Which Sporting Life Do You Really Want?

There is sporty and there is sporty. Sporty A and Sporty B if you will. I have no doubt about a sporty C and even a sporty G spot there too. When I try and write about sport what the hell am I writing about?

Am I writing about the ways that TV can make rules for sport? If that is true I should just give up and get a better life. Will TV organise the big screen events? Jesus wept how stupid of me. That has already happened. But can TV organise and control the rules?

The sad answer is yes. TV can almost control the rules of sport. Soon we can expect a football game to be split into an ”Americanised” system where the advertisements can get more time. A ninety minute football game is then best made with three or even four periods. If a four period deal is made during the next decade then 90 minutes will also be history. Can we see four 25 minute periods? Or even better 3 twenty minute TV blasts.

I am old enough to remember the ways that Olympic TV deals changed the rules for slalom canoeing. Then I thought that it was better for the wild-water canoeing folk to just a big NO to the Olympic TV deals. I wanted our slalom game to be free from health and safety TV deals and free from new rules that really help advertisements or couch potatoes. I wanted our white-water adventures to remain a real adventure.

I guess the big question is this: Which sporting life do you really want?

Golf? How nice. Good for social-fitness and image. Very, very good for advertising and PR executives as many a Limited ”Lie-a-bility” company will now regret. But just take a golf ball and a ”hitting stick” and work your way north from Kemi and Tornio. Now that is real golf. How many hits does it take to go from Tornio to Kilpisjärvi? Bugger me even the low and the unemployed could join in this competition. To do this you do not need any fashionable clothes. All you need is a ball and a stick. It can be all so simple if you want.

Which Sporting Life do you really want?

Serena Williams made headlines last year with her tennis. The joke was that we were all looking ”at her titles”. She really wanted to preach and be a better witness for Jehovah, or so she said. Perhaps she really meant to hit her tennis balls hard enough to enter the rectum of a referee? Who really knows what this sporting life is all about. Ask Jehovah?

Football? Even Manchester United and Liverpool are struggling to know what it is that they are really doing. This far it seems to be getting into bigger and deeper debt. Where is the football? Right now even Sir Alex, as in Fergie, does not know as he begins to lose it and throw his toys out from his golden pram.

Portsmouth FC keep promising to pay the huge and scandalous wages to their players. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Where has the football gone? Going to graveyards everyone. When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn.

Good news from Formula One. Mr Briatore is allowed back on the track so that we can see more exciting crashes. We suspect that some things needed to be done to take away the boredom and the monotony of this F1 circuit game. Did I really say that?

Maybe you are with me here. Maybe we do not know what sport really is today.

OK, we know that sexy sells. Money rules. People pay for heroes even from the sofa and the TV. We know all these things. But what is the real sporting life about today?

Am I the only one confused? Can anybody tell me what this sporting life is really about apart from money, sex and a ”happy sofa consciousness”?

I am trying hard to remember when, for many of us, the sporting life was a time when we might dance and play and when the dance was us. We were the dance itself at play. That was beautiful.

This next year I will try and be alert and aware of sporting beauty. I want to see again beautiful games and happenings. Bring back the art. Please. Then I can try and write about the beauty of sport, again.

Steve Bowles