Columns

While watching grown men wrestle each other over an oval shaped ball, has it ever occurred to you to ask: what is the point? When examined closely, modern professional sport seems to have little point to it at all.

Noam Chomsky, the hero of the left when it comes to media matters, describes modern sport as being used by those in power to distract us lower people from what really matters, like them killing thousands of civilians in the Middle East. 
   That’s a fairly cynical view of both sport and those who watch it. That idea may explain the reasoning behind sports like NASCAR and it’s no right-turn policy, but the idea that if you watch sport you don’t care about anything else is pretty ridiculous.
   In some ways you can see where Chomsky is coming from: with all the hype and over-analyzing that goes into sports these days it can be easy to get lost in the hyperbole that comes out of the mouths of the likes of Keith Quinn. 
   Where the argument falls short, though, is with the mums and dads who get up every Saturday morning to take little Willy down to the park to see him put on his boots on, then make mud cakes in the corner of the field, and who continue to do it week after week.
   It is at the grass-roots level that the point of sport is made abundantly clear. Sport, or any type of physical competition, seems to be as natural as two lion cubs fighting each other in preparation for avoiding a poacher’s gunshot later in life. 
   Sports can even serve as life lessons in today’s society. Take rugby for example – it’s okay if it’s not consensual so long as the ref doesn’t see you. 
   The ugly side of sport always will be around, like the overpaid players, coaches, and the Otago Nuggets Cheerleaders, and there will always be nerds who hate it that the jock always gets the girl. Isn’t that the crux of the argument?
   Even if some ivory tower academic says sport doesn’t matter, out here in the real world it most certainly does. Huge Neanderthal men cry at the sight of their team losing – or alternatively, in England they just try and murder the other side. Whatever works best I’m not one to judge the way one man grieves.
   Maybe though we do take sport a little too seriously; with all the money that went into the Beijing Olympics, there are still people who live near the Olympic Stadium who think it’s a luxury their neighbour has a hole in the ground to shit in. 
   And the constant dribble about some sort of party central makes me want to sit down and watch test cricket all day, listen to the docile tones of Richie Benuad, and get completely pissed off the main sponsor’s product of course.