Today, I find myself in a very peculiar position. For the past five hours or so I have been watching, almost solidly, sport. As a cricket fan, this in itself is not unprecedented, except for the fact that I can't really claim to like either of the sports I have been watching. The England vs Slovenia football match seemed to be an average game from my limited knowledge of the sport, whereas the current Isner/Mahut game of tennis (that, as it is still going, I have no link for, save to say it is the longest game in Wimbledon history) is as exciting as watching a fish swim excitedly back and forth in an aquarium for about three hours.
And yet, I am still watching it, hypnotised. Why? There are plenty of people who hold as little interest in football as me who become even less interested during major events like the World Cup, people whose opinions I respect and admire. Caitlin, a friend of mine (who you can follow on twitter here) recently started a discussion of her Facebook page by claiming:
When it can be front page news when there's actual real things happening that are being ignored, that's wrong.
and it's pretty hard to argue with that. By all rights, I should be blogging about Obama firing General McChrystal or passing comment on the Budget, but these things are not getting discussed in the same way.
The truth is that sport means a lot to a lot of people. I don't even think it would be too controversial to claim that many people value their sporting team or hero above any religion they may or may not have, and it certainly unites people, as seen, it was pointed out, in the film Invictus. An even more powerful example, perhaps, might have been the Christmas Day football match during World War One. I would argue that this gives it a significance that cannot merely be swept under the carpet, and that having a basic idea of events (but not necessarily an in-depth knowledge) is almost as important as having a grasp on other news stories.
The more problematic issue, and I think the one that I think Caitlin was referring to, was the coverage these events receive. Newspapers are always going to appeal to the broadest possible audience with their front pages, but the television coverage is ubiquitous. Now that the Digital Switchover is rolling out, more and more homes have multiple channels, including many with sports-channel packages, yet today, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV1 have devoted a HUGE amount of time towards covering the sport. Who should be expected to move: sports fans, or non-sports fans. Personally I feel that major sporting events, such as an England football match, do have the right to elbow out a repeat of Bargain Hunt, but since the coverage of the World Cup has put all games played on one of the major television networks (BBC1 or ITV1), which, to my mind, is excessive. However, it is something that I am willing to put up with. Provided it does not interfere with Doctor Who.
Yes, major sport stars are overpaid, their skills vastly overvalued by a society that considers celebrity the ideal (and those two worlds collided in this spectacular non-story). They provide easy hate-figures in a world too full of real villains. But to celebrate one's ignorance of anything, be it sport, politics, or even engineering, is never, to my mind, the right way to go.
