Sports Weekend: Why sports are important, even if you hate them

The NBA Finals Are upon us! It is the end of seasons for sports I actually care about until September 5th. So, I decided to write about sports, my relationship with them and why they are important even if you hate them:

As a kid and throughout middle school I idolized Michael Jordan and loved the game of basketball.  Down to the point where for two years I would only wear shorts.  I know a lot of boys from my generation were like this.  He was like watching a god play basketball.  His body did things that it physically should not have let him do.  If you have ever heard the song Wings by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis it beautifully sums up how most of us felt about Jordan. I however was terrible at the game of basketball.  No matter how long or hard I practiced, I was bad.  I am not athletically gifted and I usually have to work twice as hard as most just to be mediocre. To this day I think basketball is probably the thing I practiced and worked on the most in my life. I wanted to be a basketball player more then any other profession from age 6-17.  This taught me a valuable lesson that people often don't talk about.  Sometimes you can't be anything you want to be.  Sometimes you are just not meant to do something you love.  You might just not be built for it, and that's okay you just have to find out what you are meant to do.

Football was the only other sport I ever liked.  Not nearly as much as basketball but it was always on in my house.  My mother was an avid football fan and got my father and younger brothers deep into it.  I wasn't real loyal to any team at first and then picked the Raiders because I loved L.A. (my love for Disneyland) and the mascot was a pirate.  I never really had a strong loyalty but it was nice to have another team then my mother, who was a die hard Cowboys fan.

My love for sports began to fade in high school and were completely gone by college. I discovered this amazing new discovery called "Women". Music, theatre, movies and other entertainment mediums took over the rest of my interests. This started around 1994.

I would not really take a real interest again until about twelve years later.  This took so long because I started to resent sports in many ways.  I was a theatre kid and it was the only thing I felt somewhat natural at.  On stage, there are no direct statistics when you are a kid. Nobody wins or loses.  You memorize your lines and have fun.  As you get older it gets more complicated but there is no direct winner and loser like in sports, it is all based on an opinion someone has of you and your abilities. As a young adult I also started to notice and read about arts programs being consistently cut and sports programs being more important to most school districts. This seemed wrong to me. They both are valuable in different ways, and both are vital for child development. I just heard a co-worker say something i thought was brilliant.  She requires her son to do an equal amount of something artistic as he does athletic.  So basically he wants be in basketball, fine but you also have to be in the band.  You want to try out for a soccer team, okay audition for the next play. I think this is brilliant. I would also do it the other way. I think too often the arts and sports are pitted against each other and shouldn't be that way. I still think arts programs are too weak in the schools and not enough focus is given, but that is another topic altogether.

  
So my path back to sports was kind of an accident.  I worked in an office where everyone talked about sports non-stop.  At first I made fun of it, but after a while it just stopped being funny to me.  I started getting bored with the state of music and there were only so many movies I could watch before I needed something else to mix it up. About this time I began dating my wife who had a huge interest in sports specifically the two I liked growing up (basketball and football) so I joined some fantasy teams, picked some teams that I would root for and bam! I was back in the scene.  A few years later I work in a different office, which has ESPN on all day long.  So now I am flooded with information about sports. I am thankful I already had some enthusiasm about them again or I would have gone insane.

Now reflecting back and actually being the guy who made fun of sports, I feel like they are more important then people realize.  I mean important in a different way then you're probably thinking.  Not in the "team building, moral fiber, teamwork" kind of way.  More like in a "spectator, guy cheering, current events" kind of way. So I give you three reasons why sports are important to the non-player and non-enthusiast:

1) In most cases, sports are black and white.
I can argue all night long about why "The Dark Knight" is far superior to any other super hero movie.  You might change your mind, you might not.  It is all based off of your opinion and my opinion, nothing else.  Sporting events are definitive. The Ravens won the Superbowl.  That is that.  We can break stuff down but there is no opinion that can change what happened, they will always be known as the Superbowl champions for 2012-2013.  This gives a person a form of accomplishment when there team or city wins. It is nice to have statistical proof showing you are right and that your team for one moment was superior.

2) It brings people together. 
People cheer for the city they are from or a team they bonded with.  In some case it's their race or ethnicity. For whatever reason, you bond with a team and it becomes a part of you. It's exciting and it brings people together.  One of the most emotional things I ever saw was the first national anthem sang at a Boston sporting event after the Boston Marathon bombing.  People were there to celebrate their city and the sporting event was the conduit to get them there.  This happens more then we realize and not just because of tragic events.

Who can forget Whitney's National Anthem?

3) It can move you, if you let it.
You don't have to watch sports or know about them.  But they are there and one day somebody, somewhere is going to ask you about them.  You can do the snooty hipster thing I did for many years and say "I don't watch sports" or you could just try it out.  Watch something, show an interest. It doesn't have to be a mainstream sport it can be roller derby, just make it something that fascinates you for some reason. The point is when you get moved by a sporting event it is a weird feeling.  It's not like a play or a movie.  Theatrical pieces are designed to effect you emotionally in one way or another.  Sports are just designed to be played and watched.  You create the narrative, you create the emotional thing that happens to you. It's weird, its powerful and it is even more powerful in large groups. The Ravens became my team about four years ago. Portland has no football team and so I chose a middle of the road team with potential. I had no idea they were going to win last year.  For many reasons they shouldn't of. But they did and it was beautiful, stressful and fun.  I will be even more excited if my city can win a championship.  I am talking of course of the Portland Trail Blazers. I doubt I will see it in my lifetime if teams like the Miami Heat still exist, but on that day I will most likely weep like a baby.


I recommend not letting it move you this much...

Boom! That's all folks! Be like Mike!