Weekly Inspiration #37: It’s ok to like sports
June 14th, 2010 by SandboxThe 2010 FIFA World Cup has just started and the planet resonates to the sounds of the Vuvuzelas.
Watching sports is a form of entertainment that I never enjoyed much. I tend to see it as a waste of time. I like to play sports, to have fun with friends, but not to watch 22 people running for ninety minutes on a football field.
When I do watch sports, I can’t help myself thinking to the Roman Emperors who used to keep their people happy by giving them bread and circuses – food and entertainment. A football stadium is similar to the Colloseum except that today, people watch sports on TV and professional players - modern day gladiators – now escape the death sentence when they are defeated.
So when Amazon recommended me to buy a book called “It’s ok to like sports” by Matt Wasowski, the title intrigued me and I put it in the shopping cart.
In this book, the author makes a collection of personal essays that closely examine how nearly every aspect of his everyday life is affected by his love of sports, from conversing with his friends, to thinking about parenthood or discussing one’s personal finances. He tries to convince the reader that there is cultural value in athletics and that it’s ok to like sports.
Reading it through, two points caught especially my attention:
“It is false to say that sports are not intellectually stimulating”: for Wasowski, sports are subject to debate and interpretation just as much as art and music. The games are so complex that every detail is important and you can talk for hours about a game, trying to interpret a coach’s decisions.
What athletes are doing is truly extraordinary and can only be done by a handful of people on the planet, “just as only a handful of writers could have come up with the Odissey, The Sound and the Fury and The Invisible Man”. Athletes force admiration in their efforts to constantly push the boundaries of the human body.
So to my question: ”Why would anyone waste his time watching this stuff?” Wasowski answers:
“For the same reason anyone watches any other form of art, creativity or entertainment – because sports are fun and heartbreaking, light and dramatic, pleasing and upsetting, life and death, and consistently conjuring a gamut of emotion, insight, analysis, strategy, and debate”.
Do you watch sports? Would you also compare a football player to Homer or Faulkner? Do you find intellectual stimulation in sports, or just good entertainment?
Antoine is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. He will watch a couple of games over the next weeks and who knows, maybe he’ll enjoy looking at them from a different angle 
I have the privilege of being at the World Cup now. I have been an avid football fan since I was a child and a tennis coach for many years now. As an athlete, you want to be the best at your art. That is what you consider it when you decide to take the long route to perfecting it-to compete at the highest level that you can. You become an artist in all senses when you perform, whether on the field or for yourself. And if you follow it long enough you begin to see more of the strategy and coaching behind it to appreciate the sport as more than just "a game."
Its beyond a sport, it is a tool for development. In my experiences, it has reduced drug use in the youth groups that I teach, has kept them off the streets at high risk hours when centres have worked with us to get court/field lights, and builds confidence, empathy, and teamwork. Much like we need art classes--from music to painting--back in our educational curriculum to develop creativity and imagination; we need to make physical education and after school sports programmes a must to promote good health and social skills, particularly at a time when lack of excersise and poor nutrition have created a public health catastrophe. Thanks to sports events, kids are signing up themselves and getting on the field making the job easier for everyone.
Yet this is beyond the World Cup and just the joy of what it brings as entertainment-this is a health issue.
Antoine, you gotta attend a screening party like we had in DC on Saturday. When there are some 3,000 people cheering around you, it's impossible to stay indifferent.
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