Professional athletes are lucky. Perhaps that goes without saying. In an era in which athletes are celebrities entirely removed from the day to day reality of their fans, we pay large sums of money for the opportunity to watch them shoot a basketball, pitch a baseball or catch a football and cheer them to victory. We grow attached to these complete strangers: they become a part of our family and our circle of friends. We discuss them as if the connection is real. We fantasize about meeting them. They who we want to be and who our children wish we were. In short, they are our heroes and we shower them from afar with our reverence and admiration. Odd, because if you think about it, the vast majority of athletes are merely the beneficiaries of circumstance. They are the ones which the Fates smile down upon. In a society that tends to favor meritocracy, it is curious that we have grown to idolize those who attain their success, in large measure, as a result of pure chance.
What would tell your child if he wanted to become a doctor? You would probably tell him to be disciplined and diligent in his studies, pay attention in class and work harder than he’s ever worked before. In addition, you’d devote your available resources to improving his chance to achieve his dream by paying for test prep, tutors, special summer programs and enriching extra curricular activities. Now, while everyone does not possess the intelligence to realistically become a doctor, with the right work ethic, even those with normal intelligence can achieve this goal. Now what would you tell your child if he told you that he wanted to become a professional basketball player? Well, you would have to tell him that he needs to be about 6 feet 6 inches tall, be able to run extremely fast, have a vertical leap of at least 36 inches and be able to shoot a ball with a diameter of 9.5 inches into a hoop with a diameter of 18 inches from a distance of 15 feet about 50% of the time. Other than perhaps the latter of these requirements, mere hard work and discipline play no role in attaining this goal. Basketball is essentially something that you are born to do. Of course training and refinement play a significant role but only to the extent that it sharpens innate skills.
In reality, being a professional basketball player is dependent upon a series of factors over which we have no control. The requirements for being a basketball player are entirely counter intuitive to those that we would consider necessary for success in day to day life. Often genetics contribute to success, but rarely is success almost entirely dependent upon genetics. Every field in life has its prodigies and savants. Some children may be born to play the violin or to excel at quantum mechanics. The difference however, is that many people can learn how to play a violin functionally or to become competent in mathematical physics though it may take more time for some than for others and while you may never become as good as the prodigy, at some point the difference becomes virtually indistinguishable to all but the aficionado. On the other hand, there is no amount of practice or training that would enable the average person to dunk a basketball or to throw a baseball 100 miles per hour and the difference between a professional athlete’s ability and that of an average person is clearly noticeable.
The professional sports we have come to love today were, by and large, all invented within the past 150 years. They did not become at all profitable until the construction of stadiums and arenas. These sports had no potential to make a person rich until the invention of television specifically the ability to broadcast games “live via satellite”. Therefore, when one considers the amount of luck involved with being able to earn 10 million dollars a year by playing a game, it defies logic. Ultimately, being a successful professional athlete is akin to winning the lottery: extreme profits obtained largely by chance.
Now, I do not think that there is anything wrong with making huge sums of money simply for being tall or fast, I just think it’s…interesting.
Audley Hanna Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment