Danny ChaiI’m against when things take a short term view and not a long term view. I personally think that’s a reason why sports is going down the drain.
Lots of people have said this, but sports has moved more and more from being about a sporting competition to being entertainment. So like, go to the ballpark and they have a bunch of inter-inning entertainment, like dot racing, sausage racing, different stuff. It’s all about entertainment. This is true at any major professional sporting event.
Short term, sure, be more entertaining, attract more people. Problem is, and again, tons of people have said this, but long term, if you present sports as just being entertainment, it becomes just one more entertainment choice. You lose what makes sports special and different and people move on to other equally compelling entertainment choices. I think that’s kind of happening now. People see sports as just another thing to do, like a movie, like whatever. So they treat it as such, not something special.
I really think boxing is going to die for similar reasons, and not just the corruption. It’s always been corrupt. But a while back they decided to take the short-term route with pay-per-view. Have people pay to see it, make tons more money. In the short term. Problem is, by limiting the access so much, you no longer gain young fans. That’s a key – people become sports fans for life early on and if you miss that window, the opportunity is gone. I think boxing is missing it, and the repercussions won’t be fully felt until years from now, when the kids who care nothing about boxing grow up and the old fans die. Even now, I mean, who really cares about boxing besides a few old people? I was watching this Ali documentary and it’s way different from when he was boxing, when everyone cared, he was the biggest figure in sports, and everyone saw Howard Cosell covering his fights.
There was this debate about the whole Kobe thing recently, and whether it might be good for the NBA. Some argued that it is, and again, I think that’s a short term view. The NBA has all been about the short term view. Like, they decided in the 80s to base their marketing more on particular players, less on teams. Worked in the short term. Problem is, when those players, especially Jordan, move on, the NBA lost everything it had based its marketing on and had to start over. I think that’s partly why the NBA has struggled popularity wise the past few years.
As far as Kobe goes, I don’t buy that any publicity is good publicity. I dunno, I believe in the power of families and I do believe that bad publicity turns families off from the NBA. And those repercussions are felt in the long term, not the short term. I dunno. All of this is out of my butt but whatever.
What I’ve been wondering recently if we’re in danger of doing that in the church also. It’s clear that church should be culturally relevant. I just worry that we go too far, kind of present it as just another thing to cater to certain needs of individuals. So that if it doesn’t do it for them, people just move on.
I dunno, the church is not just another thing to make people feel good about themselves. It’s not a support group. It’s not a self improvement group. It’s special in that it celebrates the truth, you know? I just think we need to be sure that we emphasize what’s special about the church, not try overly hard to be like other things.
What on earth am I talking about? I just bored myself. Egad.