Thirteen Reasons Not to Invest Time and Money into Professional Sports

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more information.

On November 15, 2017, I published a post questioning the merits of being a sports fan. It has turned out to be my most popular post by far. Right now it has 230 comments. The last one was submitted this past July—more than three and a half years after the post was published! That’s pretty remarkable. In fact, it’s so remarkable, Mrs. Groovy has been pestering me to update this post. And she’s right. A lot has happened in the world of professional sports since November of 2017, and a revisit seems more than appropriate. Here, then, is that revisit. 

When I was growing up, I was a sports fanatic. I literally had to be dragged from the street by my mom if I was in the middle of a baseball game and dinner was ready. And I lived and died by my team’s fortunes. If my team won, all was right with the world. If my team lost, I was sullen until it won again.

But then things began to change when I found myself on the cusp of high school. It started with professional basketball. I loved the Nets and Dr. J. And I loved going to the Nassau Coliseum to watch the Nets play. But then the Nets moved to New Jersey and Dr. J was traded to Philadelphia. Professional basketball was never the same. I started watching fewer regular-season games. Then I just watched the playoffs. Eventually, the only thing that held my interest was the finals. By the time I was a freshman in college, I stopped watching completely.

This same phenomenon repeated itself with the three other major sports. I would lose interest in the regular season, then the playoffs, and finally the championship round. By the time the 90s rolled around, I was done with professional baseball. By the time I relocated to Charlotte in 2006, I was done with professional hockey. And as of last year (2016), I’ve washed my hands of professional football. I only watched one game, and that was because I went to it. My childhood buddies and I ventured up to Lambeau Field to experience a Green Bay Packer game (yes, it was a bucket list thing).

And here’s my overriding message regarding my de-sportsification: it’s freakin’ awesome. You don’t need professional sports to bring joy and meaning to your life. In fact, I would venture to say that professional sports are a major impediment to a fulfilling life. When I was “into” professional sports, I was little more than an irritable, yell-at-the-television lout.

But perhaps you’re skeptical. And that’s fair. As a renowned blogger (guffaw, guffaw), it’s incumbent upon me to prove my case. Here, then, are thirteen reasons why you should abandon professional sports.

Thirteen Reasons Why You Should Abandon Professional Sports

1. It’s silly. When you think about it, professional sports are nothing but grown men running around in costumes. The least ridiculous costumes are in basketball. But even here, things can get absurd. In the 70s, shorts were tight and cut off just below the crotch. Up until recently, they were baggy and cut off at the knee. Baseball’s getting better. I never understood the stirrup, and I’m glad most players now forego them. But the armor many batters are now encasing their exposed arms in is crazy. Hockey and football costumes are highly functional but still bizarre. Imagine going to work and putting your hand in a waffle or your head in a hardened shell of plastic stuffed with foam and partially covered with metal?

2. It doesn’t matter. Do you know what you get when your team wins the championship? You get the same thing the guy whose team lost the championship gets: a big fat nothing. Both of you still have the same crappy jobs at the same crappy pay.

3. There are too many damn commercials. A couple of years ago, some University of Texas professors did an analysis of broadcast time devoted to commercials during a typical game for our four major sports. Here are the results:

I suppose if you’re going to watch professional sports, your best options are basketball and hockey. At least with their televised games, you get more action/play than commercials. But even there, you still get nearly 40 seconds of inane marketing for every one minute of action/play.

4. The owners don’t care about you. The Baltimore Colts left Baltimore in the middle of the night for Indianapolis. The Cleveland Browns then filled this void by moving to Baltimore and changing their name to the Ravens. The St. Louis Rams recently moved to Los Angeles, which is good because that’s where the Rams originally hailed from. And because Los Angeles is such a hotbed of football fanatics, the San Diego Chargers decided to move there too. The Oakland Raiders once moved to Los Angeles before returning to Oakland (maybe Los Angeles isn’t such a hotbed for football after all). Now they’re in Las Vegas. I could go on, of course. Musical-chair franchises are a feature of every major professional sport. But you get the idea. Owners care a lot more about taxpayer subsidies than they care about you. If another city offers them a better deal, they’ll abandon you, the cherished fan, in a heartbeat.

5. The players don’t care about you. Players are every bit as businesslike as the owners. If playing for another team will put millions more in their pockets, they’ll happily dump one set of face-painters for another. And who can blame them? They’re putting their bodies and brains at terrible risk. One horrific example of this occurred on the ice in Buffalo when an errant skate sliced across a goalie’s neck and cut his carotid artery. (Don’t watch if you’re squeamish. Very graphic.) So players would be foolish to not follow the money. You, in turn, should act accordingly. Understand sports are a business and don’t get emotionally attached to any player.

6. It’s expensive. Were I still living on Long Island, here’s what it would cost to watch every game of my favorite New York teams and go to at least one of their home games.*

$899.88 ($74.99/month) for Optimum’s Core Package, which includes ESPN, MSG, and SNY.
$154.66 to go to a Jet game—ticket ($81.60) + beer ($10.50) + hot dog ($6.50) + parking ($17) + gas ($8.21) + tolls ($30.85).
$85.51 to go to a Met game—ticket ($35) + beer ($11) + hot dog ($6.75) + parking ($25) + gas ($3.76) + tolls ($4.00).
$76.50 to go to a Net game—ticket ($33) + beer ($14) + hot dog ($9) + Long Island Railroad ($20.50).
$99.33 to go to an Islander game—ticket ($59) + beer ($11) + hot dog ($6.50) + parking ($20) + gas ($2.83).

Being a “true” fan on Long Island would cost me $1,315.88 annually. Invest that same amount of money every year for 40 years at 8% and you would have $382,823.

How does that make you feel? Do you really want to give $382K to owners and players that don’t give a rat’s ass about you?

* The cost of attending these games is based on the cheapest options available. If I wanted to up my fan experience and occupy a better seat or treat my stomach to more refined food and drink, the cost of attending these games would be much higher.

7. It’s a great time suck. From April to November, you can literally spend three hours every night watching a professional baseball game. From September to January, you can literally spend ten hours every Sunday watching professional football. Now imagine how much better your life would be if you devoted that time to making your spouse happy, or doing something with your kids, or learning a new skill?

8. It’s passivity run amok. Winners aren’t sitters. Winners don’t get fulfillment by watching other people pursue glory. Winners are doers. Winners are adventurers. And what muscle do you suppose is exercised when you watch hours upon hours of professional sports? Is it your get-up-and-grab-life-by-the-face muscle? Or is it your sit-on-your-ass-and-plop-Pringles-into-your-mouth muscle? Professional sports are the enemy of vigor and zeal. The more you watch them, the more your get-up-and-grab-life-by-the-face muscle will atrophy.

9. It’s insulting. I knew professional football had finally lost me when I tuned into a pregame show several years ago and I couldn’t get over the tailored suits being worn by the hosts. Really guys? You’re not hosting Masterpiece Theatre or handing out Nobel Prizes to Laureates in Sweden. You’re giving your take on a game in which huge men smash into each other at great speeds. Do you really need $2,000 suits to set the stage for such a majestic undertaking? Flannel shirts and jeans wouldn’t suffice?

To be fair, pompousness isn’t confined to NFL pregame hosts. It’s oozing out of every pore of professional sports, from the owners and league officials to the coaches, players, and announcers. And I just don’t get it.

Note to those who bring us professional sports: You’re not involved in anything regal or important. You’re not curing cancer or stemming global warming. If you all disappeared tomorrow the world would still spin on its axis. Get over yourselves.

Side note: I long for the day when the losing coach of the Super Bowl breaks script and comes to the post-game press conference in a jovial mood. When the shocked reporters question his merry attitude, he kindly retorts: “Hey, guys, loosen up. I’m disappointed with today’s outcome. But remember, we lost a game. We didn’t get blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq.” Such an occurrence would not only be refreshing but would also inject some much-needed perspective into a society driven mad by a meaningless game.

10. It’s risky. If you’re not paying attention, you can get seriously hurt at a hockey game or baseball game. And it’s not just errant objects you have to worry about at a sporting event. Sometimes the threat comes from the players themselves. Check out the following videos:

Thankfully, player-on-fan violence is a rarity. The real threat in the stands is fan-on-fan violence. Cheer for the wrong team or wear the wrong jersey and you can be on the receiving end of some fists. If you’re of age, here is some fan-on-fan violence from the past month:

Man Wearing a Seahawks Jersey in the Wrong Stadium

Man Wearing a Chargers Jersey in the Wrong Stadium

A Fight Between Baseball Fans for Surely a Just Reason

11. It’s unseemly. I have no problem with kids wearing football or hockey jerseys. It’s harmless fun. But adults wearing football or hockey jerseys? I don’t know. It strikes me as embarrassingly beta. What self-respecting adult worships another adult? Or better yet, what self-respecting adult proclaims his or her beta status by adorning a jersey with some dude’s name on it and then freaking out like a Price is Right contestant whenever his or her “hero” does something praiseworthy on the field?

12. It’s a poor substitute for meaning. Check out the below video—it depicts life today on skidrow in Philadelphia:

Let’s be brutally honest. These people have thrown away their lives. They were born with functioning brains and bodies in one of the wealthiest and freest countries on earth, and rather than do something noble or heroic with their great fortune, they decided to chase a high. And when their bodies finally succumb to drugs, disease, or exposure, no one will care. They’ll be buried in some Potter’s Field by strangers.

Now, being a sports fanatic isn’t nearly as detrimental as being a drug addict. But what mark does the sports-possessed soul leave on this world? Do they find love? Do they procreate? Do they invent, build, or fix—do they leave behind anything tangible that says they contributed positively to the human story, that they mattered?

Again, being a sports fanatic is much preferable to being a drug addict. But if you die and all you’re known for is loving some sports team, what more did you do with your life than the poor souls littering Philadelphia’s skidrow?

13. It’s promoting evil. Make no mistake, BLM is a totalitarian black supremacist organization and movement. It wants full-blown socialist government coupled with anti-white Jim Crow. And all four major professional sports leagues couldn’t be more supportive of BLM and its objectives.

Just how BLM is advancing its agenda is simple: It wants you to hate white people and anything regarded as “white.” Capitalism = white = bad. Free speech = white = bad. Punctuality = white = bad. The more non-whites loathe whites and the more whites loathe themselves, the easier it will be to topple the American experiment, to finally vanquish any fondness Americans have for limited government, inalienable rights, and color-blindness. And in its quest to make anything white synonymous with bad, it has devised three despicable rules for white people. Here they are:

No redemption for white people. The Japanese who raped Nanking and bombed Pearl Harbor are not the same Japanese today. And the Germans who started WWII and executed millions of people in concentration camps are not the same Germans today. But according to BLM and its Woke comrades, white Americans today are no different than white Americans from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. It doesn’t matter how forcibly white Americans vilify their ancestors and self-flagellate themselves with ever harsher and ever more pervasive forms of anti-white Jim Crow, white people still suck. In fact, white people will forever suck until they invent a time machine and go back and undo all the suckiness they unleashed upon people of color and the world.

No tragedy of human frailty for white people. The Spanish and Portuguese didn’t colonize everything south of the Rio Grande and bolster their colonization efforts with millions of African slaves because they (the Spanish and Portuguese) were Hispanic. The Chinese didn’t torture and slaughter millions of people during Mao’s Cultural Revolution because they were Asian. And the Hutus didn’t torture and slaughter hundreds of thousands of Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide because they (the Hutus) were black. Nope, the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Hutus did evil because they were human beings and that’s what human beings do. We are morally flawed creatures who have to fight mightily to subdue our tribal, violent, and authoritarian impulses. But for BLM and its Woke comrades, this tragedy of human frailty doesn’t apply to white people. White Americans perpetrated the evil of slavery and anti-black Jim Crow, not because they were human, but because they were white. White Americans apparently have an “oppression” gene that non-white Americans don’t. Non-white Americans thus get to sneer and look down upon white Americans because they (non-white Americans) would never behave so badly.

No content of character for white people. BLM and its Woke comrades are surely appalled by the Tusla Massacre. There was no content of character for black people in the 1920s. A crime by one black person against one white person was a crime by all black people against all white people. And that vile sentiment caused unspeakable carnage, not just in Tulsa, but in numerous other cities throughout the anti-black Jim Crow era (see here, here, and here). But sadly, that vile sentiment, which was put to death in the 1960s, has been resurrected by BLM and its Woke comrades. Today, a crime by one white person against one black person is a crime by all white people against all black people, and BLM and its Woke comrades couldn’t care less how much carnage their neo-bigotry has caused, and will cause.

Message to white people: Don’t get your entertainment from people who support people who hate you. Message to non-white people: Don’t get your entertainment from people who support people who promote the evil notion that white people are morally inferior to all non-white people.

Final Thoughts

My favorite two lines in the song Take Me Out to the Ballgame are these:

Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win, it’s a shame.

Notice how the songwriters said if your team doesn’t win it’s a shame. They didn’t say if your team doesn’t win it’s time to sack the city.

In a sane world, professional sports would be about as consequential as Hollywood movies. Nobody storms out of a movie theater and starts smashing things if Steven Spielberg’s latest contribution to cinema is a flop. Nobody gets into a fistfight over who the best director or actor is.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with sports. But if you really love something, don’t watch it, do it. Get out and toss a football. Join a softball league. Go to the driving range and hit some golf balls.

And if you’re looking for an inexpensive escape for a few hours, go to a high school football game or a minor league baseball game. Don’t let professional sports become an all-consuming affair. It’s a waste of time, money, and dignity.

Okay, groovy freedomist. That’s all I got. What say you? Did I nail the foolishness of being consumed with professional sports? Or is my anti-professional sports screed the thing that’s really foolish. Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.