Sports: Do They Mean Anything?

I've been a sports fan for as long as I can remember. I blame it on my dad, a man who once posed the question "If people don't watch sports, what do they do with their time?" Watch movies? Read books? Blog? In the last couple of years, I've gotten away from ESPN and have explored some of these other options. In the process, I started to dismiss sports as being juvenile and pointless. I'd go to games and think that a majority of the fans were acting like I did when I was ten. I'd take on this holier-than-thou attitude, thinking that people at the stadium were wasting their hard earned dollars on over processed food, singing and dancing along to horrible music, and being completely oblivious to how much of a money hungry, corporate machine sports is, from the salaries of the players and executives to the blatant advertising all over the venue.

In short, I was an elitist.

I went to a Pittsburgh Steelers game at Heinz Field with my dad this past Sunday, and I realized that love, wherever you can find it, is meaningful. 55,000 people dressed in Steeler black and gold were there, all for one reason-they love the Steelers. My eyes welled up with tears before the game as everyone was cheering after the national anthem and two fighter planes flew over making a huge sound, because, well, there was just so much love there. It didn't matter that the love was for a silly football team and a bunch of planes that wasted fuel and millions of taxpayer dollars. Instead I just thought about how great it was that people built this nice stadium with ketchup bottles on the scoreboard and that there are people who can fly those really fast planes without throwing up or crashing them.

I'm gonna try to find love everywhere.