during any sports broadcast, professional athletics would cease to exist as we know them.
Players, coaches, and even owners come and go. The fans never leave. Without us sports doesn't exist. It would be stupid if we didn't say "we."
2. It's pathetic that you're watching a bunch of overpaid, thick headed jocks getting paid millions to play a stupid game.
This is where the bitterness about being an uncoordinated spazz begins to really show itself. But for the moment I'll take the high road. My college major was English. I've seen and read enough Shakespeare to truly hate him. Wanna know why Shakespeare's plays are boring and no one cares about them? It's because we know how they end. For hundreds of years we've known it. And if you pick any other classical theatrical work, any movie, any book you know that the ending is predetermined. It's already been written. You can turn to the last page or fast forward to the end if you want. That said, I love books, I love reading and I love the great works of literature. But the first time I read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (The Greatest Book Ever Written) I could have turned to the last few pages to find out everything that happens to the Joad family. That's not the case with sports.
Sports is the greatest theater in human existence because no one knows how it's going to end. Often before a game between a horrible team and one that's great, it's a safe bet that the great team will win easily. But last season the Arizona Cardinals beat the Patriots in New England. The Patriots had never lost an opening game in Gillette stadium and I counted on that fact so much that I got my ass booted from my betting pool in Week 2 of the 2012 NFL season. You have to watch from the beginning and go through the ups and downs. Watching sports is a very exciting, in the moment experience. Or maybe you could watch Oedipus Rex already knowing well in advance that Oedipus is nailing his mom (sorry about the spoiler but I'm pretty sure none of you is about to run out to investigate the works of Sophocles).
As for NFL, MLB, NBA, etc. players all being millionaires, that's a myth. The vast majority of players last 2-4 years, make a few hundred grand a year and then disappear from the pro sports scene forever. And almost all of them, regardless of status work their asses off to stay employed as athletes. It fails to work out for most of them.
3. Sports is a waste of time. How does the world benefit from it?
Or how about this: why not just admit that when you were a kid you sucked at sports and probably got picked on by someone more athletic than you? You resented the popularity that came with being a good athlete and girls didn't like you.
I probably sound like the smart-ass douchebag who lettered in two sports and dated a hot cheerleader. Nah. I was good at sports when I was a kid but when high school came I got this crazy idea that girls liked rebellious musicians; so I went that route. Really bad decision...
Anyway, at some point you have to accept that you can't be good at everything. Hell, many of are lucky if we're especially good at any one thing. The point is that you shouldn't hate sports because some jocks had a better adolescence than you or that you got picked on by them. Everyone gets picked on. I had an asshole older brother who made every waking hour at home an exercise in taking shit from someone you couldn't do anything about. Do I still hate him because he picked on me? Of course not. I hate him for many other reasons, none that have to do with him pinning me to the floor and slowly dropping a stink-breath loogy on my cheek when I was eight.
How does sports benefit the world? Well, my first thought is, who cares? I could come up with some psychological horse crap about how sports allows people to vent blood lust and be part of a tribe. But it's more simple than that: it's fun. There you go. Having fun benefits the human condition and therefore the world.
So if you don't rain nerd downers on my sports threads, I won't kick sand in the face of your Star Trek or comic book threads.
Thanks for reading.
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