It's Sunday afternoon, and outside is freaking cold, deep below zero. Viktor is playing 'Angry Birds' trying to find out how to collect the ultimate egg he's missing in the collection, and my wife is watching a live tennis match between Serbia and Sweden taking place in our city this weekend. Since I have no better ideas (and available home gadgets I can play with), I thought to open the old laptop and write something 'smart' about international sport and its worldwide importance. Well, on second thought, maybe a better idea would be to start reading a book, as I am not really a sports kind of guy, and this is not going to be a really smart post of mine, but what a hack! At least this way it will stay written for some future reference. So, I wonder how to start this... Let me think...
I know, I'd start with the NHL game I was watching a couple of days ago. I have no idea who was playing; I am sure some important teams at the top of the competition, but in the end, this is not valuable for the story. It was nice watching it in the beginning—the game was smooth, the ice hall was amazingly beautiful, filled with lots of people, and I witnessed two or three goals performed in great multi-player performances. Like many times before, as soon as I started feeling nice about the game (I even opened a beer can) and started comparing modern ice hockey with jazz, two players took off their helmets, got rid of their sticks, and started fistfighting. I was not confused with the fight; let's face it, sports players are not really rocket scientists, but what was intriguing was that all other players and referees didn't interfere at all. Along with the amused crowd, they watched the fight until one of them started bleeding and falling down on the ice. Only then one referee jumped between them, and in a moment I was convinced he did this to save the ice from the blood and not to save the poor man from further suffering. After a while, the game resumed like nothing happened.
This was a high-end sports competition, and after a couple of centuries of its own evolution, it ended in pure business. There is no sport honor driving the sport people—it's the worldwide phenomenon everywhere around the globe. I am from Europe, so I will divert the story into European football (or soccer if you will), where if you are a fan and watching its best, state-of-the-art competition, the European Football Championship League, you will unlikely fail to notice that every year the same teams are playing it, and to participate in the league you have to win the national competition or to be one of the first three or four teams. All those teams, by some unwritten rule, have amazingly and extremely expensive stadiums, and their bank accounts are probably items of envy for many many others.
If you are a football fan and live in Milan, Italy, Munich, Germany, Valencia, Spain, or Manchester, England, you are lucky; every visit to their local football stadiums will provide you with a great show with international top players coming from countries worldwide. In order to pronounce all their names properly, you would have to perform serious research—they are really coming from all over the world, and their paychecks are specially printed in order to have enough room for many zeros. Even though football, being the most popular sport in Europe, is more or less above the highest other team or individual sport, considering money involvement and popularity the similar impression is with basketball, the other football across the Atlantic, tennis, F1 racing, skiing and handful of other popular competitions that attracts lots of supporters.
On the other end of European sport entertainment, if you live in countries like Serbia with no real money involved in national leagues or local sport teams, people experience sport throughout national teams and continental or world competitions, like Olympic games, or perhaps like the tennis match between Serbia and Sweden broadcasting on the TV in our living room right now. The local, recently renewed, sports hall is full to the last chair, cheering loudly with lots of enthusiasm and feelings for national players, and I guess this is ok; people here don't have lots of opportunities to watch sports events on this level.
Nobody can steal this moment from the people after the winning point; even those who say they don't follow the sport and don't like it much secretly enjoy events like this. It's not even the problem if the city capable of organizing the Davis Cup match doesn't have a working movie theater, zoo park, planetarium, or valuable science institute; sport is no. 1, and it will always be there. In Serbia, this national euphoria in tennis goes one step further: Novak Djoković, currently the best player in the world, receives almost unreal credits and popularity even for his non-tennis activities. But this is sport; it gives you extreme popularity, and even though your only skill is to hit the ball better than everybody else, metaphorically speaking, you will be greatly remembered while the guys who's the top-notch in many other fields will stay anonymous.
Don't get me wrong here; I do enjoy watching a great game, especially within competitions such as the NBA, NFL, EuroLeague, and even the Championship League, but what I don't get is the entire euphoria outside stadiums. In Serbia in recent years, it has gone to the unbelievable, inappropriate, and preposterous levels with welcoming parties and street celebrations for every little success of national teams. It's definitely a one-of-a-kind phenomenon, and I am guessing, more or less, in one way or another, it is the same everywhere else.
However, I need to give sports a great amount of credit. I really think that international competitions are responsible for a smaller amount of wars today. Think about it: if you compare middle age, up to the middle of the last century, with the modern era today, it seems that people sometimes back in dark ages organized wars in the fashion of today's sports events. If they had sports back then to compete with their 'enemies', they would probably use baseball bats instead of spears, large swords, or cannons. I think this is one of the big reasons I admire Olympic games. They are more than sport. I am truly hoping money and business-fying everything with value will not spoil the core of it.
Original post date: February 2012, Update: November 2015, Update: January 2019
Image ref:
* https://oilonwhyte.com/2016/04/16/edmonton-oilers...trade-darnell-nurse/
I know, I'd start with the NHL game I was watching a couple of days ago. I have no idea who was playing; I am sure some important teams at the top of the competition, but in the end, this is not valuable for the story. It was nice watching it in the beginning—the game was smooth, the ice hall was amazingly beautiful, filled with lots of people, and I witnessed two or three goals performed in great multi-player performances. Like many times before, as soon as I started feeling nice about the game (I even opened a beer can) and started comparing modern ice hockey with jazz, two players took off their helmets, got rid of their sticks, and started fistfighting. I was not confused with the fight; let's face it, sports players are not really rocket scientists, but what was intriguing was that all other players and referees didn't interfere at all. Along with the amused crowd, they watched the fight until one of them started bleeding and falling down on the ice. Only then one referee jumped between them, and in a moment I was convinced he did this to save the ice from the blood and not to save the poor man from further suffering. After a while, the game resumed like nothing happened.
This was a high-end sports competition, and after a couple of centuries of its own evolution, it ended in pure business. There is no sport honor driving the sport people—it's the worldwide phenomenon everywhere around the globe. I am from Europe, so I will divert the story into European football (or soccer if you will), where if you are a fan and watching its best, state-of-the-art competition, the European Football Championship League, you will unlikely fail to notice that every year the same teams are playing it, and to participate in the league you have to win the national competition or to be one of the first three or four teams. All those teams, by some unwritten rule, have amazingly and extremely expensive stadiums, and their bank accounts are probably items of envy for many many others.
If you are a football fan and live in Milan, Italy, Munich, Germany, Valencia, Spain, or Manchester, England, you are lucky; every visit to their local football stadiums will provide you with a great show with international top players coming from countries worldwide. In order to pronounce all their names properly, you would have to perform serious research—they are really coming from all over the world, and their paychecks are specially printed in order to have enough room for many zeros. Even though football, being the most popular sport in Europe, is more or less above the highest other team or individual sport, considering money involvement and popularity the similar impression is with basketball, the other football across the Atlantic, tennis, F1 racing, skiing and handful of other popular competitions that attracts lots of supporters.
On the other end of European sport entertainment, if you live in countries like Serbia with no real money involved in national leagues or local sport teams, people experience sport throughout national teams and continental or world competitions, like Olympic games, or perhaps like the tennis match between Serbia and Sweden broadcasting on the TV in our living room right now. The local, recently renewed, sports hall is full to the last chair, cheering loudly with lots of enthusiasm and feelings for national players, and I guess this is ok; people here don't have lots of opportunities to watch sports events on this level.
Nobody can steal this moment from the people after the winning point; even those who say they don't follow the sport and don't like it much secretly enjoy events like this. It's not even the problem if the city capable of organizing the Davis Cup match doesn't have a working movie theater, zoo park, planetarium, or valuable science institute; sport is no. 1, and it will always be there. In Serbia, this national euphoria in tennis goes one step further: Novak Djoković, currently the best player in the world, receives almost unreal credits and popularity even for his non-tennis activities. But this is sport; it gives you extreme popularity, and even though your only skill is to hit the ball better than everybody else, metaphorically speaking, you will be greatly remembered while the guys who's the top-notch in many other fields will stay anonymous.
Don't get me wrong here; I do enjoy watching a great game, especially within competitions such as the NBA, NFL, EuroLeague, and even the Championship League, but what I don't get is the entire euphoria outside stadiums. In Serbia in recent years, it has gone to the unbelievable, inappropriate, and preposterous levels with welcoming parties and street celebrations for every little success of national teams. It's definitely a one-of-a-kind phenomenon, and I am guessing, more or less, in one way or another, it is the same everywhere else.
However, I need to give sports a great amount of credit. I really think that international competitions are responsible for a smaller amount of wars today. Think about it: if you compare middle age, up to the middle of the last century, with the modern era today, it seems that people sometimes back in dark ages organized wars in the fashion of today's sports events. If they had sports back then to compete with their 'enemies', they would probably use baseball bats instead of spears, large swords, or cannons. I think this is one of the big reasons I admire Olympic games. They are more than sport. I am truly hoping money and business-fying everything with value will not spoil the core of it.
Original post date: February 2012, Update: November 2015, Update: January 2019
Image ref:
* https://oilonwhyte.com/2016/04/16/edmonton-oilers...trade-darnell-nurse/