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Dr. Bopp
SPM 5016- Life Without Sports
Nov. 30, 2016
Life without sports. Not quite as fun as the Mannequin Challenge or the latest
#DanceChallenge. Imagine you grew up your whole life consuming sport to an extent. Through
television, in gym class, with friends or siblings, heck even at work. You were usually picked
within the first 5 children in gym games since first grade. Kids seemed to gravitate toward your
physical abilities of speed, agility and stamina. Things like that create an internalization of sport
values over time. You build a reputation for being and identifying as athletic. It essentially
becomes an aspect of who you are and why sports become important to you, because youre
good at it. This is the situation many boys and girls experience here in the US. Individuals who
are athletic are praised. And those who are not, follow sports religiously to show support and
socially fit in. You grow and watch tons of NFL games. Take in countless NBA rivalries and
Finals series. Athletic performers become icons in society, playing a game. Flash forward to
many years later and suddenly, try to cut that aspect of your life off. ESPN, my major source of
sports news growing up, has now turned into a vast chain of college conference networks. Sports
has become a cultural phenome. It is nearly inevitable to avoid exposure to sport in some form.
Try shutting out sports for 72 hours, my task this fall, and see what happens. Welcome to life
without sports.
My personal conquest to live life without sports or sport consumption began on October 10th, the
perfect way to start a Monday, an already dreadful day itself. My running time ran from about
9am on the 10th of October until about 9am on Thursday, October 13th. First thing on my mind
that Monday morning was breakfast, which consisted of 3 eggs, a banana, a cup of milk and 12
ounces of water. The second thing on my mind, was not watching or reading anything relating to
sports. My usual routine includes enjoying breakfast with either tuning in to the Food Network,
Cartoon Network or recapping on sporting events on ESPN. On Mondays, I usually pick ESPN 9
out 10 times, so this morning I had to be extra conscientious about not to flipping on that
channel. I picked cartoons, some old Scooby-Doo reruns were playing that brought back some
nostalgia. But just thinking about not thinking about wanting to consume sports was immediately
annoying off the back. Already, I thought this social experiment/task was going to be a total drag.
As I finished up my breakfast, Scooby-Doo had found the perpetrator behind the civil war ghosts
in New Orleans. A lot of thoughts that I never considered before the sport ban began to surface.
Things like, is weight training considered sport like? Is watching basketball games on the courts
leading up to the gym taboo as well? Should I just ignore everyone (more than I already do) to
make sure I dont break this class mandated commitment? I systematically dispatched my own
answers and began heading over to the gym because thats something that is second nature to me
and integral in life. Prior to my workout, I usually warm up by shooting some baskets as I had a
torn pectoral tendon repaired a few months back and that helps ease up the tightness. I had to
find a new manner to warm-up. I picked an elliptical, which was quite boring, as a substitute and
did my usual routine. Id be lying if I didnt mention how badly I wanted to shoot a few baskets
or play soccer and practice some freestyle juggling tricks. I was on the borderline of thinking
how miserable I was going to be if these types of feelings kept reoccurring. I headed back home
spent the rest of the day watching HBO shows and reading for class assigned readings. I
managed to get through Monday without sports with a lot of thoughts to consider. The next day
was a lot smoother. Keeping sports was a lot easier to manage. Very smooth in fact, that I even
surprised myself a bit. Just 24 hours ago, I was dreading the task of no sports. The rapid rebound
was welcomed and eye-opening too. It began the conversation as to how important sports are to
me. If such a drastic change can happen in 24 hours, imagine what would happen in a month of
not following sports. Would it feel as if sports have meant nothing of grand importance all this
time? Was my passion for sports a mere reflection of how society feels about them? But I had to
love sports. I majored in exercise science back at Syracuse University and loved every course
offered by my program. It was a question that I eventually got the answer to. My daily routine of
breakfast on Tuesday was much like it was the previous day, but without all the Debby-downer
thoughts. Consuming sports evidently was not an impossible task, but the desire to partake in
sports was still present. I still wanted to shoot the soccer ball or practice some freestyle futbol
moves. Again, the remainder of my day was composed of reading for my psychology course and
watching a bunch of shows on HBO. And eating lots of food and contemplating all the teachings
sport sociology class has shed light on and begin formulating what role sports play in my life.
The last day was nothing eventful. I had sports marketing, so learning about consumer values
and value creation kept me busy and inattentive to sports. It was finally Thursday and my so-
called punishment had finally ended with a few conclusions drawn about sports.
The experiment served as a type of self-discovery exercise for me personally. I learned that what
attract me to sports isnt necessarily what draws in many others. Given my background, Im quite
intrigued exercise science and processes. This has led me to understand that human performance
is what I enjoy about sports. The coordination of body parts, the types of ongoing muscular
contractions, biomechanics of sprinting, etc. are the fascinating aspects of sports for me and how
they contribute to amazing plays across the board. Aside from the first day, staying away from
sports was not too difficult as expected from a fan point of view. But walking by soccer fields did
give rise to the want to participate in some soccer. Play a pick-up game or shoot some shots on
goals. It was a bit hard to not want to park my car and pull out my soccer ball from the trunk
(yeah, I have a soccer ball in my cars trunk). But HBO did a fine job of keeping me entertained
on movies and comedy shows like entourage. Reading also kept my mind at bay along with
longer than usual time spent on meal prep. With the extra time (that was there all along, but
sports hid it), I had the liberty prepare more complicated food recipes. Video games were the last
component of my leisure time. It put things into perspective about how there are much worse
things to go without. For example, not having a phone is much worse. At some point between
October 13th and today, my phone died prior to heading out of my apartment so I made the
decision to leave it home. That itself was by far much more annoying than all three days of life
without sports combined. I missed emails, text messages and funny memes my siblings tagged
me in which was not cool at all. Guess millennials do have lives revolving around technology.
Technology in one day, put constraints on my typical interaction with others, something sports
did not do. This made me consider other fields I could be involved in if sports did not work out.
Ive been a pragmatic thinker all my life and decent when it comes to math and personal
finances, so I could see myself being a financial advisor (a career I consider upon graduation
from Syracuse University). Physical therapy based on orthopedic therapy. Architecture, I took a
few drafting courses in high school that I enjoyed due to my love for drawing and sketching.
Lastly, pursuing automotive engineering. Ive always loved cars and draw and I saw it as a good
combination of math, designing and cars. Life without sports was insightful and a task I can do