By Garrett Anstreicher
As I watch people picking fights with people who support the opposing team, getting up at four in the morning to get the best seats, and screaming obscenities at umpires and referees alike, I can’t help but wonder why we should care about sports so darn much.
HOLD IT! Put away those pitchforks and torches! If I have an angry mob surrounding my house and demanding my head tonight I want to have thoroughly earned it, so hear me out!
Mind you, I do NOT think that sports are a bad thing. Physical activity is great, as is meeting new people, and I’ve no problem with school spirit. And hey, sports are fun. I’m a tennis player and a martial artist myself. However, even though sports are a good thing, our society focuses too much on them.
To illustrate this point, let’s look at salaries for a second. The average pre-college teacher is paid roughly $50,000 per year, while the average salary of a professional sports player is $2,000,000 per year. This seems a bit odd, as the teacher clearly does the more important job in our society. While teachers educate children and prepare them to lead America in the future, sports players throw or hit balls around, but for some reason they are paid forty times the salary of teachers.
Something seems…WRONG here.
Also, our huge reactions to any sports event indicates how overly obsessed we are with them. Say, for instance, the West High Math Team (nothing personal, guys) came to be the best in the state or the best in the nation. No matter how great the accomplishment, the reaction will always be similar:
Woo. Yeah. Break out the party hats. Hoorah. (zzzz…)
On the other hand, if the West High Football team won state or nationals (or even won a GAME, for Pete’s sake), the reaction would be more like this:
Oh. My. God. AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!! I DON’T BELIEVE IT!! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON!!! (pant*pant) AAAAAHHH!!! Oh my gawd, I’m gonna cry… WAAAAHHHH!!!!
The reason why sports became such a big deal is understandable. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, the most physically capable humans would come out top and have the most power, and during the constant warfare of the recent centuries, countries needed to have physically powerful people to be soldiers. We used to really need fit people in our societies to survive, and that may be why sports and athletes became such a big deal to us.
However, our society has progressed enough that someone’s usefulness is not determined by how strong they are. The days when we needed strong people to make it through are over. We don’t have to throw away sports completely, but at the very least we should pay more attention to the things that really matter. So stop watching last Saturday night’s football game when instead you can do something that will really make our society a better place. Sports may be fun, but they’re really not worth all the attention we give them now. After all, no matter how much passion or spirit we put into it, any sport really is just a game.
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Would you want to be paid that much if you were a professional athlete? Not many peoeple can excel at that level of competition, where as many people can excel at education and other areas in their lives. Being an athlete is one in a million chance. Not everyone gets it.
ReplyDeletethe reason why athletes get paid more is supply and demand. Lots of people could be teachers, but there are very few that have what it takes to be a professional athlete. That's the supply. As for demand, athletes are watched and admired by millions across the world. they influence most of America's youth just as much as most teachers. Teachers will leave you after a year, but your sports heros will stay with you forever
ReplyDeleteYou have to consider the benefits of sports. Not just the physicall benefits, but even the benefits that they bring into the community. Sports teams help stimulate the economy everytime somebody goes and buys a ticket. Also many teams do a lot of charity work and help raise money for those charities. All that wouldn't happen if people didn't care about sports.
ReplyDeleteEducation heros will too? If we only foucus on sports we'd all be a bunch of beat up bafoons. I agree with Garret, and i think that education and knowlage trump sports iANY! day.
ReplyDeleteAs for the article itself I think it would work better if you added some more transition sentences and worked on the flow. Reading it out loud will give you a good idea of where it needs flow work. Also while the non-serious parts are funny they add little to your argument and sound somewhat forced because the tone of the rest of the article sounds more serious.
-Sofia Meredith
This is from the author:
ReplyDeleteFirst, just because atheletes are unique doesn't mean that they should be revered. Just because I can ride a unicycle down a mountain exceptionally well doesn't mean that i deserve 2 million bucks for it.
Second, just because atheletes ARE admired doesn't mean that they SHOULD be. Oh, and atheletes really don't influence children as much as teachers. On the most part they just throw balls and appear on wheaties boxes, but teachers actually help kids in their educational and intellectual development. Your idea that athletes inspire kids and teach them as much as teachers is just ridiculous.
lots of expression and stuff- allan liu
ReplyDelete