Sunday, March 9, 2014
Championship Week
Attention everyone! Sports Gab Champ Week is now available! Just hit the 'NCAA Men's Basketball' heading to check out my predictions, articles, explanations, and more!
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Conflict's Antidote: The Beauty of Sport
As the 23rd Winter Olympics came to a close, as a single tear ran down the face of that creepy bear, we too cried. We, the people of the world, united for 2 short weeks, collectively mourned the ending of a beautiful reunion, a single tear reducing us back to independent nations: nations conflicting, nations warring, nations at peace. But for 2 glorious weeks, our troubled, conflicted nations of the world united and rejoiced together, celebrating who else but our most prized athletes. The true beauty of the Olympics celebrates the true beauty of sport: its uncanny ability to bring together.
Jeremy Abbott is a four-time US national figure skating champion, and yet when the most pressure is on, during the Olympics, he has trouble delivering. If the name doesn't ring a bell, surely the memory of the American skater crashing into the wall on a quad jump, and stayed down for about 20 seconds. Abbott may have lost the competition with his unfortunate fall, but he surely won over Americans when, miraculously, he got up. Behind in his program, battered and bruised, and surely in awful amounts of pain, Abbott made the decision to get up and keep skating. Beautifully, I might add. Tell me that didn't give you chills. I won't believe you. No matter what your problems were at that particular moment, we as Americans were compelled to this man we'd known for all of 1 minute, for the drive he exhibited that made us proud to live in the U-S-of-A. Nationally, sports bring us such immense joy. Whether it was Charlie White and Meryl Davis getting the win, the US sweep in men's ski slope style, or Mikaela Shiffrin crying at the top of the podium, we were proud to call ourselves Americans. Sports bring the ultimate pride and joy.
Maybe the Olympics exist as a platform for what we aspire to be, as a global community. Sure, competition is the immediate backdrop, but doesn't that sort of represent the world? We are all competing with each other for the most revenue, power, etc., but if you delve deeper, we all have deep ties and bonds interconnecting. The Olympics is a representation of this. We are all competing to be the best, but we still gather to celebrate our collective prowess and make friends. Athletes from all over the globe, whatever their countries' conflicts may be, help each other out. This is what we strive for our world to be.
Sports are able to bring our world together in a way that no else can, and this is the beauty of it. Our most prized athletes put everything on the line for the pride and joy of not just their respective countries' citizens, but the world. Whatever conflict and strife occurs in the world, sports in the Olympics draws us closer. For 2 weeks, we are able to break the lines between our countries, and gather to collectively celebrate the athlete, in all its beauty. Countries still have troubles, concerns, wars even, but the Olympics disregards that. As the Olympic flame stays lit, so too does hope, a light guiding us, the nations of the world, towards the sweet salvation of global cooperation. Hope abounds. Pride flows. Sports triumph.
Jeremy Abbott is a four-time US national figure skating champion, and yet when the most pressure is on, during the Olympics, he has trouble delivering. If the name doesn't ring a bell, surely the memory of the American skater crashing into the wall on a quad jump, and stayed down for about 20 seconds. Abbott may have lost the competition with his unfortunate fall, but he surely won over Americans when, miraculously, he got up. Behind in his program, battered and bruised, and surely in awful amounts of pain, Abbott made the decision to get up and keep skating. Beautifully, I might add. Tell me that didn't give you chills. I won't believe you. No matter what your problems were at that particular moment, we as Americans were compelled to this man we'd known for all of 1 minute, for the drive he exhibited that made us proud to live in the U-S-of-A. Nationally, sports bring us such immense joy. Whether it was Charlie White and Meryl Davis getting the win, the US sweep in men's ski slope style, or Mikaela Shiffrin crying at the top of the podium, we were proud to call ourselves Americans. Sports bring the ultimate pride and joy.
Maybe the Olympics exist as a platform for what we aspire to be, as a global community. Sure, competition is the immediate backdrop, but doesn't that sort of represent the world? We are all competing with each other for the most revenue, power, etc., but if you delve deeper, we all have deep ties and bonds interconnecting. The Olympics is a representation of this. We are all competing to be the best, but we still gather to celebrate our collective prowess and make friends. Athletes from all over the globe, whatever their countries' conflicts may be, help each other out. This is what we strive for our world to be.
Sports are able to bring our world together in a way that no else can, and this is the beauty of it. Our most prized athletes put everything on the line for the pride and joy of not just their respective countries' citizens, but the world. Whatever conflict and strife occurs in the world, sports in the Olympics draws us closer. For 2 weeks, we are able to break the lines between our countries, and gather to collectively celebrate the athlete, in all its beauty. Countries still have troubles, concerns, wars even, but the Olympics disregards that. As the Olympic flame stays lit, so too does hope, a light guiding us, the nations of the world, towards the sweet salvation of global cooperation. Hope abounds. Pride flows. Sports triumph.
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