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Thu 6 Dec, 2007 01:12 pm
I don't hate sports, I just feel really indifferent about it. I have a hard time understanding the fascination.
I do, however, have great dislike for people who only care about sports. Actually more like pity than dislike.
Yeah I'd go along with your view, I like some of essays the link above provides:
Quote:Teamwork??
Column by The Grand Cyclops of the Anti-sports Illuminati
One of the most common arguments as to why participation in sports is important for kids is that it builds teamwork. In fact, this seems to be the central and only reason pro-sports families have for subjecting their children to the little league experience. And it's total HOGWASH.
Why is it that participating in organized sports is the ONLY way of teaching a child the value of teamwork? There are dozens of other, healthier, more positive ways to help your child learn the advantages of teamwork:
Joining the Scouts or other positive youth groups
Building a soapbox car or a tree house
Activity in school drama, art, or science clubs
Serving as a school band member
Organizing or participating in a school event
Support of community programs like Junior Achievement
and simply socializing with other kids
All the above activities demonstrate, through experience, the importance of leadership, negotiation, compromise, followership, the subjugation of individual need in the interest of the collective, and the advantage of many people working toward a common goal versus individual effort.
What does participation in sports teach your child?
That you're either a winner or a loser
That whoever yells the loudest is the person to listen to
That whoever is strongest is the leader of the group
That being a loud-mouthed bully will increase your stature much more than being quiet and supportive.
That rude and boastful behavior is acceptable
These sporting qualities can be found in people involved in any endeavor. And that's just my point. Participation in sports isn't required to learn how to deal with bullies or how to interact with other people. Participation in sports isn't necessary to grow up to be a healthy, confident adult. A person can develop social skills and learn to co-exist with or rise above these toxic personalities just by participating in life.
And they can avoid the ever-present, inescapable childhood trauma their parents were subjected to. Organized sports are the refuge of the bully and the ignorant. Sports suck!
Always got picked last, huh, Chumly?
I refused to play team sports in school (well as much as I could). Dollars to donuts I'm in better shape, healthier and more athletic than the majority of sport fans.
I like running and swimming and weights and hiking and my job is very physical, often outdoors but.......as per the provided above link:
Quote:Sports are Stupid
Sports are stupid. People who like sports are stupid. So you kicked a ball into a net, or hit a ball several hundred yards with a piece of wood, or threw a ball in a hoop or, more than likely, you just sat on your fat ass and watched someone else do it on T.V. SO WHAT?! BIG ******* DEAL! What does that matter? What does that change? You've scored a point for your team. Who cares?
What's the goddamn point? It allows people who work too many hours for too little pay a sense of VICTORY that they cannot achieve in their own lives. You know what I mean: stuck with a big ******* mortgage, kids to feed, car payments, electricity bills, taxes, water bills, gas bills, telephone bills, more taxes, health insurance premiums, home insurance premiums, your kids' college fund, even more taxes, etc. To do all of this you need to KISS YOUR BOSS'S FAT ******* ASS, keep your head down, do as little work as you can get away with and keep that paycheck coming in. Now comes Saturday. Ahhhhh - freedom. The weekend. So sit in your big chair, open a can, drink deeply. Ahhhhh. Sedate. Turn on the T.V. Watch millionaires kick balls in nets, hit balls with sticks, throw balls in nets etc. Your team wins! HOORAY!!
Ahhhh...
You feel validated. It's all been worth it. All that sweat, all that shutting the **** up, all that time with your tongue firmly lodged in your boss's ass...this is validation. It's not like music...good lyrics might make you think. You don't want that. It's not like films..a good film might make you think. It's not like romance...you gave that up a while ago for RESPONSIBILITY...and you don't want to think about that. If you ever did. You probably gave up romance for conquest anyway, when you were much younger, and isn't that what sports are all about?
Sport infuses our lives. In American high schools, it becomes a proxy caste system. Remember high school? If you're still there - my condolences - but you'll understand this well. People kicking balls in nets, or hitting balls with wood, or throwing balls in nets are MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU. Remember pep rallies? When all the people who kicked balls in nets etc. stood up in front of the ENTIRE SCHOOL and became, not merely mortals, but the GODS of all they survey. Remember the student council? Who was there? Sports heroes...every one. Not those nerdy assholes who read books, or those queers in drama, or those anonymous nobodies who scuttle through the halls keeping their head down because you never know when some ******* football hero might make you the butt of his jokes or give you a good pounding, just for the hell of it. Why?
Because the school institution supported them. All student activities, from student council elections to assemblies to homecoming centered around sports.
Why? Sports teach you important lessons about how the REAL WORLD operates: COMPETITION IS KING. Winners get the glory, losers can eat ****. Everything is justified. In American history we beat the Indians and the Mexicans and the British and everyone else who can all EAT ****! We're WINNERS...
England is no better. Virtually every male in the whole shitty little island is obsessed by guys in shorts kicking a bit of leather into a net. Everyone has their own team that they "support" (i.e. identify with as their "tribe" - God knows Thatcher stole any other identity possibly available to them), they wear their team's football "kit" (which changes just about every year - marketing y'know?) and beat the **** out of each other on a Friday night. C'mon guys - this is the place where the words "working class" was coined. Stop punching each other - punch your boss instead. Sport conditions us to think in terms of US VS. THEM. THEY wear red shirts, WE wear green shirts - we shall kick the **** out of them. Sound familiar? Sound a bit like WAR perhaps? How the hell else is a government going to convince a young population to fight its' economic incursions into other countries if we don't train them to kick the **** out of the other guy because HE'S DIFFERENT and WE SAY SO. I've not yet been stupid enough to breed, but if I had a kid, I'd rather have him/her/it watch a super-violent horror movie than a sporting match. At least in a film the characters have a reason to be kicking the **** out of the other guy: they're terrorist or they're zombies or they kidnapped the hero's wife etc. - not just because they wear a different uniform.
What sport does, in essence, is act as a surrogate form of masculinity for a castrated working class. It enforces the rule of nature, and capitalism: "Only the strong survive". Sport keeps us blind, stupid, and predatory. We are homo sapiens. Sapiens - as in sapient. We think. We reason. We feel. Those are our virtues. That's what makes us, as a species, special. **** SPORTS. Use your brain. Get some REAL heroes. Someone who thought and loved and changed things. The spirit of competition is **** THE WEAK GUY. **** them, we're smarter. Change the world - don't bother putting a ball through a hoop etc. Think. It's good for you. Let's make a better world above and beyond that of "Only the strong survive".
Don't be sedated. **** SPORTS. It's pointless
One of the most pathetic things I see is grown men crying over 'their team' loosing a match. Huge gorillas really let their inner child out. A frightened little child with no meaning in live other then the live they live vicariously through their sports idols.
Sports are FUN!
(fun to watch and fun to participate in)
I like sports, but I can totally understand the hatred for those rabid neanderthal pinheads. They're just as bad as religious nuts. Actually, I think it's the same kind of brainwashing. From a young age, they've had this crap drilled into their head until it becomes a core part of their being.
I guess it's less harmful to society at large though. Or is it? Hmmm...
thats supposed to read
Quote:One of the most pathetic things I see is grown men crying over 'their team' loosing a match. Huge gorillas really let their inner child out. A frightened little child with no meaning in life other then the life they live vicariously through their sports idols.
... maybe I should try sports.
It would be interesting to speculate on the long term effects of organized team sports on man's entire social structure.
I am willing to suggest organized team sports (not individual athleticism) has much in common with both religion and war.
Not that the above two points have not been reviewed before, but what-the-who.
Well, IMO...sports for children that WANT to participate is a wonderful thing. I have two sons, both have played and will continue to play all the sports they have the desire too. We've done the soccer, baseball, and football programs for years now. MOF, we usually play baseball starting in Feb through October of each year.
So here's the deal, I do not believe that sports builds self-esteem, teaches the value of sportsman like conduct, teamwork, etc all alone. I think if you are blessed with a good coaching system it can help. But these traits/habits/outlooks in children should be impressed upon them by their parents to begin with. If a parent can't teach their child these things above to start with, no amount of sports ever will.
So....the way I see it is this: its a semi-expensive way to have your children get up off their butts and be outside in the wonderful healthy sunshine, and environment doing something besides playing with a playstation. And if your like my husband and myself, we never missed a practice and were very involved.
Is is a question of either organized team sports or playstation? There are worlds outside of those two.
Chumly, this topic has me voting on your side. I'm totally apathetic to all forms of "sports".
What irritates the hell out of me is how sporting events pre-empt other stuff on TV.
I'm so not looking forward to the pumped up 2010 events which will happen in our own fair area.
Any obssession is bad.
Just like, being so against sports, some loser has to take the time to put together a website filled with articles pointing out what's bad about sports.
Reyn wrote:I'm so not looking forward to the pumped up 2010 events which will happen in our own fair area.
I cannot seem to get away from all the hype about 2010, it follows me around like the plague!
Slappy Doo Hoo wrote:Any obssession is bad.
Just like, being so against sports, some loser has to take the time to put together a website filled with articles pointing out what's bad about sports.
Pointing out via a web-page, that organized team sports can suck donkey balls, is not an "obsession". If so then any topical web-page is also an "obsession".
I am on slappy's side on this.
I was a child with few playmates, if any, until I was nine, and then welcomed, thankee, on a street full of kids. This was in the fifties, most of us were girls, and as a group, in pairs, or by ourselves, we ran around all the time. We had a schoolyard open to us two houses down, and played baseball and basketball there on our own after school (that net was v e r y high), on weekends, and in the summer. Before that, we did hopscotch, croquet, bicycle riding, rollerskating, housing foundation rebar climbing, ice skating...
In school, a nun I had for two years in a combo 6th and 7th grade class took us out to play baseball in the spring (she was the pitcher fairly often) and had spelling and math quizzes based on a baseball structure (1st base, 2nd base, etc.) back in the classroom. Our elementary school football team was among the best in the chicago area, if I remember right - presumably the catholic school league.
We moved to LA, and I knew no one and became athletically stupid again, and avoided gym class, having this amazingly long running period to get out of volleyball, which I thought was this horrible wrist killing torture.
Luckily I got interested in horseracing (my dad took me to Hollywood Park and Santa Anita) and golf (he took me to the LA Open a few times), and I did play golf there for a while.
I followed football on the radio and in the newspaper, and in the absence of boys at my highschool, got crushes on football players in the news.
I'm not an athlete, never was, am a natural born chair sitter with a good book. But I don't hate athletics or organized sports. I can easily hate some abuses that happen in sports, including abuses with young children, even older children.
But among the books I read as a teen from the local library, were, besides lots of short story compilations, sports stories of different years.
Some of those sportswriters weren't bad, although many had a kind of gassy ballast type of writing..
Maybe my open attitude continues because I haven't been surrounded by sports mania. A little of that, especially at its far side of hooliganism, can go a long way.
Chumly wrote:Slappy Doo Hoo wrote:Any obssession is bad.
Just like, being so against sports, some loser has to take the time to put together a website filled with articles pointing out what's bad about sports.
Pointing out via a web-page, that organized team sports can suck donkey balls, is not an "obsession". If so then any topical web-page is also an "obsession".
That particular web-page is obsessive because it focuses only on sports fanaticism. Most people watch sports or participate in sports for fun only.
The late, great Timberlandko always said, "If it ain't fun then you must be doing it wrong."
Quote:Is is a question of either organized team sports or playstation? There are worlds outside of those two.
Yea, there is a world outside of those two, and I understand what your saying about people that become overly absorbed to the point of being lunatic fanatics, even go so far as to stress over their favorite teams. Which I totally agree, it is crazy as hell. Whether I live or die sure isn't based on which team wins the Super Bowl and which one doesn't....lol
But the point I was just trying to make is this; if these traits that people claim sports instills in children aren't there when a child starts playing sports, it has the equivalent of a snow balls chance in hell of ever being instilled in them. Especially if there is a lunatic fanatic parent standing behind that child.
And my next point I was making was that I would rather find my child outside running, playing catch, or digging in the dirt than being tied to an electronic game in a dark room. We don't own a Playstation, and I don't intend on ever buying one....I detest them as bad as you detest sports!
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