It’s only a game !
Posted by Big John on May 31, 2011
I sometimes think that there are more sports pages in the newspapers than ones reporting ‘real’ news, and in particular the coverage of our ‘national religion’ is overwhelming at the moment with stories of sex and corruption spilling over on to the front pages and much of the inside ones as well.
Yes, we all know that football (soccer) is big business in this country and most of the world, but how many people are really that interested who is ‘bunging’ whom with brown envelopes full of hundred dollar bills, or which super-striker is seeking a court injunction to hide the fact that he is ’playing away’ with some ‘bimbo’ or other ?
Why they call it the “beautiful game” has always escaped me, for at times it can be a very ugly game indeed, with brainless, agressive ‘neanderthals‘, who take home obscene amounts of cash each week, making the headlines, and so called fans behaving like rampaging barbarians.
With all that is happening in the world at present, you would think that newspaper editors would consentrate on what really matters to most people and relegate all this FIFA football crap to where it belongs … a paragraph …
… on the back page !
SilverTiger said
Newspapers make money by giving people what they want, otherwise there would not be rags like the Daily Mail and The Sun, to mention but two journalistic aberrations. Reluctantly, therefore, we have to conclude that all the non-news about football and “celebs” in general is published because large numbers of people want to read it. If they didn’t want to read it, the papers would fill up with other stuff – whatever people were prepared to pay to read.
The question then is why the trivial activity called football is deemed so interesting. I will leave that to the social scientists to answer but it does suggest to me that a lot of people have too much time on their hands and no idea how to fill it with more intelligent pastimes.
Grannymar said
That is one of the reasons I stopped buying dead trees! The other was that I was paying for the advertising. Now I select only what I want to read, on the screen in front of me. The bonus is I no longer need to sit with my arms in the air!