This is why I don't like professional sports. Sports shouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry, because the corporations behind them profit off of promoting the sort of ignorant, obsessive attachment to teams that results in these ridiculous riots. If a fraction of the money spent in and around the Superbowl for things like 30 second ads ended up spent on NASA, we could be sipping space martinis, surrounded by babes in tinfoil miniskirts by now.
"Things will not calm down, Daniel Jackson. They will, in fact, calm up."
' Wrote:This is why I don't like professional sports. Sports shouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry, because the corporations behind them profit off of promoting the sort of ignorant, obsessive attachment to teams that results in these ridiculous riots. If a fraction of the money spent in and around the Superbowl for things like 30 second ads ended up spent on NASA, we could be sipping space martinis, surrounded by babes in tinfoil miniskirts by now.
Except that if professional sports corporations didn't earn a ton of money off it, they... wouldn't earn a ton of money off of it. A is A. People pay to see sports. People do not pay to see NASA scientists jump for joy at new comet research. Sports serve a valuable purpose, or people would not pay for them. Specifically, people enjoy watching sports. Sports serve the purpose of human enjoyment. If they did not, there would not be money earned off of them. Why, then, if they serve a valuable purpose, should they not exist? Why should they not earn the fruits of their work?
And as a note, NASA has far more money at its disposal than the Super Bowl. In 2010*, NASA's estimated** budget was over $18.6 billion. While the Super Bowl is hard to track, let's look at these "30 second ads" and estimate from there. In that same year - 2010 - Super Bowl ads alone brought just over $200 million. In other words, your precious ads are less than a tenth of NASA's yearly budget. While I couldn't find any total numbers for the Super Bowl - and it's almost impossible to know exactly - I can't imagine it's more than ten times the amount spent on the ads. Certainly not enough to make the kind of difference you're talking about.
So yes, even if the Super Bowl spontaneously disappeared and all the money people spent on it was suddenly turned into some inexplicable tax, all the loot from which went directly to NASA, it would not make the sort of difference you're talking about.
*Year chosen based on the most recent Super Bowl. It favors your side, FYI.
**These budgets usually end up going over. I don't really want to spent the time looking up how much it actually was right now.
' Wrote:Except that if professional sports corporations didn't earn a ton of money off it, they... wouldn't earn a ton of money off of it. A is A. People pay to see sports. People do not pay to see NASA scientists jump for joy at new comet research. Sports serve a valuable purpose, or people would not pay for them. Specifically, people enjoy watching sports. Sports serve the purpose of human enjoyment. If they did not, there would not be money earned off of them. Why, then, if they serve a valuable purpose, should they not exist? Why should they not earn the fruits of their work?
And as a note, NASA has far more money at its disposal than the Super Bowl. In 2010*, NASA's estimated** budget was over $18.6 billion. While the Super Bowl is hard to track, let's look at these "30 second ads" and estimate from there. In that same year - 2010 - Super Bowl ads alone brought just over $200 million. In other words, your precious ads are less than a tenth of NASA's yearly budget. While I couldn't find any total numbers for the Super Bowl - and it's almost impossible to know exactly - I can't imagine it's more than ten times the amount spent on the ads. Certainly not enough to make the kind of difference you're talking about.
So yes, even if the Super Bowl spontaneously disappeared and all the money people spent on it was suddenly turned into some inexplicable tax, all the loot from which went directly to NASA, it would not make the sort of difference you're talking about.
*Year chosen based on the most recent Super Bowl. It favors your side, FYI.
**These budgets usually end up going over. I don't really want to spent the time looking up how much it actually was right now.
And yet, does the core of my point not stand? Regardless of where the money went, professional sports is a stupid industry.
"Things will not calm down, Daniel Jackson. They will, in fact, calm up."
' Wrote:And yet, does the core of my point not stand? Regardless of where the money went, professional sports is a stupid industry.
It does not. I will try this one more time.
People indicate what is valuable to them by how they spend their money. If they spend their money on sports, sports must serve some useful purpose. The useful purpose it serves is to entertain. People enjoy it.
In other words, your point is exactly as valid as saying that the entire gaming industry is stupid, or the entire movie industry, or the entire fiction book industry.
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The ability to earn a profit is not a moral or philosophical justification; it is merely economic cause and effect. All sorts of heinous activities can earn a profit, everything from pimping out 7 year old girls to staging death matches between slaves and captives, but the profits of those activities do not justify them as either "right" or intelligent", as opposed to wrong or stupid. Profitable is a material measurement, while good, bad, right, and wrong are moral or spiritual descriptions which require moral or spiritual measurements.
Thus, "sports earn a profit" merely indicates that sports are economically self-sufficient, not that they are worthy in any non-material sense as good for society. Ancient Romans earned hefty profits feeding people to wild animals (and each other) in the arena, and if hockey is morally justified based on its profits, then so is the blood soaked ground of the Colosseum.
What professional sports illustrates to me is that human beings as a mass are not all that far removed from savagery. Not having suffered the catastrophic and devastating carnage of the 20th century at home like much of the rest of the world did, North Americans are perhaps the most potentially savage of all. The USA in particular has a national mythology that enables a strikingly easy tendency towards violence. To the degree that professional sports abates that tendency by directing it at something relatively harmless, perhaps sports is good. To the extent that sports feeds the desire for violence, perhaps it is bad. I don't think any one person can possibly know enough to judge such a thing fully and completely, but regardless, I think that paying a few people incredible salaries to run/skate around chasing a ball/puck is here to stay.
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I have an urge to start arguing with Denelo again. But I do not. Because I realize this thread is getting close to the point where it is political and gets locked. So let us just continue talking about how idiotic hooligans are.
I will give an example:
Hooligans are incredibly idiotic, because they go pillage an uninvolved person's store, because someone else has lost at a kid's game.
Wow, a shutout even. So much for the home team winning them all; I suspect that fact made Vancouver a little complacent. When the series started I was pulling (slightly) for Vancouver. Im a Western Conference guy and even though the difference was only a year, Van. had NEVER won a Cup. However as the series went on I saw more and more underhanded crap; diving, embellishing and junk like that. And Luongo making goalie suggestions to Thomas. REALLY? You get your ass handed to you every time you are in Boston and you want to give advice? So by the time the series was in game....5 I guess I was pulling for Boston. The fact that Vancouver booed the whole time of the Cup ceremony just cemented my opinion. Of course there are ALWAYS gonna be some boos when the away team wins. There was when Detroit won in Pitt and when Pitt won in Detroit. But they were sporadic and died out quickly followed by respectful applause. In Vancouver the boos were thundering; Bettman had to yell into the mic to be heard. Thats juvenile horsepoop. Vancouver got exactly what they deserved; nothing.
Besides, Boston is a quicker trip for the Cup to go back to Detroit next year.