Sports corrode American society

As US emperor, sports would be prohibited for one year. A sporting moratorium frees Americans  from an eight-hour-per-week habit.

While meat-heads praise sports for benefits to awareness, health or socializing, legions of children are forced into athletics demanding allegiance, encouraging violence and class hierarchy.

For its part in mindlessness, systematic racism and glorified violence, banish sports.

Sports are pointless delusions.

Watching sports encourages mental complacency. Time spent in front of TVs drooling over jocks’ political gaffes could be invested in education in political economy, labor or African American history ⁠— topics sports entertainment avoids and obscures.

Group exercise offers the same benefits without the baggage of violence or racism. Students would learn more about fitness and socializing from choreographed dance than from manipulating balls or bashing heads with helmets.

Professional athletes’ post game interviews are often gibberish — see Bleacher Report’s 100 Dumbest Things Ever Said in Sports for examples. 

A society should try to understand academics not athletes. Sports are anti-intellectual. Try reading a book at a game and count the taunts and interrogations.

Professional sports perpetuate systemic racism.

Racial stratification is baked into professional sports. The NFL did not have a black head coach until 1989, and now has two owners of color.

In 2013, TMZ reported LA Clippers owner Roger Sterling scolded his wife for attending a game with a black man, Magic Johnson. Sterling was expelled, but diversity in ownership did not change.

During the controversy FiveThirtyEight reported one team out of 92 professional sports teams, had a principal owner of color. 

Sports tout their integrationist icons, Jackie Robinson, Jack Johnson and Kenny Washington. But teams resisted integration longer than other professions. African American doctors, lawyers and mathematicians lived a century before baseball’s integration.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, nationalist displays are imposed on all attendees. Black players who object to flag salutes are despised in a country that humiliates, cages and kills its black underclass. 

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick led his teams to two NFC championship games and one Super Bowl appearance. He was railroaded out the NFL for defying its ritual of national fawning. Patriots criticize; lackeys repeat what they’re told. 

Professional team owners and coaches are dominated by white men. The NBA had six black coaches during the 2018 playoffs.The MLB has four minority head coaches, as do major college programs. The NFL has four minority head coaches and a single minority general manager overseeing a league in which about three quarters of the players are black.

Sports are making America stupid again.

Sports encourage physical competition, rather than wit or diplomacy. Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend,”If the body is feeble, the mind cannot be strong.” But a strong brain is trained in thinking and cannot perform without exercise.

College athletes practice about 30 hours per week, depriving them of college’s main benefit ⁠— intellectual exploration. Jefferson said he exercised 14 hours weekly.

In 2015, Inside Higher Education reported college athletes take easier classes to fit in. Players are encouraged to take easier classes. 

Leading research institutions UC Berkeley, UCLA and Stanford spend millions on a sports subculture to draw revenue. Despite the wealth fans waste on their teams, colleges neglect of their educational mission.

UC Berkeley ran a $30 million deficit in 2018, but spent $20 million on athletics. In 2017, Bloomberg reported many college athletics programs, including Cal, are crushed by debt.

LA Business Journal reported taxpayers will cover up to $270 million in overruns for the 2028 Olympics. Voters should have decided how that money was invested.

LA has 38,000 unsheltered residents. Remember how well Rio De Janeiro’s low income community were treated during by 2016 Olympics developers. 

Professional sports endorse conservative values.

Professional sports nurture nationalism. Most professional sporting events hold a military salute, where a veteran stands to be applauded. While generally heart warming, the practice camouflages the shame wars bring to America. 

Crowds humming “the land of the free” in unison miss the irony — the same people angry at flag protests claim they would defend speech to the death.

League owners collude to suppress wages and exclude players who complain, call for better contracts or protest institutional violence.

Team owners are comprised of billionaires and multi-millionaires. Owners represent themselves as realizing the American dream, while stifling their workers’ earnings potential.

Sports have saddled the American people with an intellectual and moral debt. Ban sports, boycott them or look upon them with scorn.