The mysteries of sport

I've never understood the point of sports. To me, the spectacle of the Olympics and the accompanying hand-wringing involving doping and underage gymnasts just bring out the logical slipperiness behind sport itself. And even if I'm perhaps extreme in my nonappreciation of sport, even professional sports commentators seem unable to muster logical theses (see this idiotic segment on Slate's political gabfest, usually a lively and entertaining debate).

While I'm an admitted square and tend to appreciate impeccable reason more than lighthearted entertainment, I at least intellectually understand the appeal of music, movies, the beach, etc. While science excites our rational intellect, music and art move our hearts and engender awe-inspiring beauty. Stories and songs expose the intricacies of human nature. Furthermore, I have no trouble understanding the sheer exhilaration of playing sports. But watching sports? I'm at sea.

I can see the entertainment value of going to a sports venue and having a good time. What I can't fathom is the diehard conviction of sports fans and the stupendous amounts of time, money, and intellectual energy devoted to fandom. Having lived in the home of the Red Sox for several years now, I can sort of understand team allegiances as tribal holdovers and a way of bonding in a time where group ties are disintegrating. But just as with college fraternity rituals, I feel there must be a better way of bonding with others than doing something together just for the sake of doing it (or liking a team just to talk about it with people). What is the logical basis of being a lifelong fan of a team you happen to live in the same city as, even if all of the players, coaches, and even owners change with time? Do people really believe their teams are the best when they objectively simply are not? Does it really matter who wins? I am also an avid gymnastics fan, and can appreciate the physical aesthetics of the human body displayed in elite sports. But that doesn't seem to be what compels most people.

Moreover, neither group ties nor aesthetic appreciation disentangle the logical quagmire of doping and athletic enhancement. The very essence of elite sports consists of pushing the human body to the limits of performance, and I see no logical reason why unnatural and sometimes unhealthful levels of training should be cheered yet drug use should be jeered. I'm certainly not first to point out the contradictions in distinguishing of "natural" versus "unnatural" athletic enhancement.

Thus, it seems that we'll never be able to extricate ourselves from the inalienable ambiguity of drawing a line when reality is as gray as gruel. Given that sport itself inherently consists of physical pursuits governed by arbitrary rules, the very act of training must exploit those rules to the fullest if a professional athlete wants any hope of competing. As the boundaries of human physicality are stretched ever more tautly, athletes jam themselves ever more tightly on the boundary of that arbitrary line. Who's in and who's out seems more and more often to be decided by urine and technicalities rather than in the thrill of a race. Even if I don't fully appreciate sport, I for one find this a dissatisfying state of affairs for one of the major pursuits of humankind.

In the end, perhaps my favorite sport of gymnastics wins the day after all. Long-derided for its emphasis on performance and subjective scoring by judges, gymnastics still relies on incredibly fine motor coordination for which drugs are (hopefully) little help for. Although the rules may be arbitrary and byzantine, they for once seem less ambiguous and capricious than the ICC's crazy doping rules. Nowadays, underage gymnasts committing government-sanctioned passport fraud seems almost quaint.