Yay, Team!

What makes a person become a fan of a professional sports team when that person otherwise appears to be a sensible human being? Why would anyone care which team won in a contest where grown, overpaid adults play children’s games? Why would any sane person purchase an expensive ticket to gain admittance to a stadium built with his tax dollars (and without his permission) to fatten the bank accounts of a handful of individuals who own professional sports teams? Professional sports teams even get free newspaper, radio and television advertising! In direct contrast, if you have a business and want to advertise your products or services, you must pay dearly for it. Not so for the team owners because America’s fake “news media” hands out free advertising to all of them. Why is it “news” when the Dodgers play the Yankees, but the sale at Ma & Pa’s Shoe Store next door to Payless Shoes is not? Why is every move of an athlete shown on the “news,” and commented on in detail by well-known “sportscasters,” but your work as the fastest and most accurate cashier at the supermarket is ignored? Why is socialism given to the rich while the rest of us are deprived of freedom, democracy, and happiness by the failures of capitalism and “free enterprise”? What part of "free enterprise" is free? Your hard-earned tax dollars were stolen to build the stadiums, swimming pools, playing fields, and so forth the wealthy can use to siphon even more loot out of your billfold or purse.

Sure, it makes sense to cheer if the team you bet on wins, but most sports fans are not big-time gamblers and they have nothing significant to gain or lose no matter which team wins, so what is all the cheering about? You won or lost a handful of nickels and dimes? Why would you wear a team’s colors, logos, or paste their bumper stickers on your pickup truck, fly their flags, tip over parked cars, get into fist fights, get drunk, make noise, riot, break things, start fires, or go as far as to paint your body like a billboard for “your” team? Why make a complete ass of yourself while you cheer some greedy team owners who ripped off your taxes to build a stadium and ripped you off again by making you pay a large chunk of cash for a ticket so you can sit in the stadium your tax dollars paid for to watch a childish game that achieves nothing other than to make a fool of you? You’re so stupid you also happily pay inflated prices for the awful beer, nachos, and hot dogs they sell to you. Tailgate party? No, it’s a party for suckers; the same people who ruin the country by voting ignorant, low-IQ idiots into public office.

Why are sports included in our universities and high schools? How do sports and the violent tribalism it endorses contribute to education and improving our country? How much needed financial support of vital and underfinanced scholastic subjects such as STEM and the arts is sucked out of school budgets by support of sports teams? Why don’t we follow the more responsible European example and organize sports around individual competitive cities and towns instead of our schools? University sports teams have become big money-makers like the professionals. Millions of dollars flow into and out of college, high, and middle school sports with little public accounting. Coaches for sports in universities and public schools are the highest-paid people in American “education.” Could that possibly be one of the many reasons the U.S. scores so low on education when compared to the other countries of the world? Good-bye “Manifest Destiny,” and the, "Shining City on the Hill!" Hello to Dumbness and Incompetence instead. On the other hand, people who make positive contributions to society, such as teachers, scientists, and creative people, are forced to live on the edge of poverty.

We cheat our young men and women when we get them to believe they can become major sports stars, so they can give their all to a sport when the truth is that no matter how talented an individual is, like rock and movie stars, there is only room for a very few at the top. We cheat our country when schools favor sports over STEM and other important subjects and America falls behind in the competitive world.

We add to the crime rate when we champion the tribalism and aggressive behavior fostered by competitive sports. According to economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009, “Study shows football upsets increase domestic violence.” Just as church and state should always be separated, so should school and sports.