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Keep New Times Free. Since we started Miami New Times , it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Miami, and we'd like to keep it that way. But whatever the case, even for the seated audience, in sports as in dramas, there is emotion in observation. And there is nothing wrong about that. Someone who knows more than I do might talk about finding meaning amid the absurd, might see sports as an interesting study in existentialism. Still, I cannot say much about all that.
Maybe Camus laid it on thickly for his alumni magazine for which he penned those words , but there remains something to be said for sports. Sports are a diversion. The sports-fan lives and dies and is reborn again, with each crest and trough a team encounters. That is stupid, and backward, and wasteful, and at times painful too. And also, it is fun. Want to keep up with breaking news? In this very article.
Now, I don't think sportings themselves are bad. Competition and having fun outside are great for the body and soul, I'm told, and I wouldn't want to take that away from anyone. No no no, the institution of professional athletics is the festering pile of social ills that I'm tackling today. Because it's the worst fucking thing. Just the worst. Let's start off with something simple, factual, and non-controversial: College sports team names are dumb. Every single one of them. Literally as dumb as a butt.
The idea is that sports teams are named after something important in their community's history, but as Cracked Workshop Moderator and Researcher Evan V. Symon pointed out to me, they aren't that at all. The Toronto Raptors, for example, are so named because they held a contest around the time that Jurassic Park was popular, and everyone thought "raptors" sounded cool.
The Anaheim Ducks are named after the Disney movies about a kids' hockey team and Emilio Estevez's dedication to douchebaggery. And the Washington Redskins are named after some fucking asshole who pretended to be a Native American to get attention. People have been arguing for decades in defense of naming a sports team after a racist turd-snorter. That's where these priorities are right now. Which should make it less surprising that Varsity sports are fucking a big, bloody hole right in the center of the American education system, and laughing the entire time.
If we did away with all varsity sports -- yes, all of it, today -- the world would be a better place. I'm serious, why do we play sports in college at all? What's the fucking purpose? Aren't those supposed to be schools? Aren't we supposed to be teaching people about the real world? No, they don't: Sports teams are actually massive financial drains on their colleges, with only 10 percent turning a profit.
Ah yes, you poor fool, you've fallen directly into my trap: Sports have no correlation with academic prestige. The aim is to move the bully, crab-like, along the wall towards the other team's end leaving bits of skin on the brickwork along the way. At one end, the goal is a garden door, at the other it's a tree. The excitement builds. Will this be the year a goal is scored? That's unlikely.
The last time a goal was scored in the St. Andrew's Day Classic was After about 60 minutes of pushing and shoving, the game usually ends in a tie. Most of us have heard about running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. It's when people spend a night drinking before stepping out into the bright early morning to run through narrow streets along with half a dozen wild, fighting bulls. Every year, up to people are injured and, since they started taking notice of fatalities in , 15 runners have been killed.
Informal bullfights take place in streets in Spain, the Azores, and other places. Young men, perhaps with images of being a matador in their immature brains, try to make passes with T-shirts or jackets.
Such antics frequently end badly and not for the bulls, which learn quickly they are not dealing with professionals. However, there are plenty of other ways in which people, almost always men, can risk life and limb by playing with bulls. In Portugal, a team of eight lines up in front of the bull and the front man incites the animal to charge. At the moment of impact, the front man grabs the bull's head and is lifted between the horns, which are padded.
The rest of the team, called forcados , then wrestle with the bull so the front man can dismount. So, why would someone stand still and take kilos of charging and decidedly grumpy beef in the chest? It seems to be a guy thing and everybody has a jolly time, with the possible exception of the front man. The front man catches his bull. Carry on lad, it's only pain. In France, they try to keep physical contact with horns and hoofs to a minimum in an amusement called La Course Camarguaise.
About a dozen nimble-footed men are in the arena when the bull is turned loose. Ribbons have been fixed to its horns close to the head and the goal for the men is to snag them using a small hook, without getting skewered.
Not as nimble as the French bullfighters are teams of men on hands and knees.
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