The Pyramid of Stupidity

All time great coach John Wooden has said a lot of great and inspirational stuff (or at least has had a lot attributed to him). One of his most famous sayings is that "Sports don't build character. Sport reveal character".

Whether Wooden is right is a matter worthy of debate. Which is appropriate, given that sports is a fertile ground for debates of all kinds. Sadly, most of these debates are dominated by idiocy of one kind or another. Homerism. "Expertism". Short-sightedness. Egoism. Occasionally even racism. Mostly though, its just downright stupidity.

I've talked about this before in my posts about the stupidity of "overrated" and various other topics. But its still really frustrating to me as a fan of not only of sports but of "Sport", and a fan of really good analysis and appreciation for the beauty of our great games, that so much stupidity still abounds. We have more sports, with more coverage, and more accompanying analysis than ever, and yet the average sports fan can be counted on to continually display their ignorance at any opportunity.

Anyone who has taken a cruise around the Interwebs knows that stupidity abounds, especially on message boards or comment sections. Antagonism seems to be the order of the day. Anything said or written which is even slightly less than wholly positive about your favorite sport, team or player is a blood insult which is reason to bring out one's proverbial fangs. While there are some really good and even great websites and blogs dedicated to analyzing sports, even their comment sections abound with idiots.

Of course, the Internet is hardly the sole source of sports stupidity. Ever tried watching ESPN, the self proclaimed "Worldwide Leader in Sports". Its mind numbing. A typical Sportscenter will contain a dozen "analysis" segments, and 90% of it fails to provide anything insightful. I thought I'd miss Sportscenter when I lost my cable access, but in reality it hasn't been missed.

Its no surprise that the asinine abundance extents to those who are supposedly paid to not be stupid, namely announcers and sportswriters. Granted, without them we'd never get the comedic styles of great sites like AwfulAnnouncing or FireJoeMorgan, but such lemonade making is a small consolation.

Recently I was in the car and made the mistake of switching over to AM and listening to sports talk radio. The topic at hand was the upcoming BCS title game, and specifically whether or not the offensive numbers of the Oklahoma Sooners were just the product of weak defenses in the Big-12. Now, Oklahoma set a record for points scored in college football. No team has ever scored so many points. No team has ever scored 60+ points 5 games in a row. The Sooner's lowest point total of the year was 35, achieved against TCU (#2 overall defense in the entire country at season's end) and Texas (top 10 Defense and number 3 overall team in the country). While Florida has a strong D, the idea that they'll just manhandle the Sooners is a big... well, stupid. They may win, but either way it should be a good matchup between two great teams.

Or so I thought. According to caller after caller after caller, this game is going to be a blowout. Ask any caller from "Big 12 Territory" and the Sooners will romp all over the Gators on Thursday. One guy went so far as to claim that, were the game to be played in Norman, the line would be -10 for Oklahoma. That's right, a 13.5 point swing against a team which has gone on the road and won in the most hostile of SEC environments and is quarterbacked by the most focused, intense, unflappable college QB in a generation.

Not to be outdone, every caller from "SEC territory" was willing to bet their firstborn that Big-12 football was a actually travelling series of 7 on 7 drills and that the Sooners thus have no chance. Predictions ranged from a total blowout to a nuclear explosion taking out the Oklahoma sideline being preferable to what the mighty Gators were going to do to them.

All this frustration has led me to twist Wooden's classic quote and turn it into a question: Do sports create stupidity, or do sports reveal stupidity? In other words, is it the result of the homerism, regionalism and information overload which comes with our modern sports culture? Or are sports simply a convenient avenue for all the repressed idiocy of a million talk show callers to express their "genius" insight to the world?