Keith Olbermann Made Some Really Good Points on the Balkanization of Sports
By Mike Cardillo
Whatever your personal thoughts or opinions are on ESPN’s Keith Olbermann, set those aside for five minutes and watch the video above. Oh wait, who am I kidding? An open mind? On the Internet? When it comes to sports? I might as well have asked everyone who clicked on this post to go out to the nearest window and look for a unicorn or build a perpetual motion machine.
If you took the time to watch the clip (obviously a big if) and listen to it, Olbermann makes a couple valid points about following sports in modern times. He starts off talking about Wednesday’s National Signing Day and admits the hoopla is lost on him since he’s not a diehard college football partisan. Of course, in today’s increasingly “Balkanized” world, admitting you don’t follow the same sport as someone else is nothing short of a crime. If you dare mock a sport you don’t follow — Olbermann cites NASCAR and soccer among others — you’re asking for trouble.
And given the level of discourse we often see these days it’s hard to say Olbermann is wrong.
On a personal level, yep, I’m a soccer fan. Once upon a time, as an American, admitting such opened yourself to all sorts of knee-jerk, easy, myopic ridicule because … I guess a game that could conceivably end 0-0 is the worst thing in the entire world and patently un-American. Naturally the reaction to many American soccer fans in the face of this hatred and loathing was to take up an evangelical approach, screaming at anyone who didn’t like soccer that they didn’t “get it.” Let’s agree neither side of these two scenarios are entirely correct.
The Internet, in the case of soccer, changed everything and made it easier for like-minded fans to discuss the game they enjoy. Apparently many Americans actually liked the sport since, lo and behold, there is usually at least one live soccer game airing on a cable channel every day of the week, but that’s beside the point.
Soccer’s rise in prominence helps highlight another modern phenomenon: there are a lot of sports across the globe to monitor on a 24/7/365 basis. The days when a “sports fan” could concern himself or herself over the Big Four of baseball, football, basketball and hockey, along with, say, the occasional boxing match are long gone. Again, thanks to the Internet, there is a seemingly unending parade of niches catering to whomever likes a particular event, be it the Tour de France, Aussie Rules football, the Indian Premier cricket league, dog shows, extreme sports, sport fishing, co-ed college arm wrestling etc. There isn’t enough time in the day to follow — let alone form an opinion — on everything and that’s perfectly normal.
In short, follow the sports you enjoy and ignore the ones you don’t. It’s a big world. There are a lot of ways to find enjoyment, rather than through hating on what somebody else likes or hating that somebody doesn’t like what you do. If you’re left out of the discussion on social media for a certain event, so be it, the world isn’t going to end. If SportsCenter devotes three minutes to a topic that doesn’t particularly interest you, the sun will most likely come up the next day.
Then again, logic, acceptance or an open mind never wins out when it so easy to type [name of a sport I don’t follow] sucks.
Sigh.