The State of Sports (SoS) 2011.

So, sports. People love 'em.. literally can't get enough. Where religion once was the opiate of the masses, the twin harbingers of mouth breathing: big advertising and mass media have turned sports into black tar heroin. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy sports, a lot, but the whole thing lacks perspective.. and it's sort of ruining the whole enterprise for me. Let's examine what's going on here.

First, ESPN brought 24/7 sports coverage to the world.. which is about 21 more hours than any sport or sports deserve. Second, coming along with this 24/7 coverage was a need to fill ALL of those hours.. and it's much easier to fill hours upon hours of down time if you're taking everything DEATHLY SERIOUS. The quest for a championship, something that once held some regional significance, but mostly as a source of pride and bragging rights, now is on a level with religion or politics or national identity as an identifying source of meaning for far too many people. Sports are games. They're played by little kids and grown men alike, and meant to be fun first and foremost. By becoming (like everything else), massively financed and marketed so that big time college and professional sports are multi-billion dollar industries, sports managed to achieve some gravitas that isn't inherent or even appropriate to what they actually are. By pulling an identity from a group of people that literally consider you a consumer or a dollar sign or signs, you're dealing with a totally one-ended relationship. You (as a fan) will never get anything other than manufactured fulfillment out of all of your time, effort and energy. I'm wholly comfortable with that and have come to terms with the implications, but the reality is that in a one-sided relationship, in order to feel that you're getting some sort of payoff for your passion, you've got to become more intense yourself in order to mask the complete lack of any reciprocity. So that's why we are where we are: where athletes/coaches who leave or screw up or are perceived to cost a team _________, are treated like actual bad people. See: Bartman, Steve. Buckner, Bill. Norwood, Scott. (that one hurt to type) Hamby, Ryan. (a college kid) And that's fine, to a certain extent.. but the key word is perspective. No one should ever get a death threat or have to move or fear for their safety from a game. Ever.

On another level, everything has taken on a preposterous sense of importance. There's no humor to anything.. everything is treated as if it's life or death. Are we playing football or in Iraq? Let's be real. When Jim Schwartz and Jim Harbough nearly came to blows at the conclusion of the Lions/49ers game last weekend you'd have thought President Obama swung at David Cameron. They're football coaches guys, come on. Football is basically one long legal fight where people try to run from other people who openly want to hurt them. Two coaches almost fought after the game? How is that an indictment of anything, anywhere? They're men, not stoic heroes. Boston Red Sox pitchers may or may not have drank beer, eaten fried chicken (?) and played video games during games that they weren't playing in. From the media reaction, you'd have thought they were in the back room shooting heroin and running a dogfighting ring. They're professional baseball players in their 20's and early 30's. They aren't CEOs. This is baseball.. players used to smoke in the dugout. Babe Ruth ate 6 hot dogs a game, Doc Ellis threw a no-hitter on LSD, David Wells threw a perfect game with a "raging hangover" (his words). Unless they're pitching that game, who cares what they're doing? What are they supposed to be doing? Icing their arms and charting pitches on their day off? It's a game.. and most of all, it's their job. A game that too many people have taken far too seriously for far too long. YOU taking it seriously doesn't make it serious. No matter how many blogs you read, talking heads you listen to or games you attend, no one on that field will ever care what you think or feel. Ever. And the sooner you realize that, the more enjoyment you'll get from the whole thing. I like sports, I like movies, I like TV, I like music.. none of those things define me and I know damn well that no one involved in any of those things cares one bit about me. Am I going about it the right way? I don't know.. but I'd rather be me than screaming "Who Dey" and blind drunk after the Bengals give false hope every few years.

Stop taking it so seriously, world... you're coming pretty damn close to ruining the whole thing. ESPN is a giant turd in the punch bowl of life. Sports are fun.. please remember that.