Posted: Jan 06, 2014 1:36 pm
Sendraks wrote:trubble76 wrote: All the money we spend on sports pales in comparison to the money we'd spend on less safe forms of conflict.
Surely we could spend the money on more intellectually rewarding things than just watching 22 overpaid bozos kick a ball around a field?
Might I suggest LARP as a safe alternative to combat?
And football.
What you find intellectually rewarding may bore others to tears. Football is wildly popular across the entire world. This is because it is an easy game to learn, requires no equipment other than a ball and is fun. It transcends language, age and all other forms of culture. It is perhaps the only truly global cultural pastime. What other activity could bond together a child in a remote African village, an Ivy League scholar and a Chinese factory worker? No form of music, theatre, dance or pushing buttons on a console in a darkened room could achieve the same connection.
I understand not everyone likes football. That's fine. But trying to dismiss it as stupid or irrelevant is mere intellecual snobbery. Asserting that it is not a cultural phenomenon is plain wrong.