The dark side to loving sports

Villanova just hit an incredible buzzer-beater to beat UNC in the NCAA championship game. It was one of the most thrilling sports moments in recent memory. But in the immediate aftermath of that magic, I found myself thinking about the darker side of the sports I love so much.

College Athletes

March Madness and college football are billion dollar businesses. The NCAA, the conferences, the universities, the coaches – they all make enormous amounts of money. Yet the athletes who generate all of this revenue are compensated with nothing beyond their scholarships. These athletes function as professionals in every meaningful sense – the time commitments, the physical demands, the entertainment value they provide. But they’re not treated as such. They receive minimal educational benefits in many cases and aren’t fairly compensated for the money they generate. It’s a system that feels fundamentally exploitative.

Stadium Financing

Professional stadium construction often unfairly burdens taxpayers. Team owners threaten to relocate franchises unless cities pony up hundreds of millions in public funds for new facilities. It’s a morally corrupt system – billionaire owners leveraging civic loyalty to extract public subsidies for private assets. And yet, I find myself cheering in those very stadiums, implicitly supporting the system with my dollars and attention.

Football and CTE

Given what we now know about CTE and the long-term health consequences of playing football, why do we enthusiastically watch athletes endure serious physical harm for our entertainment? Modern professional football players are, in many ways, contemporary gladiators – sacrificing their bodies and their futures for our viewing pleasure. The documentary evidence of brain damage among former players is overwhelming, and yet the sport’s popularity continues to grow.

So Why Do I Still Watch?

I’ll be honest – these ethical concerns are not sufficient to override my irrational love for watching elite athletic competition. There’s something about the drama, the excellence, the shared human experience of sport that transcends these very real problems. But I hope that by at least acknowledging these contradictions, I’m being honest with myself about the tradeoffs I’m making. And I hope that future developments in athlete compensation, stadium financing, and player safety might someday resolve these tensions.