Proffesional Athletes: Overpayed and Hyperbolic

Warning: If you're a fan of watching sports on TV, I may insult you to a small degree. Or a large one. I guess you'll have to read and find out.

In light of the recent 2008 Bejing Summer Olympics, I'd like to touch on my view of the obsession of sports our society has. Not just the obsession, but the actual worship of the athletes, and why you should stop sitting there on your couch screaming like an idiot at your TV and do something slightly more productive.

Let's get one thing out of the way; I'm a video game developer. By all means, go ahead and tell me I'm a hypocrite, but not until you read the rest of this and allow me to continue to talk about the difference between interactively playing a game in front of your TV and simply watching one.

All uses of the word "athlete" also applies for "Video Game Athletes" as well.

What is a sport?

This one should be pretty obvious. It's where people get together and participate in a game, whatever that may be, either competing against each other, or working together as a team. Either way, it generally involves exercise of some sort and it probably involves injury, if you're not careful. My good friend Dictonary.com defines it as "an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc."

Since the ancient arenas of Rome, we have enjoyed watching people knock eachother's brains out. In modern America, we pay those same people hundreds of millions of dollars per person every year to do it. Now I'm going to tell every single professional athlete that they are overpayed and overhyped. This money is not going to the right places.

The Delusion of Monday Night Football

First I must make one thing very clear. I do not sit in front of the TV (or computer) idolizing, watching, or even keeping rough tabs on professional gamers. There are some people who do. I don't understand them, so perhaps this is really why I don't understand the excitement many people get from watching sports. I would much rather spend my time playing a game than watching someone else play it, no matter how good they are. Why don't you go toss a football around outside? It's much more invigorating than throwing your money at guys with big muscles and decent coordination.

So why, I must ask, do so many avid football fans sit there on their couches screaming and yelling about how great (or terrible) some team is doing? It's not their team. They don't own it. They don't benefit from it. Even if you made bets with your friends over who was going to win (very dumb thing to do over something so wildly random and unpredictable), you probably don't have much riding on that team.

Why do I say it's random and unpredictable? Oh, you're telling me some teams are better than others? Sorry, but if your team even makes it to the NFL, you are filled with the top 1% of football players. The outcome of most professional NFL games is not based on who can throw, tackle, or catch better. It's about how slippery the grass was, how much sweat might have dripped in your eyes at the wrong time, or how windy it might have been. Luck is a huge determining factor in many things, talent and hard work is only about half of it.

Did you know Einstein released his oh-so-famous paper on E=MC2 mere weeks before another guy was about to? Can you name the other guy? You might call that hard work. Einstein was working harder, therefore he got it faster. Maybe. You could just as easily assume the second guy heavily proof-read his paper and added some more to it, therefore it cost him another week or two, yet if he released his final draft at the same time as Einstein, Einstein's could have been dwarfed entirely. Hard work might actually be the cause of delayed papers, costing someone vast amounts of fame. Who says a little sweat in the eyes doesn't as well?

Then there comes to whole division of people. "This Team Vs. This Team". They either win or they don't. I suppose if you're arguing over who's uniform is more colorful, by all means, but the top teams are all so similar, and all blatantly obvious as the best. They have some better players, and they have some lesser ones, but all in all, the teams who win... Win! So why does a new team seem to win every year? Oh, that's right, we're overpaying a bunch of guys who run about tossing a ball around, hoping they'll get lucky and win.

Could I compete with them? Not at all. Their entire life is devoted to the sport, just as none of them could compete with me in my field. So before you say "You're jealous that you can't do that and get payed that much", know that you are absolutely right. I am jealous that a bunch of guys who prance around on a stage, pretending there's an actual element of skill involved, get payed untold amounts of money, and then demand more of it.

Next time you watch your sports, turn off the 'exciting' commentator and just watch what's going on. Green field, colorful uniforms, little brown ball. It gets old, fast. If you care about who wins what (even if it doesn't affect you in any way), I suppose that's just where your interest lies. I'd also just like to touch on the subject of "Fantasy Football", emphasizing the word fantasy. Meanwhile, I'll be doing something that I'm actually participating in.

Enjoy your Monday Night Football.

Watching TV =/= Playing Video Games

While I'm not saying watching TV is bad, as there are some great movies and TV shows out there, I would like to suggest that watching sports on TV is a complete and utter waste of time.

"But Mister, video games are a waste of time!"

Look, we're all passing our time in this life with one waste of a time after another. No doubt about it, video games are a waste of your time when you could be wasting it doing other things. As a form of entertainment, they are completely worth your time.

Now why are Video Games worth your entertainment time, when watching Sports on TV, in my complete opinion, is not?

Participation!

When you're playing a video game, it is not mouth feeding you like a TV show. You must participate. You must act. You must think. You must strategize. You must outsmart your opponents. Your brain is far more active playing a video game than being mouth-fed input from a TV show, sports on TV, to be specific. The same goes for actually playing a game of football or basketball or soccer. When simply watching, you don't do any of the thinking, you don't do any of the planning, and you sure aren't participating in any of the physical aspects, all but the part where you jump up and down like an idiot when some guy you've never met runs across a striped line.

Just so you don't call me out on lack of exercise... To give you some numbers here, 20 minutes of jogging equates to one hour of video game playing, as far as calorie-burn is concerned. WIRED magazine elaborated on this;

* 1.5 hours of weight training (842 calories) OR 1 hour of Dance Dance Revolution (900 calories)
* 30 minutes of aerobics (242 calories) OR 20 minutes of Wii Boxing (250 calories)
* 20 minutes of jogging (198 calories) OR 1 hour of PS3/XBox on the couch (204 calories)
* 15 minutes of sex (33 calories) OR 7 minutes of Wii Tennis (46 calories)

By all means, be a rabid football fan. By all means, follow your little team to your heats content, but before calling people out on enjoying themselves with other activities (such as gaming), make sure you've got some ground to stand on. I loved this episode of Man In the Box, as it outlined this exact thing.

Returning back to the beginning, the 2008 Bejing Summer Olympics are on TV. Why, for some reason, do I not care? Am I a soulless individual with no patriotism to my country, Michael "Triangle-Man" Phelps, and young, perky girls in tight clothing?

Probably. What are you going to do about it? I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to play my video games and stop contributing my money towards some guy who likes to buy outrageously large and expensive homes and automobiles.

Where should the money go? I really can't say. Starving countries? Other lower payed professions? You name it. Anywhere but sports organizations. Maybe they should pay game developers more... Hmmm...

Oh, I mean, uh...

I know this is a stretch, but what if, just maybe, I'll instead grab some buddies and go play something together, where we all enjoy and participate, instead of watching someone else do it for us. When people say "Live the American dream", they don't mean pay someone else to live it for you. Get off your couches and show people (and yourself) how passionate you really are about sports, not how passionate you're pretending to be.