My Love/Hate Relationship

I have a love/hate relationship with sports. I love playing sports. I love supporting my kids and any other family members throughout the ages in sports. I even love watching certain sports.

But professional sports really irritate me.

I remember reading in the book Jurassic Park a certain character's opinion of professional baseball. He said something along the lines that it was just a bunch of grown men with bats swatting at balls. To put it that way spun a whole new light on professional sports.

Take a look at the typical professional athlete. They spend all their time playing a game. Are they contributing something worthwhile to society in their profession? Not really. Some of it is entertaining, but at an enormous cost. Most of the professional athletes I've heard of, their personal lives are severely screwed up. They act like children, like glorified teenagers. They are prideful and arrogant. They have way too much money and spend it on atrocious things. Sure, some of them are parents with children. I'm sure some of them are even pretty good people. But it sure seems like an overwhelming majority of professional athletes are exactly what I said before...glorified teenagers.

I love to watch college football--especially my favorite teams--BYU (of course), Michigan, and a few others. In fact, we are going to attend a BYU game this season, the entire family. I'm excited. The kids all have BYU T-shirts to wear and I even bought cute little matching bows for my daughter's hair.

I also love watching sports like gymnastics, both men's and women's, and many other Olympic sports. But I think that's where my line is--I like amateur sports but professional sports just annoy me.

So when it's football season and the great football gods of the NFL seem to rule the TV on a pretty regular basis, I get pretty steamed up. I think watching professional sports is a colossal waste of time. Think of all the hours people spend sitting on their bums in front of the TV during football season (or baseball season, or basketball season) watching grown men play sports and behave like children.

So that is my love/hate relationship. I love sports--I loved participating in gymnastics, basketball, volleyball, softball growing up. I enjoyed supporting my husband in college football and loved attending college football games myself when I was a student. I enjoy catching a college game now and then on TV. I enjoy going to local high school games--both basketball and football. I love having my kids play baseball, football and hopefully try soccer and basketball. Maybe even gymnastics.

But watching adults play their sport for huge salaries? That is just wrong in my book.