SPORTS

We like our sports. Some LOVE sports. It is great to watch trained and talented individuals exhibit athletic excellence. Sports are fun to do and to watch as entertainment. And we can all list some great talents and great moments. We count on there being more.

As fans we can have a healthy appreciation of the talent and effort displayed. But some people fall into ditches about sports. In one ditch you find people who want to give participation trophies and are really against competition, because if someone wins someone has to lose.

The other ditch is filled with those for whom winning is not the main thing but the only thing. To be one of these people you have to disregard the thousands of hours of great entertainment each year that were produced by all those who did not win it all. Some trade the love for the games for the love of backing the winner. If I follow a team that gives me great entertainment but doesn’t win a championship , should that lessen my appreciation of the skill and effort of the team? We all want to win we all want to back winners. But in the end sports is an entertainment. We should enjoy and give credit when we are entertained.

Favorites. We probably all have favorite athletes. We should appreciate them for their skills. But to take life, religious, or political advice from these people that we do not know personally just because the can put a golf ball in the cup, or hit a home run, or make a slam dunk, or throw a touchdown, or serve an ace in tennis, etc is dumb.

Appreciate athletes as experts at what they do. Don’t take them too seriously about matters in which they are not experts. As a matter of fact that goes for any expert. Academic experts can be the same as athletic experts. Some of them feel because of their limited expertise they can tell others how to think and how to live.

This is how you get to be an expert. You work and focus on your area to the exclusion of the others. The focus is necessary to get a PhD or to become a world class athlete. But in the whole ocean of knowledge of knowledge and skills of an expert is a drop of water in an ocean.

Enjoy your sports and follow your favorite athletes. I will. Just do it in a healthy way.