(ThyBlackMan.com) Americans claim to watch sports to relax and escape their strenuous schedules, which include juggling family and work. However, is the manner in which Americans relate to sports so innocent? At what point does mindless consumption become detrimental? How much time should one spend on this kind of mindless consumption?
Modern sports are mindless entertainment used as a sedative for men who have been emasculated by our capitalistic society. Yes, I am aware that the sentence is harsh but reality is harsh. America’s sports consumption rivals that of the Roman Empire’s “bread and circuses”, practice of providing free sporting events and food to pacify the citizens. The citizen’s attention was always focused on spectacle, rather than the important issues that really affected their lives such as, wealth distribution, military stability, and government corruption. The similarity to modern times is disturbing. The only difference between the two is that American fans have to pay for overpriced tickets, apparel, and food.
The macho man of America, who is in reality insecure, validates his manhood daily by quoting pointless sports statistics and making comments about last night’s game. How is it beneficial to them? For me, knowing what’s in my food or whether my child is learning the skills she needs to survive in the future is more important than the college Tom Brady attended. (Maybe I’m just a geek.) The sports 
watching experience presents an oxymoron. While viewers are scarfing down pizza and gulping soda, destroying their arteries, they’re also paying to watch someone else who is being paid to exercise and compete. Fans (or fanatics) pay via stadium entry, cable, sports packages, and the Internet to yell and critique someone who is being paid to play. The sports fanatic usually commits numerous hours watching pre-game commentary, the live game, post-game commentary, and more high lights of the game they just watched. This results in a lot of ‘WASTED TIME’.
Sports fans try to utilize sports to simulate some form of warrior spirit that is absent from their own lives, often filled with subservience and compromise. Many sports viewers are out of shape and disillusioned with the world. Why are adult men walking around with a jersey with another man’s name on the back? Why are fans trying to live their fantasy of battle and triumph through their favorite athlete, knowing they have to go to work in the morning and be subservient to their supervisor?
Some of the greatest thinkers throughout history have been consumers of sport as entertainment, mesmerized by the integrity, teamwork, athleticism, and courage competing athletes display. Unfortunately, corporations have stripped modern sports of these virtues. Even so, the viewing of modern sports is not problem. The problem begins, in my opinion, when the spectacle of sportainment becomes the focal point of one’s life.
PS: Sports fans, please stop using the term “MY TEAM”. You have no official connection or ownership with the team you profess an affiliation with. They do not know you nor do they care for the wellbeing of you and your family members. Just because you have a fantasy account does not make you a General Manager.
Staff Writer; Linton Hinds Jr.
Official website; http://Livity.info/
