Do Team Sports Hurt Society?

I’ve never understood why so many people are obsessed with sports. To me, team sports are boring and a waste of time, whether you are playing or watching. Aside from being completely pointless, they give kids poor values and trivialize the importance of real learning and education. The importance that we tend to place on sports damages society as a whole.

First of all, sports are unnecessary in schools. They take focus away from academics and actual education. Team sports encourage children to value only the people with athletic ability and to ostracize the children who are less athletic. This creates a hierarchical caste system in which those who play sports are seen as superior to the “nerds” and the un-athletic, giving intelligent kids, who would otherwise aspire to greatness, low self-esteem. When kids are constantly picked last in gym class or on the playground for teams, they may be scarred for life and feel inferior as adults, whereas the kids who are picked first will develop feelings of superiority and become horrible people as adults. The so-called jocks grow up expecting everything to be handed to them with no real work on their part for the simply fact that they can throw or kick a ball. The kids who could otherwise go on to do great things with their lives may end up questioning their own worth and lose motivation to try even try anything due to fear of rejection and failure, whereas the kids who are good at sports never learn to do any thing with their minds because society tells them that being good at some stupid game is enough to succeed in life. Everyone loses.

The argument that sports encourage teamwork and help kids learn to work together is flawed. This could be accomplished much easier by having children work in groups for assignments and projects in which students have to work together to complete the project that is in some way connected to the curriculum. Students could be required to enter team competitions that are based around academic subjects to learn team-building skills while actually learning something. 

Team sports devalue individuality and promote thinking as part of a collective. When you are part of a team, even your individual accomplishments are regarded as accomplishments of the team as a whole. Team sports destroy the ability for kids to think for themselves as adults.

In high school, I also saw a lot of teachers being much more lenient with the students who were part of a sports team (usually football, but I saw it with other sports such as cross-country and basketball as well). Usually the teachers who are also coaches in a particular sport do this most often, but other teachers do it as well. This only teaches students that, as long as they can throw a ball or run fast, that they don’t have to think or do any real work.