Sports are a huge cultural icon across the world. Sure it's time better spent to go out and do something productive but you even admit that people need some R&R once in awhile. Watching sports gives you necessary small talk when meeting with people where you can strike up a friendship based solely on liking the same team. Also if you're not involved in the sports world you will miss out on a lot of conversations.
I hate what's become of them but let's not pretend that vegging out in front of the couch and watching a game after a long day of work is a new practice. What's new is the 24/7 access to games, news, fantasy leagues, and information where everyone gets sucked in. You mention reading as more productive, but why not both? I'm a guy who needs background noise at all times and if I read I want something on the TV that I dont need to pay much attention to, so a game of baseball or basketball is perfect.
Sporting events also present human behavior and goals which exist in our instincts, but in a more public space. Competition, hard work, fighting for a cause, common ground, companionship, picking yourself up after failure, and so many more. It's important to society that people keep engaging in sports because it's a way to let off violence and other such behaviors without any chance of hurting someone. For millennia, man has turned to sports in order to live vicariously through the athletes involved. From the gladiators in Rome to Medieval jousting tournaments, to modern day NFL games.
Furthermore consider the plight of people who are not capable of being physically active. They can still the thrill of being involved in something through watching sports.
Sadly, because of everything I've said above, every league has become a huge target of SJW activists because they want to undermine our society. These are not real football or baseball fans who want to see social change; it's people who despise everything that sport represents and want to destroy it from the inside so that it can't be a "toxic" influence anymore.
At this point it's all over for any of the major leagues. No real hope for them and I don't think it will ever change until we have a social revolution and throw out all these wanna be communist despots who insist that race and gender should define everything about a person. It makes me sick to the stomach but I dont know what to do anymore. I've cut so many things out of my life because of their politics, but baseball and the MLB has been in my blood since I was a seven year old watching Braves games on TBS. It's hard to imagine a life without it and I cant decide if I would be more miserable watching it with the woke elements or if I would be more miserable trying to cut it out of my daily routine. I guess time will tell.
I don't have a long reply but i want you to know I read it all and it gut checks me a little. I'll go a little easier on sports fanatics haha.
But that's definitely where we agree, the fanatics and 24hour access + artificial fluff like fantasy leagues is all a huge detriment.
Only other point is i get the idea of people who "can't" participate are not that common and ANY level of physical activity they can do they should. Hurdles, not excuses. Every, amputee, diabetic, blah blah blah's life could be improved by MORE physical activity, i know there are cases of genuine inability, but EVERYONE should do the most they can (without negatively affecting there health)
Sports are a huge cultural icon across the world. Sure it's time better spent to go out and do something productive but you even admit that people need some R&R once in awhile. Watching sports gives you necessary small talk when meeting with people where you can strike up a friendship based solely on liking the same team. Also if you're not involved in the sports world you will miss out on a lot of conversations.
I hate what's become of them but let's not pretend that vegging out in front of the couch and watching a game after a long day of work is a new practice. What's new is the 24/7 access to games, news, fantasy leagues, and information where everyone gets sucked in. You mention reading as more productive, but why not both? I'm a guy who needs background noise at all times and if I read I want something on the TV that I dont need to pay much attention to, so a game of baseball or basketball is perfect.
Sporting events also present human behavior and goals which exist in our instincts, but in a more public space. Competition, hard work, fighting for a cause, common ground, companionship, picking yourself up after failure, and so many more. It's important to society that people keep engaging in sports because it's a way to let off violence and other such behaviors without any chance of hurting someone. For millennia, man has turned to sports in order to live vicariously through the athletes involved. From the gladiators in Rome to Medieval jousting tournaments, to modern day NFL games.
Furthermore consider the plight of people who are not capable of being physically active. They can still the thrill of being involved in something through watching sports.
Sadly, because of everything I've said above, every league has become a huge target of SJW activists because they want to undermine our society. These are not real football or baseball fans who want to see social change; it's people who despise everything that sport represents and want to destroy it from the inside so that it can't be a "toxic" influence anymore.
At this point it's all over for any of the major leagues. No real hope for them and I don't think it will ever change until we have a social revolution and throw out all these wanna be communist despots who insist that race and gender should define everything about a person. It makes me sick to the stomach but I dont know what to do anymore. I've cut so many things out of my life because of their politics, but baseball and the MLB has been in my blood since I was a seven year old watching Braves games on TBS. It's hard to imagine a life without it and I cant decide if I would be more miserable watching it with the woke elements or if I would be more miserable trying to cut it out of my daily routine. I guess time will tell.
I don't have a long reply but i want you to know I read it all and it gut checks me a little. I'll go a little easier on sports fanatics haha.
But that's definitely where we agree, the fanatics and 24hour access + artificial fluff like fantasy leagues is all a huge detriment.
Only other point is i get the idea of people who "can't" participate are not that common and ANY level of physical activity they can do they should. Hurdles, not excuses. Every, amputee, diabetic, blah blah blah's life could be improved by MORE physical activity, i know there are cases of genuine inability, but EVERYONE should do the most they can (without negatively affecting there health)