Is There Some Kind of Sport Thing Today?

I hear today is the Superbowl.  Apparently that is something to do with professional football.  I don’t understand all this…

It always amuses me in the locker room at the gym to hear all the middle aged men talk about sports teams and say “we did this” and “then we did that”.   How does sitting in over priced seats in a stadium or sitting at home with a six- or twelve- pack make this a “we” situation?  How are they part of the “team”?  What is their contribution to the effort?  Why are they so engaged?  Admittedly, many of them sound over paid, but that’s the only commonality with professional football players that I can see…

After being amused, I am quickly disturbed.

See, everyone gets all worked up and passionate about football games.  They know statistics and team histories going back decades.  Why don’t they get this way about politics and things things that really matter in peoples’ lives?  I know they don’t know their US history as well as their NFL history.  That is evident in their other conversations.  They will challenge each other on sports facts, but blindly accept everything Faux News has to throw out there.  I don’t understand this…

Is it so important to escape into this fantasy of being part of the team?  What drives this behavior?   Has everyone become so disgusted with politics and the inequalities in everyday life that they just want to let it all go and ignore it?  Is this just another excuse not to think about the “real world” and to hide in a false kinship of sporting events?  Or are they just plain shallow…

I guess maybe all this relates to how, for some reasons, they don’t get worked up about steroid use in professional and college sports.  They assume everyone takes them and so it evens out in the end.  Do they assume that politicians are all the same and therefore it all evens out in the end?

That’s a dangerous assumption and one I fear is taking hold…