I'll conclude that watching sports is the height of civic irresponsibility. It's nice that people are cheering on the sportsmen, but really, what's the deeper meaning behind watching sports?
In a way I think there's something about watching sports that isn't - it's harsh to call it selfish, but there's a lot more take than give in watching it. It's like you'd expect the athlete to give it all he's got, and in return you'd give it something completely intangible - moral support? It's a bit like living your life through the athlete, in an arena where the rules are complex, to be sure, but so much more simple than they are in real life.
If the team loses, and gets relegated, it just disappears, and you'd just support another team in the meantime. If it loses out on the title, not much harm. Just a few tears, no real loss. But you'd share in the glory if your favourite team wins. Or you can just cheer on whichever team is winning, it's a sure win situation.
When teams march to the title, there is a sense of inevitability about them, as in, they would keep on producing results, even when they don't play well. It's easy to think that winning and winning, or drawing against another top team, is no more than what is expected of them anyway. And it's assuring, you've spent the whole season wondering whether they were going to win the next match and now you're tired of it, but it's nice for them to shoulder the burden. But now there's that element of treating them as though they were robots.
There's something extremely passive - aggressive about watching sports. Watching TV is one of the most passive activities you could think of, and a complete contrast to the grunting, sweating action on TV. Put an ice cold beer in the hand of the fat slob in the armchair, and you have an extremely perverse picture.
Let's think about our EPL soccer. We would pay Starhub more for the "privilege" of watching football, just as we would automatically still give our hard earned money to that wife we used to love with a passion but now just dole out $$$ to out of habit. And you know that all bets are off that one of the Big 4 will win the title this season.
I used to like the interesting politics that went on during the EPL season. Especially the one where Alex Ferguson wound up Kevin Keegan, that caused him to melt down in front of the TV cameras. (I find that extremely motivated athletes like Kevin Keegan and Bryan Robson aren't that good at being managers because they only know how to motivate themselves and not others. Roy Keane is also an extremely motivated player, and we'll see if he also has that talent for motivating his team.) I liked watching how Alex Ferguson told his players near the end of the 98/99 season that they had to give it all they got because they wouldn't ever have such a good chance at the treble. The miraculous thing about the treble is that the players clicked together pretty late in the season. They weren't leading the table at Christmas. Their route through the FA cup was very fortunate: they needed a last minute goal to knock Liverpool out, and a miracle goal to knock out Arsenal. They won the league by 1 point, which means Arsenal were breathing down their necks to the finish line. And then those close scrapes in the Champions League that every Man U fan knows about. Every title in that treble were scraped wins, and that was why it was so magical. They weren't an all conquering imperious team that could win matches while sitting back.
But I'm a little tired of watching football. Is it a coincidence that after they jacked up prices for EPL subscriptions, we have an unprecedented amount of coverage for the EPL in the papers? I think not. Somebody in Starhub must have been providing a lot of press to the Straits Times. Those damned hand in glove GLCs. I think this circus has been playing the same old tunes for too long. You have the same Rob Hughes in the papers expressing his righteous outrage for whatever stupid behaviour the EPL players come up with, yet you'd take a step back and find that he's part and parcel of this circus himself. You'd have managers playing "mind games" with each other, but we've already seen that since a worthier runner up than Kevin Keegan arrived in the form of an Arsene Wenger. And now all those "mind games" are laughably bland. It turns out that whichever of the big 4 loses the fewest games earlier on will win the Premiership. It used to be you could have upstarts like Leeds, Blackburn and Newcastle challenging for the title. Nowadays the definition of an upstart is somebody who cracks the big 4, and the latest upstarts are Everton, who qualified for the Champion's League one year only to crash out almost immediately, and Tottenham, who would have pipped Arsenal to 4th place if not for the fact that they were poisoned on their last match.
No, I'm thankful for the lessons in life, but it's not something I really care for anymore.
NB: I wrote this entry before the "Sven Goran Erection" one. Guess I still follow what goes on in EPL after all...
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