Nicholas Warino
New User
Last night's match was so good it inspired me to write a full-fledged defense of sports, which I thought I'd share here:
Last night, I stayed up until 7:00am watching two grown men hit a fuzzy yellow ball back-and-forth over a net halfway across the world. To some, that is an indicator of my lack of intellectual or emotional depth as a person.
Described in their most literal sense, sports are just games with silly, arbitrary rules. Even worse, professional sports are mere distractions. Playing sports may be fun, but watching other people play sports? That seems strange to many.
The question: why would any self-respected thinking man waste time, thought, and money following other people play games for money?
Last night’s epic, grueling six-hour match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal for the Australian Open title was a powerful answer to this question. Sports, particularly when played at the highest levels, are powerful emotional and intellectual spectacles for the following reasons:
1. An expression of human physical beauty. This is what David Foster Wallace described as “Kinetic Beauty,” as distinct from sexual or cultural beauty. The arbitrary rules of sports provide a structure to hone human physical traits in discernable units—an outlet for physical expression. All sports emphasize different traits to some degree and thus highlight the range and extent of physicality in man.
There have been roughly 100 billion humans to walk this earth. Last night’s match featured two humans reaching physical prowess rarely seen. Nadal and Djokovic are the current end-result of millions of years of human evolution, decades of progress in advanced nutrition and training, and 20+ years in personal ambition and dedication. The availability of professional tennis allowed and encouraged these men to dedicate their lives to maximizing human strength, speed, agility, flexibility, grace, hand-eye coordination, and endurance. Quite literally, nearly all of humanity is incapable of the physical performance witnessed last night.
2. An expression of human will. It is rare to observe man’s will to survive, thrive and dominate in such naked, stark terms. Sports grant us such an opportunity.
This is not to say that sports are alone in provoking such emotional expressions or the most profound outlet. There are other endeavors of man—war and tragedy, most obviously—that reveal our emotional core, but such endeavors are rarely directly witnessed and are sad and shameful to see when they are. They are not worthy causes of celebration and joy. The sheer fact that professional sports are “meaningless” allows us to observe and marvel at some of the core motivations of humanity.
Similar to the physical expression, Nadal and Djokovic showed us the lengths at which man will go to succeed. For context, Nadal and Djokovic are two of the greatest tennis players ever and are at the height of their abilities. They have dominated the sport for the past year and have met in nearly every significant final. To each other, they represent the ultimate challenge and obstacle towards total domination of their domains. Djokovic is the current alpha-male—the king. Moreover, he climbed to the top by thoroughly dominating the former alpha-king Nadal.
Due to the physicality, competitiveness, and equality between these two players, last night’s match became a spectacle in observing man overcoming personal exhaustion, pain, and doubt. The match lasted nearly six-hours (a record for a final by over an hour) with the players sprinting several miles, swinging hundreds of times, and punishing their joints, muscles, and ligaments as they changed direction with full force and momentum all night. No significant match had ever reached such exhausting heights. Each player had moments near the end when defeat was in sight and succumbing to their total exhaustion would have been understandable, but each instead decided to search for unknown energy reserves solely due to their respective wills to dominate.
3. Unpredictable narratives. Because professional sports are played within contexts of seasons or tournaments, there are strong narrative elements present. The participants all have different personalities, styles, traits, and abilities—they are discernable characters. There are underdogs, champions, redemption stories, aging heroes, villains, rivals, and comebacks. These are narrative features familiar to many works of art.
However, unlike traditional forms of narrative art, the outcomes in sports are entirely unpredictable and procedurally dynamic. A tennis ball landing a fraction of an inch wide can change the entire outcome, our perception of what happened, and what was meaningful about past events. Rarely in movies, for example, are we truly surprised, since movies tend to follow basic elements of storytelling. Only in retrospect do sports follow such scripts. As they are happening, they are stories being written in real-time.
Last night’s tennis match allowed us to witness man at his current physical and emotional peak, in a dynamic unpredictable manner. How often would we get to observe and admire such behavior in purely positive circumstances, if not for sports? Without tennis and sports in general, these expressions would be largely unknown.
Last night, I stayed up until 7:00am watching two grown men hit a fuzzy yellow ball back-and-forth over a net halfway across the world. To some, that is an indicator of my lack of intellectual or emotional depth as a person.
Described in their most literal sense, sports are just games with silly, arbitrary rules. Even worse, professional sports are mere distractions. Playing sports may be fun, but watching other people play sports? That seems strange to many.
The question: why would any self-respected thinking man waste time, thought, and money following other people play games for money?
Last night’s epic, grueling six-hour match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal for the Australian Open title was a powerful answer to this question. Sports, particularly when played at the highest levels, are powerful emotional and intellectual spectacles for the following reasons:
1. An expression of human physical beauty. This is what David Foster Wallace described as “Kinetic Beauty,” as distinct from sexual or cultural beauty. The arbitrary rules of sports provide a structure to hone human physical traits in discernable units—an outlet for physical expression. All sports emphasize different traits to some degree and thus highlight the range and extent of physicality in man.
There have been roughly 100 billion humans to walk this earth. Last night’s match featured two humans reaching physical prowess rarely seen. Nadal and Djokovic are the current end-result of millions of years of human evolution, decades of progress in advanced nutrition and training, and 20+ years in personal ambition and dedication. The availability of professional tennis allowed and encouraged these men to dedicate their lives to maximizing human strength, speed, agility, flexibility, grace, hand-eye coordination, and endurance. Quite literally, nearly all of humanity is incapable of the physical performance witnessed last night.
2. An expression of human will. It is rare to observe man’s will to survive, thrive and dominate in such naked, stark terms. Sports grant us such an opportunity.
This is not to say that sports are alone in provoking such emotional expressions or the most profound outlet. There are other endeavors of man—war and tragedy, most obviously—that reveal our emotional core, but such endeavors are rarely directly witnessed and are sad and shameful to see when they are. They are not worthy causes of celebration and joy. The sheer fact that professional sports are “meaningless” allows us to observe and marvel at some of the core motivations of humanity.
Similar to the physical expression, Nadal and Djokovic showed us the lengths at which man will go to succeed. For context, Nadal and Djokovic are two of the greatest tennis players ever and are at the height of their abilities. They have dominated the sport for the past year and have met in nearly every significant final. To each other, they represent the ultimate challenge and obstacle towards total domination of their domains. Djokovic is the current alpha-male—the king. Moreover, he climbed to the top by thoroughly dominating the former alpha-king Nadal.
Due to the physicality, competitiveness, and equality between these two players, last night’s match became a spectacle in observing man overcoming personal exhaustion, pain, and doubt. The match lasted nearly six-hours (a record for a final by over an hour) with the players sprinting several miles, swinging hundreds of times, and punishing their joints, muscles, and ligaments as they changed direction with full force and momentum all night. No significant match had ever reached such exhausting heights. Each player had moments near the end when defeat was in sight and succumbing to their total exhaustion would have been understandable, but each instead decided to search for unknown energy reserves solely due to their respective wills to dominate.
3. Unpredictable narratives. Because professional sports are played within contexts of seasons or tournaments, there are strong narrative elements present. The participants all have different personalities, styles, traits, and abilities—they are discernable characters. There are underdogs, champions, redemption stories, aging heroes, villains, rivals, and comebacks. These are narrative features familiar to many works of art.
However, unlike traditional forms of narrative art, the outcomes in sports are entirely unpredictable and procedurally dynamic. A tennis ball landing a fraction of an inch wide can change the entire outcome, our perception of what happened, and what was meaningful about past events. Rarely in movies, for example, are we truly surprised, since movies tend to follow basic elements of storytelling. Only in retrospect do sports follow such scripts. As they are happening, they are stories being written in real-time.
Last night’s tennis match allowed us to witness man at his current physical and emotional peak, in a dynamic unpredictable manner. How often would we get to observe and admire such behavior in purely positive circumstances, if not for sports? Without tennis and sports in general, these expressions would be largely unknown.
