Chances are that if you were born and raised in Chicago, you love Michael Jordan. He is the unofficial deity of nearly all Chicagoans. If one were to object to MJ’s greatness in a crowd of Chicagoans, that person’s very life and liberty may be in jeopardy.
The same can be said of many other Chicago greats such as Walter Payton or Ernie Banks. Is this to say that sports too heavily influences us as a society? Many will argue that sports do distract the general populace from more important issues or that they detract from the fame of people who really deserve to have the spotlight on them like scientists and Nobel Prize winners. To these people we just have to say “Ok fine, but when’s the last time a Nobel Prize winner dunked from the free-throw line?” Sure Steven Hawking contributed greatly to the field of physics and devoted his life to hard work so that the rest of us could live better lives and even someday explain the very nature of the universe, but he just does not have the star power and aesthetically pleasing traits that a sports superstar has. This is not to say that great scholars and scientists are not due their fame, they just do not capture the imagination and fascination of the people like sports stars do. While someone like Steven Hawking deserves multitudes of credit for his work, he is probably the only famous living physicist that anyone can name off-hand. Sports stars, on the other hand, can be counted dozens at a time.
In Chicago especially, sports is a lifestyle. How else in this oftentimes bleak and divided city can people of all colors and creed come together and identify on a single subject? While this is not to say that sports do not make people mortal enemies, i.e. Cubs and Sox fans or Bears and Packer fans, it all depends on the perspective that one views these divisions from. In a sense these divides strengthen our identity as either Americans on a larger scale, or Chicagoans on the community scale. We rely on sports to establish who we are and further broaden our sense of identity.
The values that sports emphasize are also as American as apple pie. Anyone who has participated in a rigorous sport can tell you that playing sports teaches self-discipline and perseverance. This is why sports stars are amongst the most admired in the world. People look up to these athletes and strive to attain even a sliver of the greatness that these people have achieved. Everyone can learn something from sports in order to better themselves. Critics may argue that all sports promote is steroid use and super-ego, however, these aspects of sports are not promoted in the mainstream or as the core values that sports convey. These negative attributes of sports are punished and not promoted so it is unfair to hold them against the overall positivity of sports.
Societies across the world have recognized the influence of sports in keeping people entertained while at the same time establishing culture and identity in a society. To say that sports play too large an influence in a society is to not look at what has made the society what it is. Sports are an expression of cultures, they are the essence of societies, and they are ultimately the face of the values that a people hold.