My friend Kurt loves to make fun of the fact that I love sports. Playing or watching…doesn’t matter. He is not shy about the fact that he thinks they are pointless. So I thought about why I like sports and this is what I got for ya.
- I love competition. I thrive on it. I hate losing, there are few things worse in life. Sports are just a natural way for competition to come out.
- They teach life values. You learn about adversity, perseverance, teamwork, focus, toughness, and on and on. In high school my coaches would always emphasize the importance of sports as life building and I always thought it was just their way of advocating for their own thing. Now I see what they were talking about. So many of the life values and skills I have, I developed playing sports both as an individual and with a team.
- It is always fun to watch people who are so much better than you. If Tiger Woods only hit the ball as far as me, and hooked every other drive in the rough I wouldn’t care to watch. If Michael Jordan couldn’t dunk I probably wouldn’t have cared to watch him. Humans have a fascination of watching something that is beyond the normal for human performance.
- They are an escape. This is talking more about watching sports. I love coming home from church and watching golf. Last week the PGA Tour was at Pebble Beach and it was sunny and 65. I was watching it and it was cloudy and 45 here. Pro sports aren’t real life for most people, so they provide an escape from the mundaneness of life.
- They can change the world. You might think this is an exaggeration but I don’t think it is. The #1 example of this was the US beating the USSR in the 1980 Winter Olympics. I think athletes like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods have made the world a more equal place as far as racial lines are drawn. I think North and South Korea walking together for opening ceremonies at the Olympics is just incredible. I could go on and on with different ways that sports has had a say in history.
