Some Things are Less Equal than Others

There really ought to be double standards. Not everything and everybody merit the same treatment. I am not saying people do not deserve equal opportunities under the law or anything that draconian. If you think the cheese slid off my cracker I have the perfect example. ESPN broadcasting Pop Warner football.

ESPN broadcasts sporting events via the internet which is something I really appreciate as a huge college basketball fan with no television. So this past Saturday I was checking out the schedule for the day when I saw they were, at that very moment, showing a Pop Warner football game. For those of you who do not know, Pop Warner is to football what Little League is to baseball. In the case of the game I “tuned” in to it was boys 9, 10 and 11 years old playing.

I only watched for a few minutes but in that time I got to see little football players who looked more like Violet Beauregard from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory after she turned into a blueberry than anyone from the Green Bay Packers. Truly, a ninety pound boy wearing all those pads has a certain weebles wobble but they don’t get sacked quality to them. Even with that quirky imagery the weirdest aspect of the whole experience was the broadcast was exactly like an NFL play-off game. The play-by-play guy and the color analyst (yes, they had both) were just as urgently talking about the clock management as the final few seconds of the first half were running down as they would if it had been Joe Montana and Bill Walsh making the decisions. (It wasn’t.)

Here is my main problem. When Eli Manning and Ben Rothleis… Rothleesbi… Rothelbee… , uh, Tony Romo are playing there is a multimillion dollar industry hinging on who wins and who loses. When Little Timmy and his best friend Not So Little Jimmy are playing the only thing hanging in the balance should be which set of kids feel happier when they go get ice cream after the game. Unfortunately that is not the case and I happen to believe one of the reasons this is a problem is the big wigs at a huge media entity like ESPN think it is a good idea to show prepubescent kids play a game in the same manner they broadcast grown men (albeit many of whom are rather stuck in barely post pubescent maturity levels) pursue their career.

Sport should be fun and a way to teach children teamwork, engender camaraderie, and create healthier bodies. Sport can be an excellent way to show kids that the effort you put in directly relates to the ability to do something well. This is not the case as often as it ought to be. Sport is too often a way to prove we are better than you, strength is power, and losers are unworthy of respect. I am sure I am overstating things to a degree and that there are still places where competition is healthy and kids have fun but the more often we broadcast ten-year-olds playing tackle football the more often we increase the number of children in the grasp of those who believe winning is everything.

There was one person involved in the ESPN presentation who seemed to realize it was a little ridiculous, the sideline reporter. Yes, they had a pretty girl sideline reporter just like they do for their big money making broadcasts. She was interviewing one of the coaches as the teams left the field for halftime. She asked the normal hard hitting journalistic questions that all the hairdos with a microphone ask of Rex Ryan and Bill Belic…Bellish… Beelich…, John Fox on NFL sidelines. The difference here was the look on her face as the coach answered the question. She was obviously not at all interested in the answer and was much more concerned with the inexplicable turn her career had taken. (A degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern and here I stand asking a systems analyst who played Div II football but could have gone pro if only he hadn’t had chronic turf toe his senior year how he is going to maintain his lead in a game with a bunch of athletes who would rather be playing Super Smash Brothers or watching Spongebob.) Out loud she says, “Do you think your team can continue to dominate on both sides of the ball in the second half?” Interior monologue, “Somebody shoot me, please.”

It may shock the reader to find out Christopher Pyle never played organized sports beyond his summer playing t-ball. He can be openly mocked at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.