Hate the player, love the game

When I was first approached about contributing to this blog, it was pretty obvious what my focus would be. Throughout my life, I've never met anyone who spends more time following sports than I do. Just to be clear, I'm not making that out to be a good thing. When you can't get your day started without reading at least five different sports-related websites and watching the morning Sportscenter, which you already saw the night before, you might have a problem (and by you, I mean me). So why am I so obsessed? And more to the point, why didn't I just become a sports reporter like people have been telling me since college? Reason number one is that I'm lazy. I had no idea how to get started in that field, and I didn't have the motivation to find out. The other reason, which is much more pertinent to this posting, is because I don't think I'd like sports if I got to know the people involved in them.
Pro athletes are treated like royalty in this country. Have been for years. As soon as you show a good amount of talent in high school, colleges are calling you left and right with recruitment pitches. Imagine being a teenager, and having grown men tripping over themselves to get you to go to school for free? Can you imagine being this kid? At college it's more of the same, except now, if you play a big-time sport, you appear semi-regularly on national TV, and gain fame and exposure on top of the other perks. And if you're somehow good enough to make it to the pros, you live the rest of your life in a dream world filled with money, women, and power. Tell me then, how are these people supposed to stay grounded? It's really not their fault. LeBron James has been on the national radar since he was about 15, and appeared on ESPN several times during his senior year of high school. Now I've never met LeBron, and, taking a wild stab in the dark, I'm assuming I never will. But I'd imagine it would be really hard for me to relate to him, since he's a multimillionaire, he's called himself "King James" since he was a teenager, and he's only 23 years old. This isn't meant to disparage LeBron more than it's meant to rip the system that he came up in. I would hate to contribute to that system by becoming a reporter, and having to fawn over the LeBrons and OJ Mayos of the world in order to get an interview. So while I love the sports that they play, I think I need some distance from the athletes that play them. And the executives that corrupt them. Which is where blogging comes in. Blogging allows me to pursue my dream in a half-assed manner, getting close enough to the action to discuss it in a public forum, but far enough that I don't have to deal with any of the people involved. So call it laziness. Or jealousy. But realize that I'm fulfilling my passion, without having to call somebody who's younger than me "King." Even if I do wind up reading 10 articles about him tomorrow morning.
CS