Sport makes no sense. And, yes, I can be serious, Mr McEnroe.
Neighbours of ours used to have domestic disputes accompanied by cries of "Kill 'im, Arthur!" I wonder if they ever did.
In professional sport, the aim is to win. As we say, “to bring home the silver”, even if we want gold. It takes dedication and training and early mornings and lots of milk shakes. Sportspersons engage the services of coaches, who endeavour to instil in their wards a “killer spirit”. Clint Eastwood would have said, “Go, get ‘em, Floyd.”
In contact sports, like football (association football isn’t actually meant to be a contact sport, but there’s a lot of mud around) and more especially rugby or American football, tempers flare, men shout at opponents and at the ref. Red cards and fisticuffs. That’s when the killer spirit erupts into a desire to kill. It’s the same instinct that regimental sergeant majors try to instil into recruits. Mild, meek, barely-shaven (in all senses) recruits, who’re shoved a rifle in their hands and told to “Go, get ‘em, Floyd.”
The most contact of contact sports is boxing. Here is a picture of a boxing knock-out, and it’s not doctored, it’s just extremely well timed. Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott. What it shows is that winning can still be about playing to the rules, even if a killer spirit is loose on the canvas. To win at boxing, a boxer must not just think “knock him out”, he has to think “kill him”. Because that’s what the other guy is thinking. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Lord Queensbury. In fact, very few sports (those that attract sponsorship, at least) have got in their rules, “The winner is the player who demonstrates the greatest killer spirit”, yet we instil a killer spirit in order to get our protégés to win. Playing by the rules is not enough to win, even if you have to win by playing by the rules.
And that’s why sport doesn’t make sense, because the killer spirit instilled in professionals has filtered down to the Under XIV’s squads and pre-teen tennis stars. How you win is to kill. And killing is just a question of luck, unless you have a system that ensures you kill the other guy and he doesn’t kill you, which can be clever, or just cheating.
It’s like bingo, but it’s fixed. People like bingo, but not when it’s fixed. And sport makes plenty of sense, if you’re doing the fixing and killing.