I've been wondering for a long time- why do we care so much about sports? Our culture is so sports driven to the point we pay thousands of dollars to watch the games live, spend time from our day checking scores, statistics, reading articles, streaming videos and track the personal lives of athletes. Athletes make millions from our obsessions. They live the quality of life most of us dream of. So why are we so obsessed?
I've been a huge sports junkie for years. I've been watching sports, writing about teams and players to the point where I sell autographs of professional athletes. Athletes make millions of dollars by my and the rest of the world's consumption to the point where players can work 6 months of the year and feed their entire past and future family generations for decades. So what's the point of sports? Are we infatuated with the fame and money involved? Are athletes like movie stars where they take us to fantasy world where we can escape the mundane activities of our day to day lives? Quite frankly, I know more people who feel that actors and actresses are more deserving of the millions they make than professional athletes.
I'm an avid NBA and Celtics fan. I follow the Celtics deeply and watch their every move. In the end what is all for? An 18th championship? For me to be one of the 60,000 residents in the Boston area to claim our team is #1? The Larry O'brien trophy is worth approximately $15,000. Yet, you have hundreds of million dollar franchises spending millions to capture that trophy year in and year out. The taste of championship sweetness lasts about a week or 2 before normalcy takes over and a new sporting season is underway. The NFL is planning to boycott the season because the players and owners cannot come up with a way to amicably divide $9 billion dollars. In the end the fans suffer. Maybe we need a new obsession to fill the void.
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