Sports are dumb. They’re just sweaty musclebound brutes chasing some object. Wait: I like sports. Go sports! I think I’ll watch others toil physically toward a goal all involved have deemed important, especially since we’ve been deprived of them for so long when we could’ve most used a distraction.
But the return to play has been exchanged. You simply can’t have fun. This is a serious time when everything has to be bad. There can be nothing frivolous like games, announce game players. Oppression is as common as rooting for the Patriots to finally crumble. And police are too busy murdering black men to enforce laws. Dystopian hellishness prevents knockout tournaments when people really wanted them.
Unity through monitored competition would’ve been nice after the zombie plague. Instead, pro athletes called out sick when society is finally getting well because police shot a man with a knife who initiated a domestic dispute. Postponing sports the moment where they’ve never been more welcome is a missed opportunity worse than Star Wars prequels.
Most people aren’t progressive enough to skip work because there are things going wrong in this rather imperfect realm of existence. Tell your boss you’re taking the day off because injustice exists, and you’l likely be told you can spend all your time fretting how someone somewhere is repressed. You just won’t be compensated for doing so.
Sports boycotts gave us free time to think why they’re misguided. That didn’t really work out for participants. A few horrid instances mean America is rotten, claim those fighting prejudice. Individual incidents don’t mean everyone else sucks even if they occurred as framed, which they often do not. Claiming individual confrontations with cops represent law enforcement or the country as a whole is itself a stereotype. Don’t smirk at the irony, hater. You’d think people who compete for a living would know how statistics work.
Half a year of quasi-vacation should have provided moments for self-reflection. Unfortunately, social justice lunatics just used ample alone time to indulge in their more rabid notions. Maybe 2020 America isn’t the bigoted hellhole it’s been portrayed to be. Of course, thinking so is racist.
Woke Twitter owns franchises. Complying with demands to pimp liberal policies is how billionaires share the wealth. Rather zealous social media users with bio pronouns are upset teams didn’t lecture hard enough. Normal people with careers and loving families were foolish enough to follow Twitter accounts of beloved clubs for score updates and not so they can be told how people should be treated equally. Those whose favorite sport is sanctimony seem like the types who really appreciate troglodytic tackling and checking. I’m sure professional agitators spend fortunes on jerseys and season tickets.
It’s undoubtedly wise and decent to let LeBron James serve as your professor and conscience. Millionaire basket-makers can’t let you just watch them work. Athletes who explain why the country that provided them with incredible opportunities deprives people of basic opportunities seem like geniuses who very much would’ve attended college if athletic scholarships didn’t exist.
You don’t need a degree to know what an insulting gesture kneeling for the anthem is. The thorough slight applies to any country, particularly the awesome one where the nonstop moaners live and thrive. Petulant dolts refuse to work in order to tell you why you should loathe it here.
If game-playing barons believe their home country has problems, they should check out the other ones. Of course, they’ll do so from afar, as having to get a new passport would cut into valuable wokeness time. They totally don’t reject the USA in its entirety, which is why they display their outrage during its anthem. Kneeling fist-raisers can claim their self-aggrandizing displays are only meant to hurt the feelings of bad cops, not to insult the nation outright. The Cleveland Browns can also claim to be Super Bowl favorites.
Ticking off people who think sports are for sports is bound to be good for ratings. Potential customers are already accustomed to life without viewing ball pursuit. Quarantine habits can come right back.
Pausing games for harangues will lead to leagues discovering they’re not indispensable. There’s a missed opportunity to show commercials in between plays to desperate fans. We missed the events to the point we’re willing to watch teams we don’t care about. I’m a Sabres and Knicks fan, so I obviously don’t have teams to back. But leagues would rather inform me why equality is good than let me tune into random matchups. I guess I’ll check what outside is like.
The best way to show tolerance is by playing. Sports are a pure meritocracy where performance rules. Ethnicity is irrelevant. Any team that excluded potential employees bashed on complexion would be punishing themselves. Athletic bouts show humans at their best. And you thought you were just putting off mowing the lawn by watching the late game.
But refusals to compete took away the best method athletes have for displaying human value in action. They think not doing their tasks will teach us. Most won’t become coaches with such poor strategizing.
Idling is punishment for fans with the nerve to want enjoyment, especially after a rough shift. You don’t even think America is the Fourth Reich. There will be no tipoff until you accept your reeducation. Obey with everything someone else thinks for tolerance. Owning a player’s jersey means he gets to tell you how to think. Hearing what opinions to have applies whether they’re teaching that racism is bad, which isn’t quite controversial, or that cops are bloodthirsty Klansmen with badges, which seems a bit excessive.
You can’t decline. Wait: where are you walking? Away? Leagues have competition within them, not from the outside. The only way to beat each sport’s de facto monopoly is by not participating. Commissioners wish they could make that zone illegal.
There are other ways to entertain ourselves if sporty entertainers decide they’re above it. We withstood the seclusion by finding new ways to amuse ourselves. Spending money on different types of merriment shows the market is functioning. Ticked fans won’t pay to be told why they’re sustaining bigotry in between contests. I told you sports offer life lessons.
Anthony Bialy 