Sports are Important ... Because They're Important.

On Thursday, this story on the Detroit Tigers and the city of Detroit ran on ESPN.com, while this story on how some people in Detroit can’t even afford to bury loved ones who have died ran on CNN.com. I’ve written before on this blog about the ludicrousness of the idea that the success of sports teams translates into some kind of relief to a city or region. While there may be occasional instances in which a sports team or event has some kind of bearing along these lines to a geographical entity, the sports media plays this connection up way too often. In his Thursday column, Jerry Crasnick did exactly that. Yet, really, will the Tigers making the playoffs, or making the World Series, or winning the World Series really do anything to help alleviate problems like the inability of people to afford to bury people or the many other difficulties that a people and governments in places like Detroit faces? No. At best, the playoffs and World Series will cause a little more money to be spent in the city as people visit the city to see the games. Maybe one more big-name free agent will sign to play for the Tigers and, thus, spend a little more of his money in the city. Yet, that money will do little to assist with the economic issues the city faces. At most, taxes collected on income, property, and sales will add a little more into the hopper for the city and state governments. And when I say little, I mean really little. The amount that that will generate is miniscule in comparison to the state and city budgets and the amounts needed to improve living, working, and economic conditions in the city. So, it’s rather disingenuous for sportswriters to make these kinds of claims, and, as I said in my previous post, this all just seems like another example of the sports media justifying the importance of sport. They set up a tautological argument that at its core goes something like this: sports are important because they help geographical regions, and they help geographical regions because they are important signs of a city’s prominence and success.

And, meanwhile, a very similar kind of thing may be happening to the city of Chicago and the United States as whole in regard to the Olympics. Check out what The Agon wrote about this for more.

I love sports. I enjoy watching them. They help keep me going sometimes when I'm driving, when I'm working, and so on. But let's not kid ourselves by overestimating their significance. And let's recognize how self-serving these kinds of stories about the significance of sport can be.