We get it. You don’t like sports. Who cares. I think there’s validity to sport and I enjoy watching and playing many of them. Has capitalism ruined everything the common person holds dear in most sports? Yes. I literally wrote an article about it.
But sport itself isn’t inherently bad and being like “herp derp sportsball” makes you sound like a basement dweller incel who wants to shoot up their school because they think jocks get all the girls instead of the kind gentlesirs who study the blade.
A lot of people are only exposed to sport as a tv show and a product, but most sports have roots that go back hundreds of years, are very influenced by working class history and local teams are often at the heart of communities (although many have been stolen and turned into just another generator of capital).
Sports have also been an arena for the class struggle - aristocrats and workers battling it out over who should be allowed to play and control different games at different time, “amateurs vs professionals” (i.e. those who were wealthy enough to be able to fund their sporting career as a hobby vs talented workers who needed to be paid to play) was a controversy in sports for decades. Even today there are many teams run and owned by fans in some sports, and the struggle between workers who have been watching their teams for decades (even through multiple generations of families) vs their indifferent capitalist owners is ongoing.
Also playing sports is fun and you will make friends and get healthy.
Read up on sport in 20th century socialist states, it was treated with massive investment and athletes were awarded high honour, it was tied in to public health (along with often being integrated with making people fit enough to serve in the army to defend against all the capitalist countries wanting to invade you for trying to not be capitalist). Even in capitalist countries today grassroots sport is one of the only real community/social circles people have that isn’t tied to working for a capitalist.
I talk shit about the NFL and college football to my family and coworkers all the time.
The criticisms need to be directed at the system, like how billionaire owners get 52% of all profits, can move teams whenever they want - and use that threat to bully cities into giving them tax money for stadiums. For fucking billionaires.
Or college sports, which is dominated by the likes of easy-to-hate Alabama and Ohio State (the best players go to the best teams, so it self-perpetuates and will always be that way), schools often barely educate their athletes, funding for students and education instead goes to lavish "athletic facilities."
The most unconscionable part of college sports is how if players get injured before going pro there is no recourse for them. They're just out of millions of dollars, permanently injured, and with few career prospects. This goes for college basketball and baseball too, but the violent nature of Amerikkkan football means that anyone that plays in college will come out with at least one permanent injury. Usually bad knees/hips at a minimum, neck or back problems if they aren't lucky.
I remember hearing years ago that the average career length of an NFL player is like 4 games. After dedicating probably a decade of your life and eschewing real education. What does a 22 year old with no prospects do after that.
Yeah, I remember a while back doing some math on NFL average career pay spread over a lifetime and being shocked.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but given the health concerns of playing professional football one is probably better off becoming an accountant or something, outside of like, super star players who make multiple millions a year.
Knew a guy that tore his ACL a month into freshman jv football, walks with a limp ten years later. Absolute insanity
Oh yeah, this is very legitimate criticism, and it only serves to hurt the sport to continue on this way.