athletes as gladiators

competition is the catch 22 of the human condition. things change, but everything stays the same.

 

Panem et circenses.

 

well said.

 

Hey, except now we have steroids and HGH to make them into real gladiators. :madgrin:

 

Physically brutalizing as some, definitely not all, sports competitions are, none has injury as its deliberate aim, let alone death. Yet retaining the risk of injury or death keeps the stakes interesting: without such risk competitive sports would be like playing poker without betting real money: boring for the players and boring for the spectators.

Most competitive sports have cerebral elements, the games have a strategic as well as tactical dimension, and imagination can often win the match over raw physicality. Brutality is only an element of the game, not its entirety.

I think it IS part of an enlightened human society that enjoys demonstrations of extraordinary skill, extraordinary daring, by individuals and by cooperative teamwork (a competitive team is the ultimate demonstration of socialism: diverse talents cooperating to prevail where no single talent could succeed). To make such demonstrations spectator events is the ONLY venue or reason to do them.

I certainly agree that much about spectator sports is boorish, attended by boors, but that is only a weed in the garden, so to speak, not the garden itself. Gardens can be weeded, so too can spectator sports continue, as they have, to be less about raw brutality and more demonstrations of the virtually limitless human potential to excel, at breathtaking levels, in a vast canvas of skills.

 

Since Michael Vick didn't get a "deathmatch" with any vicious dogs...I still hold judgement that our overpaid sports celebrities are like the gladiators of old (granted, the highly prized gladiators didn't fight to the death...but most all had to start that way). :tsk:

 

that's what i like about golf, the worst that can happen is your oponent sticks out his club and trips you as you walk down the fairway.

 

this must be your first year of watching hockey.

 

That's the game scoring is secondary?

 

has been since i started watching in the sixties and before that, i'm sure.

 

Au, contrair, I beg to differ.

Boxing has as its very core goal the act of inflicting a head injury. To knock out one's opponent, whether in actuality or as a technicality, is how the game is won. Unconsciousness is a result of a brain injury - perhaps a very mild one, or a very severe one.

If you listen to the coaches of the vast majority of the organized sports, you will see that it is a very good thing that so much protective padding and gear is required, as teams are encouraged to "take out" the competition, to "slaughter them", to "lay them out"... and, even with the gear, and the physical conditioning, the incidence of life-changing injury is high.

I think Hyo has hit this one square - and, yes, it is indeed "Bread and circuses" for the masses.

 

Fascinating thread. Thanks for starting it, Hyo.

Probably my single biggest peeve in all this is the obscene amount of money that players get. How did we as a society decide that players (really, they're "playing?") and actors (is there a difference?) should be the highest-paid section of our population? We won't pay for a quality-made item from the US if it costs us $2 more than what we can buy from overseas. But we'll gladly pay the steep price for entertainment.

I guess it is a bit like asking somebody to pay a tiny bit more for a Prius or EV... or whatever. You know... something that actually benefits us. And NOPE. Can't do that. Not worth it. But I'll buy this SUV with chrome accents, DVD player and towing package. The only question is, "what's in it for me?"

Sorry.. a bit dis-jointed. But I get a free pass today. It's Father's Day and we just opened margarita season here at the EVnut ranch.

 

The high salaries commanded by celebrities have nothing whatsoever with the public "valuing" them at such rates but their effectiveness as conduits for advertising in a multi-media era where vast audiences can be reached for technological pennies, and public fascination with celebrity itself. We may think it's George Clooney we like but it isn't George we like but his celebrity. We also admire sports talent, but our fascination with the added dimension of celebrity, made possible by cheap technology, inflates the value they can demand from advertising. Absent advertising celebrities would get paid better than you and me, perhaps, but not at the three, four and five levels of magnitude they enjoy.

 

Blame the intellectual designer who made us prone to this form of distraction. I personally can't wait for football to start again.

 

oops, double post

 

see ... I thought the worst that can happen with golf is that 100's of millions of acre feet of water (and the megawatts used to deliver it) go out to the desert (along with petrochemical fertilizer) ... where a good part evaporates, and a some goes to moisten grass where only horned toads would be otherwise. Then my water district wants ME to take shorter showers and grow fewer tomatoes and plumbs.


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Today's jocks may not get killed very often, but they definitely get disabled.

Concussions/dementia are a big issue in hockey and the NFL...lots of players after their career are disabled.