Posted this elsewhere but @Lv99_BixNood asked for its own thread.
Watching other men play sports as a hobby is pitiful. Even worse is watching sports you can't ever be good at. Most male sports fans are in heavy denial about this: you have to weigh 250 lbs to play football, and you have to be 6'6 to play basketball. In pro leagues, the size advantage is insurmountable.
There are two axes on which a sport can speak to its society:
Axis 1: ideal physique. At the high level of a nationally popular sport, maximum effort is put forward by all competitors, bringing us back to genetics. From this perspective, different sports are simply filters for different genetics: calisthenics for small men, powerlifting for large men. Which body type is the best? The sport of a society encapsulates the ideal physique of that society.
Axis 2: Gini coefficient. Some "civilized" sports admit a wide range of body types; others heavily favor a specific trait. Anyone can play golf; only the tall can play basketball. Do we let everyone play, or only a specific few? The sport of a society reflects the inequality tolerated by that society. (Direct analogy to actual civilization, which is the spreading of female access and wealth from one alpha man to multiple beta men.)
You already know where this is going: American sports are uniquely and precisely designed to select, crown, and worship a tiny elite population of very large men. It does this by systematically stripping away avenues of success of small men.
Avenue 1: no contraptions. Size doesn't matter in sports that test for tool proficiency. "God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal." This includes weapon sports (shooting, archery, fencing) and to a lesser extent net-and-ball sports. American sports don't involve tools, except the bare minimum of a ball (any less and we would be left with mere pugilism).
Avenue 2: no pound-for-pound activities. Size is a serious penalty in sports where players manipulate their own bodyweight (in accordance with the square-cube law). This includes climbing and gymnastics. American sports never involve those activities; they never require inversion of the body.
Avenue 3: direct contact without weight classes. This one's particularly brutal. In the jungle, the biggest animal wins; that's why human games have weight classes. Yet American sports manage to do away with those! How do you take away something so fundamental incontrovertibly without pushback? By only valuing team sports. Team sports have the convenient property that they cannot have weight classes without logistically unfeasible segmentation. (Basketball limited to short people? You mean the WNBA?) This setup traps small men to play against large men in the same league. Add in emphasis on direct contact, and small men are literally bounced away. (As a cherry on top, the social aspect of team sports weeds out loners.)
Apply these filters and it's no coincidence you get the classic American sports: football, basketball, and baseball. Now that we've eliminated any way small men can win, there's no wonder large men rise to the top. It looks like they've won by themselves, but the entire system was geared toward them the whole time.
In other words, if you had to design a perfect system to lionize large men over small men with a veneer of meritocracy, you'd be hard pressed to come up with something that wasn't the modern American sporting system.
What's the point of sport in other cultures? To celebrate civilization; to celebrate the contributions of small and large men alike. What's the point of sport in America? To worship primitive Chad; to worship Paul Bunyan; may the largest man win, every cash and every prize. American sport is a 250 lb, 6'6 bully stamping on a 100 lb nerd's face — for ever.
Happy Super Bowl Sunday.
Watching other men play sports as a hobby is pitiful. Even worse is watching sports you can't ever be good at. Most male sports fans are in heavy denial about this: you have to weigh 250 lbs to play football, and you have to be 6'6 to play basketball. In pro leagues, the size advantage is insurmountable.
There are two axes on which a sport can speak to its society:
Axis 1: ideal physique. At the high level of a nationally popular sport, maximum effort is put forward by all competitors, bringing us back to genetics. From this perspective, different sports are simply filters for different genetics: calisthenics for small men, powerlifting for large men. Which body type is the best? The sport of a society encapsulates the ideal physique of that society.
Axis 2: Gini coefficient. Some "civilized" sports admit a wide range of body types; others heavily favor a specific trait. Anyone can play golf; only the tall can play basketball. Do we let everyone play, or only a specific few? The sport of a society reflects the inequality tolerated by that society. (Direct analogy to actual civilization, which is the spreading of female access and wealth from one alpha man to multiple beta men.)
You already know where this is going: American sports are uniquely and precisely designed to select, crown, and worship a tiny elite population of very large men. It does this by systematically stripping away avenues of success of small men.
Avenue 1: no contraptions. Size doesn't matter in sports that test for tool proficiency. "God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal." This includes weapon sports (shooting, archery, fencing) and to a lesser extent net-and-ball sports. American sports don't involve tools, except the bare minimum of a ball (any less and we would be left with mere pugilism).
Avenue 2: no pound-for-pound activities. Size is a serious penalty in sports where players manipulate their own bodyweight (in accordance with the square-cube law). This includes climbing and gymnastics. American sports never involve those activities; they never require inversion of the body.
Avenue 3: direct contact without weight classes. This one's particularly brutal. In the jungle, the biggest animal wins; that's why human games have weight classes. Yet American sports manage to do away with those! How do you take away something so fundamental incontrovertibly without pushback? By only valuing team sports. Team sports have the convenient property that they cannot have weight classes without logistically unfeasible segmentation. (Basketball limited to short people? You mean the WNBA?) This setup traps small men to play against large men in the same league. Add in emphasis on direct contact, and small men are literally bounced away. (As a cherry on top, the social aspect of team sports weeds out loners.)
Apply these filters and it's no coincidence you get the classic American sports: football, basketball, and baseball. Now that we've eliminated any way small men can win, there's no wonder large men rise to the top. It looks like they've won by themselves, but the entire system was geared toward them the whole time.
In other words, if you had to design a perfect system to lionize large men over small men with a veneer of meritocracy, you'd be hard pressed to come up with something that wasn't the modern American sporting system.
What's the point of sport in other cultures? To celebrate civilization; to celebrate the contributions of small and large men alike. What's the point of sport in America? To worship primitive Chad; to worship Paul Bunyan; may the largest man win, every cash and every prize. American sport is a 250 lb, 6'6 bully stamping on a 100 lb nerd's face — for ever.
Happy Super Bowl Sunday.
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