Almost all sport fans insist they want sports to be designed so the best team wins or the best players reap the highest awards and applause. But that is simply some esoteric babble. What we really want from sports is a lot of excitement and drama.
The best teams are obviously the ones who rack up the most wins during the regular season. There is luck in almost all sports, some more than others. It would be difficult to seriously insist the the Superbowl proves who was the best team for that season. Any team with a good enough season record to be in the playoffs has a chance to win the Superbowl---a break here, an injury there, an untimely missed tackle, catch, field goal, etc. and the game goes the other way. So why playoffs? Because they are exciting and get all the fans worked up. We all argue strenuously about which teams are better than the others each week. The 'best' (if i can use the term very loosely) football analysts are assembled and will vigorously argue before every game about which team will win and why. The opinions are often rendered with the same conviction we get from a preacher on Sundays. While one is absolutely sure about the path to Heaven and the other as to who will win the game, in one case we will never know and in the other case those who are best at predicting football games will manage---sometimes, but never consistently, to predict around 60% of the games correct. So much for expertise. I am in a football pool with devoted fans and---we include internet 'football experts' in the pool and this year I damn near won the whole thing. How much of an expert am I? Please, spare me the admission.
Hell, I can do better than 60% in a two horse race and we all know how unpredictable horses are in a particular race. We will argue about which player is the best, like maybe the best receiver. Maybe we can reasonably put receivers in the poor, good, and excellent category---but after that the stats are hardly any reflection of better or best. It depends on the quarterback, the teams played, injuries, the weather conditions, who the other receivers are on the team, the coaches, whether on a passing or a running team, the quality of the pass defenders, and so it goes, on and on, seemingly forever. Such fine tuning receivers in an accurate list from best to worst is simply a bit silly.
We all have favorite players, players we like the best. And we like a team the best. But why we like a player or team best is often more personal bias then being attracted to the best players and teams. In most cases we like the home team or players the best. Why? Almost all the players are from someplace else. And the team is owned by a wealthy owner who had the most money to buy the team and is tied to the state in no other way except they own the team. The product on the field is hardly any locally collected group of talent by a local owner. The 'best' fans are the ones who shout the loudest, are most emotionally involved in the games, never miss a game, and feel the worst when "their team" loses and the most excited when 'their' team wins. Ironically, the excitement over a win doesn't match the reward in any personal way: we don't get any money from the victory; rather we may have spent a small fortune to attend or buy drinks, whatever. And we ourselves do not gain any more personal respect from others because our team won, or get our names in the headlines, or get a job promotion, or have a greater ability to attract sexual partners---no, we are left with the hangover, and a transient feeling of elation. HOWEVER, the periods of disappointment will always outnumber the feelings of elation. There are 32 team in the NFL and only one team can win the Super Bowl. We can do the math, most have no final elation over the season. Some just get their disappointment earlier in the season than other fans. In fact, to lose early on is mild disappointment, taken in stride. But to lose the Superbowl, now there is disappointment big time. So, in some sense, sports is for those who can manage to handle losing more often than winning.
Personalities play a big role in which athletes we like. And why not, since there is no accurate way to precisely designate a player's rank among his peers, why not choose one whose personality we like best. BUT WAIT, like most everything else in professional football, personalities are programmed. Every athlete has been trained ad nausea how to behave, what to say in public, and the appropriate way to feel about any hot button issues with the public. Why such an effort to control the personalities of the players? Simple, to do otherwise attracts attention to the athlete instead of the team and can upset a good number of team fans. So 'just stifle yourselves', players are admonished. Seeking athletes to interview after the game, for the most part, is a dumb exercise. "First of all I want to thank (in some sort of order) God, my teammates, my parents, my homies, the fans, etc.). Sometimes they quickly form prayer circles before or after the game to be sure people know how connected they are to God. I really don't want to cheer against a team or player God might be for, but often there are prayer circles on both sides of the field. That kind of leaves me stymied. I mean, we always feel pressure to support OUR God, OUR nation, OUR family, OUR friends, and OUR home team. It seems everyone, everywhere does the same thing, and so, will the real chosen ones by God please come forward. Does God really choose his chosen favorites via genetic cabals? While this fits well in my own personal situation, all these others---the religious heathens, foreigners, diverse ethnics, and cultural deviates seem to have gotten the short end of the stick. It seems somehow so many people are really lying about the chemistry they have with God.
Sports give us something to root for, to entertain us, to engage socially with others, and to give us something to root for without any personal responsibility for the outcomes. If our team loses it certainly isn't our fault. I personally prefer to pick individual players or coaches whose persona interests me. I probably read more biographies than any other kind of books and I have read thousands of books.
To be able to understand why some people behave the way they do is satisfying to me. Some people like to take gadgets apart to see how they work, and I like to examine someone's past or circumstances to figure out why they behave the way they do. I have spent a good deal of my life wandering around alone, hither and thither, observing other people and experiencing the marvels of nature---the substrate upon which God's evolutionary process is played out.
When it is not which team or coach or player is the best it is which sport is the best.
How this is determined is a mystery but some sports are simply unethical. The sole purpose in boxing is to batter a person's head to various points of unconsciousness and there is always brain damage to varied degrees. How is that ethical? Football is rapidly approaching the unethical point. Human evolution has evolved to the point where athletes get ever bigger, stronger, and faster than in earlier times.
Any record involving speed and strength always gets better with time. At what point in time will someone no longer be able to run a faster mile? Beats me. In the grander scheme of things I wonder if humans are the end point of the evolutionary process? There is not reason to think there is going to be any end point species, but it is impossible, at least for me, to imagine where all this is heading. At any rate, to get back to point, the best sport for everyone is the one they like the best. HOWEVER, to me a sport is different from a un-athletic skill. Billiards is a skill, bowling is a skill, golf is a skill, and so on----no real athletic talent needed. And of course some 'sports' are phony and there is no need to waste any time here on them. If we ever need proof that sports are in large part entertainment, these phony sports are proof.
I guess there is a purpose to a Hall of Fame for each sport but the selection committee needs to be more carefully selected. I am not sure how, but certainly putting on the selection committee sport columnists who have spent a lifetime peddling their own personal biases about players of their own liking is hardly an impartial jury. Their is always some talk about whether certain players should be denied entrance for their personality or behavior off the field, or their attitude, and so on, with issues that have nothing to do with their play on the field. The most absurd one is this non definable vague gut feeling about team chemistry. If someone is disqualified for consideration because of any such purported notion it should only be if their coaches and teammates vote them as unacceptable as a teammate. This nonsense is nicely put by a teammate of Terrell Owens who was asked if Owens was a good teammate, or too much of a locker room disturbance: (Laugh) "Look, T.O. doesn't even barely speak to me or most teammates, he's too absorbed in his own training and performance. But when the game starts, do we want him on the field with us? You bet we do. That's what we are here to do, win games, and T.O. has an energy and focus that we all admire. So what if he's not my buddy? He's a great teammate and a good role model. He can project any personality he wants, what the hell do we care? It's you guys who fuss about it."
Maybe the best thing about sports is the eternal hope we can have about vicarious success. There are plenty of people out there, for one reason or another, who never get the chance to feel they won, but with sports they can have chance to feel good about winning, even if it is a vicarious sort of victory. I was at an off track betting facility one day and this kind of down and out chap was next to me betting on the horses, obviously with money he could ill afford to waste. He kept chatting to me and got real excited about the races, even though he mostly lost like everyone else. I asked him, "Don't you get tired of losing money on these ponies?" He said to me, and I have to paraphrase this because I can't duplicate his dialect: "I know you think me a fool, but what else in life makes me feel like a winner once in a while? If I don't bet on the nags, I's always going to be a loser with a bit more money. I come here to be a winner once in a while. If I was smarter and more successful I wouldn't have to come here to feel like a winner now and then. Some of these fools spend a lot of money on booze, and booze never makes you feel like a winner, just dulls the pain of being a loser." I often think of people like him, they outnumber those with better circumstances, and since then I think many of the affluent who drink so much are doing so for the same reason---their financial affluence hasn't really made them feel contented about their life. Why else do they need to drink themselves into a stupor except to get their mental state dulled from how they really feel about themselves and the 'rat race' into which they are so entrenched? Life is always good theatre and most of it is sad. Contentedness seems to come to those who are contented with what they have opposed to those for whom enough is never enough.
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