War and Sports

I was thinking the other day about sports and why they are so popular among men and I realized that sports are THE model for War.  Think about it, what do sports do?  They increase physical fitness, they teach strategy and muscle memory, they are extremely quantitative, and participants are always trying to determine a winner.

What got me thinking about this was when I asked myself the question, "why do people want to win so bad?"  Who gives a rat's ass?  Yeah you won, but peripheral to money or women, what is really the gain?  I say women here because I think men are much more competitive than women, sorry, just my opinion.

In any event, I realized that sports and games in general are a means of conditioning and training our mind to think critically in a competitive manner.  If you think about this evolutionarily (I know, I do this a lot, sorry) man has always competed with other men for resources, be it food, land, or women.  If you think about it, sports and games have been a safe way to compete and train for real battle.  Take any major sport, most professional athletes are ideal examples of soldiers, especially for historic war fare.  Take a beast of a man like Ray Lewis.  If you could pick any random person to fight a long side you in battle or protect you, wouldn't Ray Lewis be a perfect example?  He is aggressive, hungry and scary.  The parallel to a dark age warrior is not difficult to draw.  And I say dark age because now a days warfare has become a bit more complicated so for this example, ancient warfare is a better model.

Now lets take a close look at football (you could do this with any sport).  Each player serves a purpose.  A team (which could be a country's military) has to be organized into different groups to maximize utility and efficiency.  Certain people serve different roles and purposes.  Take a quarter back, a great leader or "colonel" on the field (the coach could be the general).  He is responsible for coordinating several participants in an offensive campaign towards victory.  Death and destruction isn't the goal but penetration into a team's territory is and eventual conquest of their endzone is the goal, which could be like getting across enemy lines and planting your flag/government.  Success is determined by a point total and at the end, whoever has the more points wins.  This is just like a war, but no one dies

Even the vocabulary is the same.  In sports and warfare we use words like weapons, penetrate, demoralize, contain, strategy, execute, etc...  I find this to be eerie but it makes a lot of sense.  Why would males have such an inherent urge to win.  It has nothing to do with the accolades that are offered because they are fleeting.  A superbowl ring gets forgotten and previous winners mean very little, just like previous battles.  If a country wins a great war, fantastic, but winning now means more.  Who gives a shit if you won in the past, if you lose now, you lose everything.

In essence, I think this is why competition is so strong in people and why they work so hard to win.  It isn't about enjoying the game, it isn't about money or fame, it is about defending your turf.  That is why fans exist, they are like civilians.  It is even easier to draw the similarity because people tend to root for their home team.  This makes sense because it's like rooting for your tribe's or country's army in battle, of course they would be your team.  If your team wins, your region is dominant and at least for the time being, you reign supreme.  Survival of the fittest.

I find this to be an interesting situation because it shows how people have evolved to develop their warfare abilities.  In addition, it's also interesting because despite our advancements as a species, we are still as primitive as ever.  We as humans have such an inherent drive to distinguish ourselves from one another and to organize into defendable units.  In looking at the world this way, it is easy to see that things like World Peace will never happen.  We are animals just like lions and fish and we will fight one another just for the piece of mind that we are the best.  We need to feel dominate and sports train us to do so, or at least are a way of exercising those tendencies without death and destruction.  I think that is why people stick at risk kids into sports programs.  It channels your anger and aggression into a useable medium.  

I suppose then, that the idea of "can't we all get a long" is not possible.  It would be like trying to convince the NBA to form one giant team that just practiced.  They would never do it.  Athletes are competitors that want to duke it out between one another and figure out who the best is.  We as fans want that as well.  We need to know who the best is because we need to know who to follow.  We need to know who is the alpha male.  That is why we have things like MVP's and Hall of Fames.  Just like museums that celebrate historical figures like George Washington, Ulysses S Grant, and FDR, we have shrines that celebrate great athletes.  They aren't much different than soldiers if you think about it.  

What's funny, is the parallels of fighting wars poorly and sports is very interesting.  Take the Vietnam War or Iraq.  Our campaign is like sending in a great athlete to compete in a different game, no wonder you aren't successful.  Imagine it as a tennis match.  Going into a tennis match with a basketball player against a Federer or Nadal would be pretty useless.  Even if its someone like Kobe Bryant or LeBron, athletes with amazing abilities in their sport, you are still going to get owned by an opponent who's playing a different game.  It's not that one athlete is better than the other, one is just good at a different game and if your opponent choses the game you have to attack them intelligently.  You can't go with your primary option (ie football or baseball or basketball), you have to go with theirs, if its on their home turf.  That is why invasion of far off countries rarely works.  As an aggressor, odds are you aren't going to play your opponents game better than they do, it's just not possible.  maybe some places play your game, but not everyone will and you better adapt or you are just wasting your time.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts on the subject.  Thought it was kind of interesting.

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