A big beef with sports

I love sports. In high school people thought something was wrong with me for only being able to hold conversations about sports. At work, there is a random lady who only associates me with sports. When I go to my mom's in Louisville and I run into people I know...they ask me if I am still playing sports.

Living in Kentucky makes my sports fandom a little more difficult to enjoy because overwhelmingly I am subject to the sports views of the masses, as opposed to the view of the 14th largest television market in the United States win which I grew up. In Seattle area I was able to watch most every game of the teams I loved. It was nice.

However in Kentucky, I am constantly being force fed an absurd amount of Red Sox/Yankee, LeBron, and Pittsburgh Steelers games, as the media caters to a majority of fans and the supposed national sports interests.

I don't begrudge the networks for that decision, because at the end of the day they are around to make a profit. I don't blame the fans, because at the core most people don't care as much about sports as I do. Therefore I can't expect casual fans to have the deep-rooted fanatical memories associated with the successes, and more customarily the failures, of being a true sports fan. Still, I find it necessary to sling blame somewhere so I will put it on the respective leagues and America.

In reference the leagues, one of the most common statements I hear for all sports, save golf when Tiger is winning, is that ratings are down. I know that if I had the ability to watch, listen to, read or live sports... I would. Easy. But why can't I? This is where America comes in.

This unrestricted form of capitalism is ridiculous. I understand the need to make profit and to further your business interests--but the prices for tickets; the inaccessibility of sports to non-cable television, the limited selection of sports on cable, and the outrageous conglomeration of "inside information" are ruining sports. There is very little a casual fan can get for free to bring them in.

Aside: LeBron made an INCREDIBLE block against China on Sunday. (It was Kenyon Martin back at Cincinnati with two good legs esque). I didn't see highlights of the feat until Tuesday because of the Castro-like grip NBC has on the images. How is that good for the Olympics?

As I said I understand the drive for profits, but at what cost? The reason kids don't play sports, the reason people don't go to games, the reason ratings are down, the reason our nation is growing more and more obese, is because we are selling everything. You don't see the connections?

Part of athleticism that gets kids going is the desire to be like someone. So how can you be "like Mike" or now like Kobe if you only see them once a week and maybe twice after NFL ends? Or why would you want to play baseball if nobody your color played professionally? Would you play football if the only thing you heard about was Brett Favre and his legacy?

Attendance at most games is constant, but the average American family cannot go out and cop $120 tickets for nosebleed seats at an NFL or NHL game, or $80 for a NBA game. Shoot, I haven't been to an MLB game in years, but I bet those prices kill people too. And don’t get me started on the food...

So if you don't identify, and you can't go, why watch if you have to pay to get the premium accessibility to major pro-sports. NBA TV, the NFL network, MLB league, and whatever the hell irrelevant network the NHL has combined with ESPN INsider, and services like rivals.com and scouts.com monopolize the coverage of what you want to see as a sports fan. It's turning sports almost into a secret society...damn near a grand to follow all 4 major sports just on television and the internet.

So what do you do instead of spending that kind of money on sports? Turn to things like World of Warcraft, Halo, the Hills, or the worst VH1... anything to entertain you that you can watch with consistency that is either cheap or free. Instead of activity, we have lazy people who fail to interact.

It is becoming more and more expensive to buy sports equipment, kids have to play on increasingly more teams to remain competitive at the sport they choose to play. And then kids can't play more than one sport because of time, money, injuries etc. The system lends itself to alienating/segregating people before they get started.

Athletes make millions to play games, which makes people want to be like them. But also fosters a hate for people who cannot be like them, which feeds into a lot of racial tension, especially with basketball and the NBA.

I could go on forever about this because I believe sports is one of the places you can assess a lot of the nations problems. In addition to having a screwed up sports system, we place so much value and we strive to profit off things that you just shouldn't profit off of. Hell I have said it before and I'll say it again: making profit off of someone's health (health insurance), general security (insurance), and retirement (social security) is not good. When someone profits, someone else loses.

Salute