In recent times, household names have shamed the multi-billion dollar sports industry to an extent that almost no other generation has witnessed. A 20-year old sports fan has been alive long enough to endure the Tim Donaghy fixed games fiasco, the steroids-era Mitchell Report, the dog-fighting days of Michael Vick and even a Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax. Last week, yet another insult catapulted into the spotlight, hurtled by none other than psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow. His accusation that “[sports] don’t matter to the world, in the long run, when it comes down to it, at all” should nauseate any sports lover or beholder of common sense. What is this Fox News Medical A-Team correspondent choosing to ignore? Only the blatantly obvious, of course.
Dr. Ablow’s first insensible argument stems from the firing of Mike Rice, the malicious head coach of the Rutgers Men’s Basketball team. He claims Rice’s bullying nature is the “product of a culture that wrongfully deifies sports figures.” Eliminate the word “wrongfully” from his statement, and even history would have to agree. In the fifth century BCE, the Greeks crafted the Riace bronze statues, essentially a pair of naked warrior-athletes. A Stanford professor reasons that “[the figures] simply know that what they do they do supremely well, better than anyone else. It does not even occur to them that we could want to do anything other than admire them.” To sum it up, it is human nature to deify the wonderment of athletic bodies, not a crime. Whatever perverted standards of acceptable behavior Mike Rice abided by are now receiving the harshest media backlash since the Jerry Sandusky child molestation trial. Aside from the colleges that failed to adequately punish both these men’s first offenses, our culture has reiterated that sports figures will only be deified for their athletic accomplishments, and nothing more.
In his second piece of flawed logic, Dr. Ablow boldly demands that “sports fans [get] over themselves” as they are “a glaring symbol of…how willing they are to settle for being fans, instead of fanning the flames of their own passions.” To oppose this opinion, simply let the numbers speak for themselves. Each year, over 40 million children and adolescents in the United States participate in organized sports. Many of these kids grow up with the dreams of playing at the professional level, and acquire valuable life skills throughout their athletic endeavors, such as teamwork, discipline, and self-confidence. Recreational players, both young and old, channel their “fandom” into motivation for bettering their own athletic performance. They aspire to be the Alex Morgan or Peyton Manning of their own particular field, whether or not it is of athletic nature.
Finally, Dr. Ablow oversimplifies the impact of sporting events, stating, “games are games are games.” What he fails to realize is that the sports industry is a multi-billion dollar global giant. In the current economical crisis, the sports world is one of the few that has actually managed to increase revenue by almost four percent. It is more valuable than the U.S. automobile industry and ten times more valuable than Hollywood. Hundreds of thousands of jobs rely on the media coverage of sporting events––managers, equipment guys, statisticians, athletes, and even doctors need sports to stay afloat. Eliminating this, as Dr. Ablow suggests, wouldn’t solve problems; it would cause them.
Maybe Dr. Ablow is bitter because he was picked last for his recess kickball team. Or maybe he lost his fantasy football league ten years in a row. Either way, his nonsensical opinion on why sports don’t matter, “not an iota,” lacks sufficient evidence and logical grounding to be taken seriously. In the ever-wise words of Ron Burgundy, sports are kind of a big deal.