Skip to main content

Evolution of Sports

Post-modern Sports.
In the beginning, like when I was a kid, sports was completely devoted to sports. I read about who’s doing well, whose not.  I read about trades and how they might affect the team.  I read about the draft and the talents of the draftees.  Rarely did I read about money, except for the superstars.  But now, we see less of this as sports has evolved.  The evolution?  Here's a sketch.
  1. Sports teams, talent, prospects, achievements, hopes, potentials, front-runners.
  2. Sports money, who’s making the most, minimal salary scales, how much this player can demand, owner’s net worth, league’s rulings on player behavior.
  3. Sports personal issues such as domestic abuses, arrests, dress style, diverse opinions, executing contract options.
  4. Sports and politics, athlete’s opinions, athlete’s political expressions, athlete’s standing on personal principles, league rulings on politically oriented dress.


Only tangential these days is a discussion of the issues of times past, talent, prospect, achievements, and the like. The league commissioner is more important than the teams, the athlete’s press coverage is more important than performance, the coach’s tenure is dependent on extramural issues. 
Sports has become a microcosm of political and social belief systems in America.  It is similar in Europe, but without the politics.  Money, abuses, and transfers rule discussions across the pond. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Human Simulation is Possible - by Humans

  Human Simulation: Agent-Based Modeling and the Computational Case for Our Reality   1.       Introduction In the essay, we introduce the notion that humanity could be a deliberate simulation based on an extremely simple single-celled organism, hardly anything more complex than that. This will allow an (apparently) new interpretation of the notion that humanity is simulated, but that there is no master engineer at a massive number of dials and switches, responsible for every twist and turn of our universe and lives. We begin with the notion that the universe exists and operates under its own laws. So, given the Earth [2] , when and where life first began, it was infused with a living agent, self-actualized, reproductive, and with other basic rules for its operations, interactions, and much of what single-celled organisms do today. The idea from this occurred some years back when writing code in ActionScript (formerly Flash), I was able to create...

No Sympathy From Me

Suicide Coming Home Many years ago, a friend hung himself in his basement.  I was a pall-bearer at his funeral. I was shocked I was so asked.  I did this.  I did not understand why a good-looking fellow, intelligent, kindly, and true could do such a thing. He did. I do not.  His family suffered greatly.  Yet he left no issue.   Thankfully. To my mind Country singer Mindy McCready, 37, showed us the very height of personal selfishness by committing suicide.  By giving birth to two offspring, she accepted the responsibility to raise her newborn and six-year old son.  She abrogated it spectacularly.  (As did the father a month ago.)  Though she may have suffered depression for any number of reasons, she has little sympathy from me for leaving behind a legacy that is now lost, is now parent-less, and may drift into problems of their own in the future.    There is shame and heartbreak in all this, but blame should be...

UNCERTAINTY IS CERTAIN

  Uncertainty is Certain G. Donald Allen 12/12/2024 1.       Introduction . This short essay is about uncertainty in people from both secular and nonsecular viewpoints. One point that will emerge is that randomly based uncertainty can be a driver for religious structure. Many groups facing uncertainty about their future are deeply religious or rely on faith as a source of comfort, resilience, and guidance. The intersection of uncertainty and religiosity often stems from the human need to find meaning, hope, and stability in the face of unpredictable or challenging circumstances. We first take up the connections of uncertainty to religion for the first real profession, farming, noting that hunting has many similar uncertainties. Below are groups that commonly lean on religious beliefs amidst uncertainty.   This short essay is a follow-up to a previous piece on certainty (https://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2024/12/certainty-is-also-emotion.html). U...