On the Pointlessness of Professional Sports

So a team with a green uniform plays a game against a team with a blue uniform. Surely fans of watching professional sporting events know that sometimes teams win, and sometimes teams lose. They must know this going in. But they act so surprised and devastated when "their" team loses. They act like it is an impossibility that they did not previously consider possible.

So a bunch of grown men throw a ball around for a period of time and are lauded as heroes. So much so that these intellectual titans are simply given millions and millions of dollars a year. To PLAY A GAME. They make millions of dollars A YEAR, not a one-shot deal, A YEAR - to play a game. Why?

Perhaps it is because sports fans project their hopes and dreams on to these men as they play their sport. Perhaps they subconsciously imagine it is THEM playing the game, thus temporarily taking them on a fantasy that takes them away from their dreary, depressing existence while the game is going on. Inevitably, this becomes addictive because naturally they don't want to go back to their pathetic life, so they stay invested in a team of lunkheaded criminals as a spoonful of sugar to help the unabashed bitterness of their life go down.

And that is how our vaunted, neo-Olympian Gods can get away with running people over with their cars, carrying guns in public places, and torturing animals, among other crimes. Because they help people escape how much life sucks. Never mind that they have never created anything of value, i.e. a product or service which we might find valuable, never mind they have never created anything of artistic value, such as a painting, novel or film, never mind they have never contributed to the betterment of life as we know it in any tangible form, still they get paid millions of dollars and get free passes for their transgressions to play a game that makes the people that watch the game feel better about life, acting as a sort of crutch.

From the college level, on through to their professional "career", these idiotic sportsmen get a myriad of privileges, breaks, shortcuts and bonuses that the average person does not get. Their lives, as a result, are easier and more lavish than the average fan. From the fact that they don't have to do their own schoolwork, to the endless supply of groupies and everything in between, it's good to be a moron if you can throw a ball.

So what we have is a sort of symbiotic relationship between the fan, who roots for the blue team though they cannot explain why, and the high-paid, idiotic criminal who plays a game for a living and expects to be treated like King Menelaus.

So fans will paint their bodies and stand in freezing cold weather, and dress up in ridiculous costumes and riot in the streets when "their team" loses, because due to some mental lack, they have invested their hopes and dreams into a bunch of belligerent, inarticulate goons who couldn't care less about them.

Musicians, artists, teachers, painters, filmmakers, scientists, AIDS researchers, mathematicians, professors, novelists, poets, historians, archivists, astronauts, and all your kith and kin shut up and please stop endeavoring to touch some part of the human condition, there's a game on tonight.