Do Sports Suck?

Where do professional and collegiate sports fall into the liberal view of the world? Nowhere, it seems. Welfare, health care, gender, race, and sexuality are all widely discussed. Sports, however, remains an open question mark. Sports represents one of the many areas where conservatives and liberals can come together and agree.

Not every student is designed to excel in academia. Some are awfully good at throwing a football, running, swimming, or golf. These students should have a right to compete for scholarships on the basis of athletic merit. Sports are a perennial popular attraction at universities, drawing many fans. If this is what the people want, what's wrong with that?

If we abandon the ideal of athleticism altogether, where does that leave us? Are we to become a society of effete intellectuals? Is there no place for physical fitness anymore?

Athleticism was an integral part of the Ancient Greco-Roman ideal from which the modern university derived. Surely push-ups, jogging, running and hopscotch all have a place on the menu at a university.

To me, it's all a question of emphasis, or to put it in blunt terms, how much money we spend on sports. Too often, city governments bend over backwards to encourage the construction of stadiums, because, the argument goes, stadiums draw tourist dollars. City governments even float municipal bonds to pay for the cost of construction. They grant decade-long tax breaks to teams willing to relocate. Does this seem excessive to you? To me, it sounds like a boon for the private owners of teams, but a big black eye for the public, which is deprived of its fair share of tax revenue and burdened with debt, adding insult to injury. Whenever government officials cut a sweet deal for big business, always ask one question. Who was bribed?

Professional teams, like other big businesses, participate in a practice known in the United States as "welfare for the rich." Public resources are stolen and handed over to private owners with the cooperation of public officials. This isn't right whether the beneficiary is a sports team or a paper mill.

I'm not in favor of any concrete policy with regard to sports. I think journalists have a duty to report on the costs involved with the excessive emphasis on sports, professional or amateur, but government does not have a stake in it. This is an area where voters should have the information that they need to make better decisions. Leave any policy questions concerning sports up to the voters. If the voters decide to go in debt to the tune of many millions of dollars to finance a football stadium, so be it. If they decide the football stadium is more important than repairing roads, so be it.

Any of my visitors who are interested in viewing all of the arguments against sports are welcome to visit Sports Suck, which offers a forum where you can argue your opinion on the matter. As for the arguments in favor of sports, never fear. The entire mainstream media has already signed up as perennial cheerleaders.