I don’t get it. I understand that pro athletes have great abilities: speed, agility, stamina, whatever their particular sport demands. I’m not knocking that ability; I have a great respect for their discipline and determination. But when it comes to professional, televised sports, what’s the big deal? What benefit, besides great entertainment, are they providing to the world? How are their sports playing abilities contributing to a better future for mankind? It’s good entertainment, but I think pro athletes make way too much money for what they do. Why can’t we spend some of that money on medical research or public infrastructure or social services? Because public good isn’t exciting?

So what’s the big deal? When I watch football I see a bunch of (over)grown men in two different colored uniforms running up and down a big field fighting over the posession of a little ball. Basketball, a bunch of tall men trying to get a round ball through hoops on alternating sides of the court. Baseball, a lone guy trying to get rid of a ball and run in a diamond pattern before another bunch of guys gets the ball back to the starting point.

What if they had a game and nobody came? Or watched? Is the improvement of our situation to be eternally postponed by the pacification of the masses? Are we but a modern Rome whose citizens are concerned only with bread and circuses?