Why We Watch
May 7, 2017
It’s because we don’t know the outcome that we watch competitive sports.
If we know in advance who will win, we are much less inclined to watch.
This explains why television viewer ratings for live sports events are many times greater than for tape-delayed broadcasts and reruns of the same event.
It helps explain why onsite attendance for the Quarterfinals of the MHSAA Team Wrestling Tournament declined after seeding began. Pairing the No. 1 seed against the No. 8 seed, and No. 2 vs. No. 7, had predictable results and didn’t draw as much interest as in previous years, before seeding.
It is not automatic that seeding MHSAA tournaments will increase tournament attendance. Random pairings is a fair system, and random results an exciting experience.
Loss of random results is what worries U.S. professional sports leagues and united them against legalized sports betting. It is why sports organizations have tried to restrain the use of performance enhancing drugs – we don’t want PEDs to predict results.
The lure of participation for adolescents is that competitive school sports is difficult fun. The attraction for spectators is that the results aren’t known in advance. It’s what puts us on the edge of our seats, holding our breath, biting our nails.
Sounds of Silence
April 12, 2015
I write in the early morning hours for the same reason birds sing then – it’s quiet. Birds can hear their voices, and I can hear my thoughts.
It is during the uncontested moments of the day that I can try out ideas – test them on paper. Yes, on paper! My most creative and productive process still employs a legal pad, a pencil and an eraser. The physical process of writing the words, looking at them, and often erasing what doesn’t make sense to my mind or sound right to my ear as I read it aloud.
The task of written communication has become more difficult during the four decades I’ve been engaged in this enterprise. While the work has become more complex and requires more nuanced discussion, the space available for careful comment has been reduced. Pretending cleverness or profundity, texts and tweets often do more harm than good to promote creative and productive discourse.
I am rarely provided the luxury of long-form journalism in this modern age. Even a “feature” article in a prestigious national professional journal is expected to be less than 1,500 words.
Modern scribes must boil down complicated matters to brief blogs like this one, hoping in a few short paragraphs to share an insight worth reading and to suggest a response worth doing.
The insight here? Silence is golden.
The suggested response? Seek a solitary space to describe and defend what it is that you hear in that silence.