Tomorrow, #1 Florida plays #2 Alabama in the SEC Championship game. It is basically an early national championship. The winner of this game is, most likely, the best team in college football. The match is incredibly exciting, as both teams are unbeaten, and both have played incredibly good football to get where they are.
#3 Texas has done what it takes to play the winner of this game for the National Championship, but first it will have to win its own championship against Nebraska. This will also be determined tomorrow. Texas is also undefeated and it would be fun for my home state to take home the national championship trophy once again. ((Last time it was under Vince Young in what was probably the greatest game in football history, against Matt Leinart and USC. Trust me, watch it, you'll see my praise isn't exaggerating.))
Meanwhile, today the World Cup drew the various groups and matchups that will be played in South Africa this summer. USA got a wonderful draw, in Group C with Slovenia, Algeria, and England. The first two are no big deal, and even England is only ranked 9th compared to our 14th, in the FIFA rankings. The USA could go deep into the world cup this time, but of course they aren't the only story. Holland is at the top of its game and also in a group it should handle easily. If you have never watched Holland play, watch it this summer. They are like visual music. There is only one World Cup every 4 years. Only a few countries have ever won a world cup. It is the most popular event in the world, and the highest award given in Sportdom.
With bowl season in football, and the playoffs around the corner, we can't forget the Vancouver Winter Olympics. In just a couple months, the world will gather yet again under the Olympic Torch ((after an incredible Beijing Olympics that went flawlessly and left everyone feeling good, the USA and the Chinese hosts.)), and fight over skiing, skating, hockey, and the all important curling.
2010 is a good year for sports. Heck, it may be the best year for sports in a long time. But my point is this -- sports are wonderful. Athletes are wonderful. Their performances are wonderful.
Sports does three things that nothing else can -- it brings the world together in peaceful competition -- it unites each individual nation (or state, or city) in patriotic support of their team -- and it lets people glimpse the highest heights of mankind's greatness. The beauty of an athlete performing well in his game is the same as the beauty of any dancer, singer, or any other skilled craftsmen. To denigrate athletes as somehow being inferior to other art forms is ridiculous. What they do is incredible, it is popular because people understand that it is incredible, and there is no reason to resent what few accomplishments other races have when we already have plenty ourselves. Not that blacks are necessarily better than whites in football, soccer, or the Olympics -- in many cases it's just the opposite. But to resent anyone who likes sports, and to mock anyone who is good at sports, simply because they are not white -- is churlish. It's stingy. And most of all, it's intellectually dishonest. We can give credit where credit is due. We can admire the beauty of a skilled player playing well. And we can do all of this while still wanting a country of our own.
One of the most inspiring scenes on earth is the Olympic March of Nations, where all the athletes walk around the stadium with their flags waving, even poor countries, even countries at war, even countries in total diplomatic isolation, and all of them being applauded with friendly encouragement by the crowd. People who have little to cheer for in their normal lives, people who don't even know where their next meal is coming from, can look up and take pride in their nation marching alongside all the others, a legitimate contender for medals that has put forward their very best to show the whole world what their people are made of. It's wonderful that like the ancient Greeks, we can put all of our differences aside and just celebrate humanity's skill and strength together as one for a month of games. Even while Georgia and Russia were at war with each other, their athletes faced each other with politeness, goodwill, and fair play, across the whole range of Olympic events. Who can't be inspired by their example?
For the next year, we are going to watch just what mankind is capable of, when they take their very finest physical specimens, and dedicate their entire lives into training their bodies and minds into doing something well. We can't possibly compete on their level, nor would we want to -- not everyone is born for athletics, and we can't all afford to spend every day concentrating on them. But what we can do, is marvel that we belong to the same species as these people, and that the human body and brain really can pull off the stunts we see in front of us. Walking through the Louvre is one way to become spellbound at the works of man, but another is to simply sit down in front of the television and watch these events. The miraculous performances some of these people put on, is every bit as beautiful. I still remember Carly Patterson on the Balance Beam, and Nastia Liuken on the floormat, the two all around gold medalists, both Americans, of the last two Olympics. Not only am I incredibly proud that these two girls are Americans, and that they are white, but simply that they are human beings. That within the human race there exists liars, deceivers, criminals, fools, assholes, and hypocrites -- but also these two gymnasts who wipe the entire slate clean. These people redeem the whole human race. They show what we can be -- and what more and more of us will be -- in the future. If any one person can do it, it is physically possible to replicate. This is why investigating the limits of human ability is a story of hope and joy for us all. Once a limit is broken -- a tiny bit faster 100 meter dash, a tiny bit higher high jump, a tiny bit more intricate synchronized dive -- we can all smile and think, "Someday our children will be all this and more."
But also, we don't need to perform at the same level as our best. We just need to support them, so that they can be their best. God knows the Olympics couldn't happen without billions of dollars of sponsors, fans, viewers, equipment providers, coaches, and so on. The same is true of our inventors, scientists, artists, and so on. It's a lot harder to write a twilight saga, or a harry potter series, if the authors had had to invent the very concept of magic, witches, vampires, werewolves, and so on. The fact is we all participated in the writing of these stories, because we all shared a basic cultural heritage with the writers, who could easily tap into our shared folk stories. You could say everything written for the last century has just been Tolkein, Tolkein, Tolkein. But then you must recall that even Tolkein got his ideas from more ancient myths and folk tales, dating all the way back to the dawntime of our heritage. Tolkein had the support he needed, and in turn he provided support for even more ambitious works -- like The Wheel of Time -- which were even better and more popular than the original. So it is that each generation's best is slightly better than the previous generation's best. And so it is that the best are because of the masses ((what is a scientist without the LHC to perform tests with?)), and the masses all benefit from our best (( What is the LHC without a scientist to interpret the results?)). If this isn't symbiosis, if this isn't a hive brain, if this isn't an interconnected whole, what is?
Instead of worrying about who precisely is winning the gold medal, it is more accurate to say that humanity has produced yet another gold medal winning performance. If aliens were watching us from space, they wouldn't be impressed by our soldiers, our businessmen, or our firefighters. They would relegate all of this to the same activities as ants and other animals who all ceaselessly and mindlessly engage in the same things. But they would be amazed to see Florida vs. Alabama being cheered on by hundreds of thousands of people on all sides. They would marvel at the figure skaters in Vancouver. They would be completely floored at the frenzy surrounding the World Cup. Why? Because it produces nothing but excellence. And that is a concept animals can't even understand. It is a product they have never made, and never will. And alongside the excellent people, are the excellent fans -- all likewise establishing their unique humanity, by the fact that they value excellence themselves. Aliens could come up with dozens of theories about how humans instinctively learned how to fashion skyscrapers and cars just like birds make nests or badgers make dams -- but there would be no way for them to explain why humans make ski jumps except one -- Man lives in two worlds, the natural and the transcendental -- and every weekend we take time off to sojourn from one to the other.
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