“So you’re not good at sports. It’s a very small part of life.”
So says Marge Simpson to her daughter Lisa, just as Homer walks in chanting: “sport sport sport sport sport sport sport sport.”
As I watch episode upon episode of The Simpsons on a particularly hung over Sunday, I’m reminded by my yellow friends that sport is a huge part of some people’s lives and totally irrelevant to others. Take me for example. My brothers and father are all extremely sporty; my dad used to play squash for Kenya, my older brother is hoping to compete in the 2012 Olympics in the 800 metres and has already run for Great Britain and my younger brother played county rugby. As you can imagine they’re all very fit and healthy. Even my mum is a fan of sport and regularly plays tennis and takes part in charity fun runs and bike rides. I seem to be the only member of the family who thinks sport is a bit meh. And for those who aren’t au fait with the word “meh”, in my case I would define it as “not interesting enough to care about.”
Don’t get me wrong - I undoubtedly appreciate the physical prowess and skill that it takes to play professional sport and the discipline required to perfect one’s art. And, let’s not mince words, certain sports stars are very easy on the eye (hint: the man I’m thinking of plays rugby and was once going out with Kelly Brooke. Initials DC.) To be honest I can even understand why people enjoy watching sport; I imagine it’s exciting if you’re into that sort of thing and besides, everyone has to accept very early on in life that different people happen to like different things. My boyfriend drinks whiskey and beer, both of which I find repellent and conversely I love cheese in an overtly reverent manner and Harry can’t stand the stuff. My best friend at university liked Samuel Beckett, whereas I found his stuff needlessly esoteric. I loved WB Yeats and she thought his writing was a load of drivel. In short, different horses for different courses.
My real gripe isn’t with sport in general; it’s with football. I can’t stand the disproportionate way that people worship it. It seems unreasonable to get that worked up over something which is only meant to be for entertainment purposes. Oh okay, and is sometimes a remarkable display of human talent which should be justly admired, blah blah blah. But quite clearly there are some things going on in the world which are truly worthy of our abject attention. Wars, poverty, crime, injustice, sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia and naturally the scourge of The Daily Mail and its loyal morons to name but a few. The answer to this puzzle is obvious: thinking about the above is depressing. I don’t need to take a poll to know that most of us would much rather watch a sitcom than the news. But just because human nature is unlikely to change, doesn’t mean that (for the most part) we don’t all know deep down that we should care more about the important issues and less about which team won the Premier League (or in my case, which celebrity has just been dumped.)
My second problem with football is the money. Motor racing is also an obvious candidate for a dressing down, but football’s got to be the worst. At least with motor racing the guys are risking their lives – in “the beautiful game” they keel over at the slightest provocation and feign injury. Wake up chaps; there’s a rather well known game called rugby where guys really do get the stuffing knocked out of them; we’re not impressed by your wet blouse theatrics. These ill educated, immature thuggish fairies get paid thousands of pounds a week, in many cases earning more in a year than thirty average Britons. How is that fair I ask you? For crying out loud, nurses get paid around twenty one to twenty seven thousand a year, and what they’re doing must be a gruelling and often thankless task, but is undeniably vital, unlike football. Again the answer for why these spoilt men-children are disproportionately rewarded is simple. There’s a ton of money in football and there’s hardly any in the bottomless NHS pit.
But I’m not going to let a little thing like practicality or reality divert me from my Utopian society, where sport is appreciated with an appropriate level of adulation. A world where boys can actually afford a season ticket to see their team play and where teenagers aren’t plucked out of school before they’ve even passed a GCSE so they can spend the next twenty years earning millions for kicking a ball about (and probably cheating on their wives and girlfriends in between matches and coke binges.) And most importantly, a world where grown men don’t think it’s acceptable to brawl or weep bucketfuls because their team lost. Wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air to hear a Millwall supporter utter the words: “hey, it’s just a game”? Because let’s face it, it is!
Just think what the earth would be like if a huge portion of the money that’s pumped into the bloated football industry was sent to third world countries or used to provide jobs and houses to the world’s many homeless? Imagine if those who gleefully participate in game-related punch ups were prepared to get up and fight with such avid passion for women’s rights or Amnesty International. Picture the loyalty and lover like devotion football fans have for their teams and transfer it to the plight of an African child. You have to admit it would be a very different world to live in. Almost certainly a better one. But unquestionably the most persuasive incentive for subscribing to my Utopia would be that ol’ kill joys like me would cease our insistent ranting and turn our talents to something more useful. Like getting off our fat self righteous arses and taking up a sport.
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