Competitive sports in this country have become a monster behemoth in the last 30 years or so. They are a multibillion dollar industry consuming billions of peoples hard earned dollars. Americans have been trained since youth to use them like a drug.
In early childhood children are taught to beat their peers in games of competition. They are indoctrinated in commercial sports to become a slave of it industry. Soccer, football, baseball are pushed on many kids. Other young children are taught that its fun and they are better than other kids if they can perform to the rules and rituals of this cult like craze.
Children who are not interested are chastised and shunned as if they were lepers.
Other than the great some of money involved, billions of hours of human time and experience are wasted on such trivial things. Many are ostracized if they don’t join in with the cult like behavior of competitive sports brainwashed minions, For a man in this country to be uninterested in sports, he is automatically assumed by many be inferior or defective. Its been heard more than once “he must be gay, he don’t like sports!”
Women have had to feign interest in competitive sports to gain acceptance from males or to fit into groups. Many have succumbed by the brainwashing in the process. Many others have been forced into to gain acceptance from their fathers.
Children in school are often times treated cruelly because they have no interest in competitive sports. Ones who lack the physical attributes to compete, are shunned and made fun of, as if they had some social disease. In High Schools throughout the country, a child who is not into competitive sports is given no other place to fit in. They become the bad kids many times just because they are taught to feel inferior or defective. In order to assert themselves and feel important, some resort to pretty drastic behavior like the kids who did the killing at Columbine. Competitive sports teach indifference to others, and mob behavior. A lot of your school bullies come from the ranks of sport obsessive families.
Many believe the ruthless behavior of the business world is derived from sport culture.
In training and motivating its obvious with all the reference to business and competitive sports. A lot of men are not hired, if they don’t demonstrate an interest in sports. Even at work people are ostracized and shunned for not liking competitive sports. Competitive sports have become so ingrained in our society it divides people much like drug use, politics and religion.
In the early days of history, competitive sport was used to brainwash people into preparedness to go to war. It really all started as a device to train for war. War and killing are at the very core of competitive sports. So is it no wonder, that competitive sports can be such a destructive thing?
This has destroyed families, people have been made drug addicts from their participation and the desire to fulfill the mind set which comes from it. Fathers have used it to ignore their kids and avoid their responsibilities. Nowadays there are mothers who do the same thing. It has become of drug of its own. A drug to numb emotions, to avoid reality and to shun responsibility. I know of many people who can recall needing the attention of a parent, only to be denied because a game was on. You mix the drug alcohol with it and it can become an abusive tool.
But billions are made with it, from the sale of food to booze and decorations and trappings. I just shudder to think of all the positive things that money could be spent on. Marx once wrongly said that religion was the “opiate of the masses” but I think truly today in America, competitive sports have, in fact, become just that. IS this just another thing which has degraded American to such a pitiful mess?
I know I am going to get trashed for this post… just as I have stated above, it’s almost a sin in this country to speak out against competitive sports. But go ahead and prove me right or wrong. Give it your best shot, but try to see that there are two sides to this issue.
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Comments: 54
Now we have people in professional sports who make more zeros then I can count, doing nothing more than those before them did. Much of it has been glamorized way beyond what it really is. To think how many homeless and hungry people can be fed, and sheltered on one of their salaries, makes me so ill! The monies racked up for endorsements, alone could help cut the deficit. It seems that too much in our world today is all assbackwards.
A friend of mine told me he was "getting his life back." Meaning the football season was starting. The sad thing about it was... he was serious. I've always been a little on the outside, so being thought of as strange for not being a sport lunatic is ok with me. I watch for the fun of sometimes. But more often than not...
...I have better things to do, man.
As a child I was fat, awkward and not very competitive at sports. I hated sports in school and was always one of the last picked for any game (a very tough thing for a kid). Watching my own children's progress through school I noted how very many year-end awards went to athletic accomplishment and how few went to academic accomplishment, the exact opposite of what it should be in an educational institute.
However, despite my school experience with sports, I recall many hours of playing pick-up hockey, pond hockey, ball hockey and baseball with friends that I enjoyed a lot. My son participated in soccer, football, hockey and softball through school and other youth organizations, though he shared his father's physical limitations. My daughter played rugby at one point, but mostly avoided sports.
The insane amounts of money lavished on sports is indeed way out of whack with the real importance it holds for society. This is worse in the US than in Canada. Our universities do not have football games that attract 100,000 paying customers or whose revenue is more vital to the university than any other source. The only professional, major league sports operating in Canada are the NHL (6 of 30 teams here, the rest in the USA), MLB (only the Toronto Blue Jays left north of the border) and the NBA (only the Toronto Raptors left north of the border). The Canadian Football League (CFL) operates only in Canada and amounts to a minor league compared to the NFL, in both salaries and revenues. There are a smattering of other professional sports but they are all small dollar enterprises (Lacrosse, soccer, what have you).
I think that the problem is not sports itself but the way sports has been corrupted by the capitalist ethic. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a rant against capitalism, which is a wonderful way to run a business. But when profit becomes the only important thing in sports it is very destructive to the ideals of sport. It is why athletes are on steroids and other cheating drugs.
Look at the Olympics. When reintroduced to the world at the end of the 19th century it was about the human ideal of physical perfection. It was about amateur competition and the athletes had other things going on in their lives (often university studies).
Now it is about winning the gold medal and becoming wealthy as a result. The athletes do nothing but train. They are either out and out professionals or amateurs in only the most theoretical sense of the word.
I have no problem with an athlete being well compensated for their performance, as any other entertainer might be (and salaries are ludicrously high for rock stars and movie stars, too). But multi-millions of dollars a year to play a game is not a good use of resources.
Everyone from 8 to 80 should be out there on the athletic field as participants in one sport or another, but instead we have become a nation of spectators. Too many couch potatoes watching the professionals leads the nation to a kind of self destruction.
I wish I knew how to get the Ameican spectators off their duffs and out onto the sports fields that are available in most communities. Wouldn't it be nice to see them drinking more gatorade and less beer. Obesity would virtually disappear; they would be happier and healthier.
Now I live in a city where people actually worship the college team. It's so stupid. These kids come in to town and act like their crap doesn't stink, commit crimes, and get off without serving time. They give nothing back to the community. It's shameful.
I was so happy my kids showed no interest in sports.
if my sons want to join in on sports then ok but neither yeti nor i are big on sports and we share your view
I wouldn't have thought it was possible to find a place where people were more obsessed with sports than Texas, but I did when I moved to Australia. Obsessed as in "I only got three hours of sleep because I was up watching the cricket (or the tennis, or the rugby), and also in the sense that many of the adults I knew continued to play some sort of organized sport (including senior citizens playing lawn bowls), and in many small towns, sporting clubs are a big part of community life. And yet despite all that, for the most part it felt very different from the sporting culture back in Texas, because Big Money hadn't taken over everything yet.
Now, a lot has changed, particularly at the pro level. But at the community level, it's not too bad. Our oldest son started playing basketball last year, and he enjoys it, meets and hangs out with kids he might not otherwise get to know, and the competitive aspect is kept fairly low-key. The middle son wants to start playing next year, but it's just one of a number of things he's interested and involved in.
Sorry Dex, but there's no way I can equate their participation in sport with being addicted to dangerous drugs.
Good point, Sheryl. There's a bit of that sort of thing around here, but we talked to friends and others to get a sense of which sports/leagues to avoid so that we could reduce our chances of getting tangled up with it. So far, so good.
Gotcha, Dex. I understand where you're coming from, but to be fair, the same can be said of anything. I think the problem isn't so much the "drug" (sports, church, work, Gather, etc.) as that so many people seem to want to escape or ignore reality in the first place. How did so many people end up with families that they desperately want to escape from?
Couple of thoughts:
- when I was in high school, I played field hockey for four years. Those times on the field and with my team were some of my most memorable times in school. Our coaches were disciplined, but mentors and never pushed winning...always team spirit and good sportsmanship. I won't say that I did not learn those things in other groups - perhaps in band and chorus - but there was something in addition to the lessons and comraderie. There was the exercise, the fresh air after classes and before a long night of homework, the critical thinking skills involved. I would not want to totally take away those opportunities to kids who want them.
- For children, sports is often used by parents as a replacement for real 'play'. It is easy - there is adult supervision, the kids are occupied a LOT, and the parents can live vicariously through their children's successes. The problem is, this is NOT real play. Real play is unstructured, imaginative, cooperative, and with the child in control. I fear that the structured 'play' of sports is inhibiting the real benefits of 'playtime' by replacing it - and that means we are going to have an unimaginative, competitive, frustrated group of adults in this country who do not know how to think critically or work cooperatively in teams without getting some kind of trophy for it.
One of the great losses in this age of technology is letting kids be kids and allowing them the freedom to explore their worlds, free of adult supervision. For some reason, parents are not considered 'good parents' if they allow their children this freedom and don't schedule their days full of sports and lessons in a variety of areas. Such a loss...
In business I read a lot of articles about young adults entering the workplace now who don't know how to problem-solve, who expect constant rewards and reinforcement just for doing their jobs. It's very sad. I hope things turn around, but it's up to parents to do it.
In the '50s the town my family lived in got rid of Little League. Parents were upset that most of the summer was taken up with playoffs at levels above the local. They started their own baseball program where kids actually got to play in June and July. August was reserved for family vacations. :) To tell the truth, I liked playing softball with my friends better.
School sports used to be a much smaller deal. It's the Clown at the Birthday Party syndrome. Kids' birthday parties used to be back yard events with party games and cake. Now they have clowns, jumping things, or parents just rent restaurants. The cheapo party favors have become expensive goodie bags. Everything has gotten bigger and "better." Makes me sound like a geezer but I think it's better for kids to learn to appreciate the small. They have less chance of getting jaded or disappointed by adulthood.
Probably because you and your friend were calling the shots, working together as a group without adult supervision. Such an important skill to develop as a child - and so rare nowadays.
You make a lot of good points that I can agree with. I was a jock, blessed with sports ability. I enjoyed it. The comeraderie. The working together. Learning how to win & lose, & life goes on. Sportsmanship. Feeling good when you excel. Respecting your opponent's skills.
Sure, commercialism has taken over sports; Not to mention the Pro's but even the olympics, down to college sports, & even H.S. kids who are drafted by the majors when they're 16 yrs. old. Yeah, they're all millionaires, & I can't afford to buy a ticket to the game anymore.
Right now I'm watching the Twins & Tigers in an extra-inning game, that for the 2nd year in a row, has gone to a tie-breaker 163rd game for the AL Central championship. Sports loyalty brings a community together. They'll win or lose, but I'm grateful for a long season of fun watching.
Damn! Twins just tied it up again in the 10th, as I speak, er, write. I don't think that any of those millionaires on the field right now are thinking about their bank accounts. They want to win so bad, they can taste it.
The purity of any sport is in our mind. It's not about those who play it, it's the game itself. When I was a kid, it was 90 ft. from home to 1st. Damn if it isn't the same for these guys. Hope you understand what I'm getting at. lol.
The best parent that I ever met, was a guy whose kid was a sure thing to make our "A" travelling hockey team, & he insisted that his kid play in the intra-squad association league instead. He wanted his kid to experience a broad range of options, & choose what he wanted.
I got so pissed off by it all, that I retired to refereeing hockey games. No more surprises; I knew that I would catch heat from both sides of the ice. LOL.
Bottom of the 12th, Twins win! Twins win! Twins win!.
Thanks the truth Ruth!