I like to swim and I have been known to run. I even like to kick and throw a ball around with friends or children for fun, for leisurely recreation. But as soon as anyone proposes re-shaping those simple pleasures into organized events featuring opposing teams that compete against each other according to rules for the acquisition of points in order to defeat the "others," they lose me and I walk away.
That framework beautifully encapsulates the immorality of sports and explains why sports are such a grossly inappropriate model of human relationships. Sporting competition is not a model of, or proxy for, peaceful social competition. I reject the position that sports teach important social lessons. Sports do not help develop admirable character in a person. So, there is no appropriate place for organized sports in schools or society at large, and advocacy of and support for organized sports approach the boundaries of criminality in my idiosyncratic opinion.
We get our unavoidable daily dose of sporting silliness through all the media. But in an Olympic year it is important to juxtapose a different perspective in the face of the pathological excitement and publicity we are about to be flooded with.