Appreciating Sports

As soccer is easily the most intense and exciting sport I have ever watched, it dumfounds me that most Americans think it’s boring. Further, they prefer a sport in which a bunch of guys in body armor spend more time utilizing time-outs, period breaks, clock stoppages, unlimited substitutions, huddles and replays then actually doing anything. But as much as I’d like to write an essay on why Association Football is better than American Football, the more interesting issue for me is why such preferences exist.

The main reason why people don’t like sports in general is because they themselves lack athleticism. However, since watching sports doesn’t require any athletic ability whatsoever, this reasoning is absurd. Sports contain among the most concrete examples of human achievements. Architects, painters and chefs can all demonstrate undeniably exceptional ability, but none of these directly pit man against man in the same time and place with established rules to decisively declare who is better. Sports can confirm or deflate with equal unpredictability. Even when the results are contentious, there is a winner and a loser. Comparatively, prose is complete bullshit.

Watching a sport without knowing the rules is akin to reading a book in a language you don’t understand- there’s no way of discerning what is going on. Even a seemingly simple thing like how and when the game ends might be complicated for the uninitiated, but is all-important in grasping what’s occurring. An in-depth knowledge of the rules will allow a more full comprehension of the game’s intricacies, and yield greater appreciation. I think most learn rules by watching a sport with someone who can explain it to you, which is a style of learning many adults are reluctant to engage in. Based on the coaches I had growing up, I wouldn’t assume having played a sport means you know the rules. They mostly spout jargon and expect you to know what they’re talking about. (I still vividly remember a rare occasion of getting on base in fourth grade Little League and shortly thereafter hearing the coach yelling, “Tag up! Tag up!” from the dugout with absolutely no idea what he was wanting me to do.)

All sports use a fair amount of jargon, which makes any game mysterious to one not indoctrinated. Jargon often doesn’t translate between sports, which causes frustrating confusions. When an American Football fan hears a soccer fan declare, “Nice tackle!” he thinks, no it wasn’t! and when he discovers a tackle in soccer isn’t what he thinks it is (it’s an enforceable technique for kicking the ball), his knee-jerk reaction is to think, that’s stupid.

I am predilected to prefer sports with efficiently eludicated rules. (Although I don’t follow NASCAR, I appreciate the simplicity of its premise.) There is something beautiful in being able to pull off one specifically difficult task and also in performing various juxtaposed activities. Sport rules typically figure out ways of exploiting human limitations, such as kicking while running or only punching above the belt. As a viewer, this requires an appreciation for the degree of challenge involved in successfully accomplishing an athletic feat. Most who would look upon even the more simple of actions required in sport and declare, “I could do that!” have never tried.

Obviously, the actual skills required differ from sport to sport. Usually there is some kind of built-in mechanism which tests to the max things such as speed, endurance, agility, strength, focus, instinct and coordination. The skill and determination trained athletes possess are an awe-inspiring thing that one can’t fully appreciate without having seen them perform live (and I’m not referring to showing up on cheap drink night, chatting with your friends and getting wasted). It is frighteningly easy to forget that athletes are still human. I can only imagine what it must be like to have 10,000+ people screaming at you to catch a ball or whatever, when that is obviously what you’re trying your best to do. Athletes are not created from a mold. Each player has unique abilities, weaknesses, ideas and fears that influence his game. Anyone who has dedicated the time to get to know a player, watching him mature and/or deteriorate, has probably seen humanity at its best and worse.

Given human limits on physical prowess, strategy employment becomes the overriding factor between winning and losing. Understanding strategy demands a more sophisticated knowledge of the subtleties within the structure of a sport. A player must study his opponent, find his weakness and determine how to exploit them before going about accomplishing that task. In defense, the opponent strives to discern how he is being exploited and strives the close the holes. It is hard to contextualize the outcome of a game without watching it as it unfolds.

In any competition, the outcome is only important to anyone who cares who wins. Being a neutral spectator is nothing like being a fanatic. Even events of a sport one enjoys become dull if you aren’t cheering for a winner. Team loyalty can span generations, uniting or dividing families. In some countries, sports clubs can have political ties. You can’t really take anything a sports fan says seriously, because their opinion is absolutely biased. While having a bias is best avoided in judicial matters, there is no substitute for wanting and hoping for your team to win. Fans are undoubtedly the most obnoxious thing about sports, but there is a part of human nature that compels us to take sides and unite behind a common goal which sports allow us to indulge. The thing that saves us from sports fanatics is that sporting events take place within a clearly defined arena. No sport can function without an out-of-bounds. The brilliance of sports is no matter how seriously it’s taken, in the end it’s “just a game,” and when the game is over, everybody goes home, hopefully looking forward to the rematch.

One could argue that sports are the greatest way there is of settling a dispute. This reads as ostentatious, but certainly sport is preferable to war. For example, the Biblical Elisha conceived a simple way of turning religion into a sport. I propose that the world’s religious leaders get together once each year at rotating sacred sites throughout the world and build bonfires. Then their respective religious fanatics can congregate and cheer, jeer, pray or whatever, and the first religion to get their god to light their bonfire, say before sunset, wins. The winner can get- and then smash- a golden calf or something. Throughout the year, local churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. can hold little competitions on town squares. Atheist referees can prevent attempts of cheating. Agnostics can root for whoever seems to be in the lead. What objection could any religious zealot have against this opportunity to demonstrate their god’s power?