Sports, the Better Debate

(I haven't written in over three weeks because my schedule is a little thrown off right now. Plus, I'm talking about politics. This could get ugly.)

Monday night (in the United States, at least), three big programs were on last night: Monday Night Football between the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears, Game 7 of the National League Championship Series between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, and the third and final Presidential debate between U.S. President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. Regardless of where you were at any time between 8:00 PM and about 12:00 PM EST, your TV may have been on with one of these three programs.

As a lot of you might know, tens of millions of people have been watching these debates. This time wasn't any different, but it wasn't any better either.

"Report: Nielsen says an average of 59.2 million viewers watched the 3rd debate, down from 67.2 mil for 1st and 65.6 mil for 2nd."

The third presidential debate was going against one of the highest-watched NLCS playoff games and Monday Night Football, which had ratings of 2.4 and 4.5, respectively. Combined, that alone amounts to about 15+ million viewers that had not cared about the debate at the time. Then again, people think that if you've heard something once, you'll hear it about 15 more times.

What I'm trying to get to here is that during this election year in the United States, big things that bring America together didn't falter. I think we can all remember that after 9/11 came and passed, baseball and football got a lot of love and patriotism, especially the Yankees since they were in the World Series that year. From what I've seen, when the U.S. is in peril, people will come together and find piece of mind through sports and leisure. C'mon, what is the best way to relieve stress? Music and physical activity!

Here's another point. Now, don't read this out of context. Like I said above, when a man (or in some cases, a woman) is elected to a government position, you don't exactly know what they'll do or how they will execute something until they actually get that seat. When you watch a sporting event, you'll see something more decisive and proven as the teams will duke it out until the end of the game. That's just my philosophy on that anyway. Plus, when something comes down to leadership of the country in a democracy, it's left to the We the people, and there are times when not everybody knows the facts and will just vote for someone to make a personal statement or just to say that they voted. When it comes to something like sports, in this case football, you will have We the people rooting for something they are more familiar with and don't watch it just for the sake of watching it. Believe me, I think more people know how the game of football works than most current events involving the economy and foreign policy. Most people will find this statement sad, but I'm not shocked that it's true among some demographics. Sometimes we have to wonder what our purpose is in life, and sometimes when things get overly complicated, we tend to turn our minds off to big matters like politics and more leisurely matters like sports.

For one thing, they do say that the two worst things you can talk about to people is religion and politics. Why? You can alienate people. At least when you talk about sports and you have a Yankees fan poking at a Phillies fan, you can at least agree or something like the fact that you guys most likely hate the Mets too.

On a night like tonight, we don't have to worry about politics. For me, I've got Hurricane Sandy knocking at my front door. However, I'm guaranteed some football and Game 4 of the World Series. When I'm on Twitter, I'm more than happy to debate about sports because sports is so vast and we're all entitled to some sort of opinion. In politics, on the other hand, you see other people or other people see you as being right, wrong, or misinformed.

This is why, if I ever get into journalism, I would rather do sports than politics. I'd rather be appreciated for sports analysis instead of political opinion.

--AZ