I Broke a Tradition This Year

Yes, I broke a long-running personal tradition this year. I accidentally did it, but it still counts. Now I have to start over. You see, I accidentally discovered who was playing in the superbowl the day before the bowl rather than my normal method of discovering it the day after when I also find out who won. As you can tell, the superbowl plays an important role in my life. Sorry, I know it is important to a lot of people, and they derive a lot of enjoyment out of anticipating, arguing and watching, but I don't get it. Professional organized team sports don't make any sense to me. At least with individual sports you have an element of personal skill and challenge, but even then I wonder. I mean basically we are making it possible to pay people more money per year than most of us will make in a lifetime, to play a kid's game. Professional football, basketball, and baseball players who are in high demand can easily be paid millions of dollars a year. Even the less in demand make hundreds of thousands, and that isn't including product endorsements, personal appearances, interviews, ect where they can easily earn 2 to 3 times as much as their salary.

I don't understand it. It's like actors and entertainers, we pay these people so we can watch them play a game or pretend to be something they aren't. We pay more to be entertained than we do for services that directly impact us. Someone tried to justify the high salaries of sports stars by telling me that they had such a short career. Career? They are playing a GAME. By definition a game is leisure, while a career is work. What is the difference between paying someone to play football and paying them to play hopstotch, red rover, old maid, chutes and ladders, or scrabble? Give me a $100,000 a year and I will happily play chutes and ladders or checkers for a couple of hours once a week. And I will retire in 10 to 12 years if you want me to.

Physical games were original done as a way to insure warriors stayed in good condition and helped them to practice some of the skills needed to fight during peace time while at the same time burning off some of the aggression warriors tend to naturally have. Later these games were encouraged at school because they resulted in kids getting excercise, learning things like teamwork, good sportmanship, how to win or lose gracefully, while burning up enough of their youthful energy that they might actually be dealt with in a classroom.