510:55 PM, 4 April 2006 by The White Moniteo
I really do not understand why sports fans are the way they are. I don't understand why they dress up in their team colors, pay money for tickets, facepaint, and buy food at inflated prices just to sit in a stadium among other fans and shout, scream and pretty much act crazy. I tell everyone who asks that I am not interested in sports and many get the idea that this is strange because sports is supposed to be important. Because the majority of people seem to like sports and I don't then by definition I suppose that makes me abnormal. I once spoke to Claire about my family. You see, I don't live in the normal nuclear family. In fact, my family size as a time series is as volatile as the NASDAQ. My big sister moved out into a monastery and then my dad left to work overseas. Then my step-brother moved here. Claire then told asked me, "Are you going to live a normal life?" She spoke as if normal is good. But is it? What is normal? A normal characteristic is the characteristic that most people have. Therefore, a nuclear family is normal because most families are nuclear families. So what is the normal IQ? By definition the normal IQ is 100. If you had an IQ of 140, that means you are abnormal. But is having a IQ of 140 such a bad thing? For most people, probably not. Therefore, aiming for normalness is not always preferable.
Anyway, back to what I was saying about sports. One thing that annoys me is why sports fans interpret a win by their team as some sort of personal achievement. If I watched a sports game between team A and team B and team A won, then clearly members of team A will benefit. They will receive medals, prizemoney, sponsorship deals, and so on. The coach and managers will probably get a promotion. It makes sense that they are happy. They really have won. Assuming I'm not a gambler but a mere spectator, then team A's victory has absolutely no impact on me at all. I do not win any medals. I do not receive any lucrative million-dollar contracts. I do not get a promotion. I get nothing. In fact, I lose anywhere from 15 to 100 dollars on the ticket required for admission into the stadium. Furthermore, with the amount of time I wasted watching the game I could have worked and earned even more money, so there are opportunity costs (or indirect costs) as well. There has been a lot of talk about how men like sports because it is highly competitive and blah blah blah. But if men are so competitive, then why would they watch sports? By watching sports you are wasting your own time and getting behind. While you are watching some game someone else is working, earning more money, and getting ahead! If you really were competitive, you wouldn't watch sports!
Not only does sport make individuals think that they are getting something when in fact they are getting nothing but sport also seems to makes people think that a country is better off when in fact nothing happens. When an athlete wins something big, some people say, "Oh, he has done so much for this country!" What I would like to know is how some athlete winning a gold medal or a trophy significantly benefits the country he comes from. If we were to witness GDP per capita increasing within a country by say 10 percent from one year to another, then that means that the average citizen is richer. People are better off. Therefore, economic growth helps people. On the other hand, an athlete who wins a gold medal does what? He gets a little bit richer but if he were from a large developed country this small increase in wealth is negligible. How is it a national achievement and not an individual achievement? Like I said before, the athlete wins the gold medal. He or she owns the prizemoney, the medal, the trophy, or whatever, but the spectators don't get that. If I were a spectator I would not be proud of the athlete but instead I would be envious. I'd be annoyed that someone else won but not me.