Damned Liberal

I remember those days in high school, when every guy wanted to be a sports jock--a letterman. Because, as we all know, the sports lettermen got the girls. Sports was a means to an end...another sort of "winning". Alas, my attempts at basketball, track and (finally) swimming proved to me that I simply didn't have the stuff to become a letterman. That happens to most high school guys.

However, a victorious high school football or basketball team DID do wonders for school spirit, and bragging rights. Those thousands of kids in the stands participated in a vicarious thrill as "we" beat "them" and if we won, the after-game dance was even more vibrant.

I get a bit confused when it comes to college sports (especially football), where colleges pump zillions of dollars into their sports programs, where successful coaches make tens of millions per year, and where the kids doing it all get paid nothing...well, maybe a scholarship. Why does everybody but the players make money on the deal?

Then there's pro sports, where cities spend hundreds of millions in tax dollars to build new stadiums where the pro teams keep the money from tickets, sky boxes, concessions, etc. Some cities are now finding themselves financially strapped, btw, by these generous stadium deals.

And at the pinnacle, there are the pro sports players, some with salaries of $10 million, $15 million, $25 million or more per year. Throw in endorsements and commercials, and they can quickly become billionaires.

Then, if you ask yourself "What do they contribute to society to justify making that kind of money?", you may be hard-pressed to come up with a suitable or justifiable answer. When you think about some very important people who earn a pittance by comparison (teachers, emergency personnel, nurses, scientists, academics), you may might ask (if you're a liberal) "Why the disparity"?

I've concluded the answer is really quite simple.
It's the "Number One" rule that governs all human life.
Number One is most important.
People take care of themselves first.

It's demonstrated by the Party of NO: They don't give a shit about the welfare of the country. What they do care about is creating failure for liberals, and about getting re-elected by their ignorant, brainwashed, prejudiced, unthinking, highly-opinionated, racist old white male base. They're taking care of Number One (getting themselves re-elected).

It's demonstrated at those holiday sales when an uncontrolled crowd rushes into a store and tramples and kills somebody who falls down in the herd.

It's demonstrated on the highways by those SUV drivers who are so aggressive, and by road rage that usually develops over something so minor and trivial yet results in a fight or a death: He cut in front of me, so I killed him.

And so it is with the big money in sports.
We love to be entertained and we love to see "our" team win...it's that vicarious stuff again.

Being entertained is one of our highest priorities, as demonstrated by the amount of money earned by the best entertainers (sports, movie stars, talk show hosts).

That, I have discovered, is really the meaning of life, the meaning of the universe.

Most important to us is our entertainment, our ability to escape "the real world" for a few hours, or to vicariously enjoy "victory", "winning", "the triumph of victory".

The meaning of life and of the universe is NOT "42".
It is Number One.