If we put our sports passion into other fields, it would be a different world

I wake up in the morning and catch last night’s sports highlights on TV while reading the sports pages as I eat breakfast. On the drive to work, I tune into one of the sports-talk radio shows.

At work throughout the day, I listen to the radio for more sports talk if I have some time. During the day, my phone vibrates from time to time as my team sends out various alerts.

On the way home, it’s more sports talk in the car. Then, before dinner, I watch the afternoon sports highlight shows. After dinner, depending on the night, there is always some game on TV. How long I stay with the game before reading and then going to bed depends on how good the game is.

Does this make me sound like some kind of a rabid sports nut? You may say I am but I don’t think so.

I know there are many guys and gals who are way more into it than I am: season tickets, flying to other cities to attend games, buying all kinds of sports clothing and memorabilia, etc. Heck, I’ve never even painted my face purple to support my beloved Minnesota Vikings, though I will admit painting my garage doors purple. At least I stopped short of painting the Viking horns on them.

Why I’m bringing this up is it occurs to me the time and energy devoted to sports in this country is so out of proportion to our many other problems and concerns that I just can’t believe it. Think about the coverage sports gets in the media.

Every newscast and newspaper has a sports segment or section. There are entire networks devoted to sports. Same with radio and of course the internet. The amount of time and effort that goes into sports-related concerns is truly mind-boggling. I do like sports a lot, but even I realize this amount of coverage and constant attention is a little over the top.

If you don’t believe me, tune into a sports-talk radio program next time you’re in the car. Often you will hear grown men, and sometimes women, getting in heated discussions over a missed field goal or a bad call from a ref or some off-the-cuff comment some random athlete made.

Can you imagine if all that passion was put into, I don’t know, education? Or health care? What a different world that would be. Just think about that for a minute.

The reason sports are so popular is they create a diversion from our everyday struggle just to survive. Commuting, raising kids, dealing with various rules and regulations, etc. are not easy. They don’t call everyday life “the grind” for nothing. “Happy hour” wouldn’t exist if life were easy.

Sports allow us to get away mentally and sometimes physically for a little while. It’s easy to forget about your problems when you’re watching your favorite team try to get the game-winning score. I’ve been a Vikings fan for close to 50 years and I still can’t get enough of them (I just hope they win a Super Bowl before I die but it’s not looking so good).

There are, of course, many media outlets that are not sports related. There are news-only TV channels, and newspapers still cover a lot besides sports.

But who talks about what’s on C-SPAN (except to point out the constant stream of, shall we call it “spin” to be gracious, from this administration’s daily news briefs). For some reason, people rarely get excited or passionate about the many issues and concerns that affect our daily lives. At least not in the same way they do with sports.

I’ve had occasion to be in court several times over the years. I’ve seen traffic court and small-claims court firsthand, and I know there are criminal and civil cases going on all the time as well. All of this is public information that in many cases directly affects people’s lives.

Yet you rarely see any of it let alone hear about it. Even our highest court, the Supreme Court with justices that are seated for life, is not on TV. Why is that? Why shouldn’t we, the people who they serve, be allowed to see what goes on there?

Many folks probably wouldn’t even let their attention be diverted from something as mundane as, say, a regular season baseball game if it was on, but many I’m sure would love to see it. I know I would.

Sports and sports-related businesses provide a ton of jobs, which is great. Anytime people are working in a thriving industry, you have to be happy.

Yet I’m sick of hearing guys call a sports-talk show and argue that a certain pitcher would be a bargain “if we could get him for ten million a year.” I know you earn what the market will bear, but millions and millions of dollars to play a game is just wrong.

I think of a teacher who has to spend her own money to buy supplies for her kids. Or people who work full-time but can afford to eat or pay rent but not both. Somehow it’s just wrong that you can get paid so, so, so much money to play a game while so many honest, hardworking people can barely get by.

We’ve come to accept this in our society, that certain professions command outrageous salaries out of all proportion to what they are worth, while the hard workers who affect our lives on a daily basis — police, firefighters, government workers, service and retail workers — have to scrap and fight for any kind of increase.

I don’t know what the answer is here. But imagine if all professional athletes were limited to, say, a million dollars a year. Many would balk at this but I’ll bet most of them would still rather play ball for a million a year than work at the bank or the garage or whatever.

Think what good all that saved money could do if it were pumped into education, or to ensure that everyone had health care. Wow.

You could argue that many athletes are just one knee injury away from their careers being over, and you’d be right. Hopefully they learned something else in college besides how to play a nickel defense. That would insure that they can find gainful and productive employment when their career ends eventually. I mean, education is what college is all about, right?

I could go on and on about all of this but the game is about to start and I can tell already it’s going be a good one.