This adolescent attitude has permeated our entire society. One might expect testosterone laden male teenagers mired in poverty to behave as though there are no choices other than win or lose. One might expect uneducated or poorly educated persons to think that competition might somehow be more productive than cooperation. On the other hand, one would (or should) never expect members of the Congress of the united snakes of amerika to assume the posture and rhetoric of schoolyard bullies. Nonetheless, our nations legislators behave increasingly as though they are on opposing teams in some highly competitive game than as though they are charged with the cooperative governing a complex society in a technologically advanced and rapidly shrinking world. Legislators who would rather shut down the government than work toward a compromise that would lead, eventually, to (if not) a balanced budget (perhaps a redistribution of resources) should be fired and replaced. If an election were held today to determine whether or not the entire congress ought to be sacked, we might very well find ourselves in need of a few replacements! Did our current crop of lawmakers spend more time at their respective college's athletic events than they did in history and economics classes? With the national addiction to spectator sports, it is more of a probability than a possibility.

"Addicted to sports, not drugs" is the message of an all too popular bumper sticker that conveys more truth than it was probably meant to. Although the person who coined this phrase may have meant to be tongue in-cheek, an addiction is an addiction, and one is no better than the other. As a boy I enjoyed backyard games of catch with my Dad and my brother and sandlot football with the neighborhood "gang" - a term that had a different meaning in the late fifties and early sixties than it does now. In those days there was no such thing as professional football, football was a game for teenage boys. Baseball's major leaguers during Kennedy's space race made no greater salary than did the average rocket scientist of the day. I have watched high school classmates of mine (Terry Bradshaw, Robert Parish &;Joe Fergusson) who would not have passed even the most rudimentary of courses had they not been given special consideration for their talents on the football field or basketball court go on to earn salaries (in professional sports) that are many times those of today's astrophysicists. Science and math majors I knew to be Mensans now repair VCRs and weasel their way through mediocre lives as sales reps. This has given me cause to ponder the role sports games play in our society, the history of recreation in general and of professional sports in particular.

It isn't difficult to imagine some unnamed austrailopithicine ancestor of ours discovering a pleasant sensation resulting from the release of endorphines after a successful session of practice in what had previously been survival skills. Voila; recreation is born! Running when no danger of dragons (read, "saltwater crocodiles") existed, gathering plants with no thought of hunger or hurtling spears with an atlatl for the sheer delight of observing their flight cannot have been dissimilar from swimming laps in a "cement pond" or jogging along a tarmac path in the morning before heading to the office. Today we call these activities "sports," and the enjoyment of them "recreation."

It is with equal ease that we may imagine a less esoteric ancestor, one unable to derive any similar flood of endorphines from the mere acts described above - one who derives pleasure only from a performance which is observably superior to that of other (wo)men. Such an attitude reduces sport to competition. With the addition of more people to the competition, a game (or a free-for-all) will have been created. It is among the spectators - and perhaps the players themselves - of these earliest games that we can see the roots of what we now refer to as "gaming," or "gambling;"

"If Og throw rock more far than Oop, I give you big seashell; if Oop throw rock more far, you give me pretty rock."

State gaming commissions regulate parimutuel gambling on dog races, horse races, jai lai, the lottery, bingo and casino gambling. Strict rules apply, and billions of dollars change hands every year - all of it legal, and most of it taxed. Although many of today's professional athletes seem to be no better educated than was australopithicus, when modern day Og bets modern day Oop, the stakes (no longer pretty rocks or seashells) are wagered outside of the influence of the gaming commission; outside of the law. Authorities turn a blind eye to such goings-on for two reasons; sports fans are allowed to believe that they are "getting away with something" and public attention is diverted from the abuses the government heaps upon the People.

Illegal sports betting has made spectator sports into multibillion dollar enterprises and our schools into proving grounds for twentieth century gladiators rather than halls of learning. The lure of tax free (albeit illgotten) monies of such staggering sums has proven irresistible to the criminal element of our society, our political parties notwithstanding. While the salaries of winning athletes continue to rise, state and federal budgets for education continue to be cut. Questions have arisen (and have been very quickly hushed up!) regarding the relationship between Jeb Bush (the next governor of Florida, whether we like it or not!) and Wayne "I want to be King" Huizynga, who owns pro baseball, basketball and hockey teams as well as controlling shares of a pro football team. In much the same way, an entire population looks the other way when champion boxers stand trial for rape or football stars are busted for cocaine. This isn't new; the legendary sports hero Babe Ruth was well known to be a drunken and abusive womanizer, yet he remains more highly respected by a greater number of amerikans today than any of the great gentleman-scientists who were his contempoearies. Nobody seems to care; but people should care; persons of such ilk are social pariahs and should be treated accordingly!

The national preoccupation with spectator sports (and the inherent illegal betting and other crimes) has led the amerikan public school system down a sadly deteriorating path of anti-intellectualism for well near half a century now. The resultant level of ignorance in our society is frighteningly close to overwhelming our entire way of life. According to the National Sporting Goods Dealers' Association's annual survey(s), the top three sports in America, by participation, have remained the same for the past twenty years. They are (noncompetitive) swimming, (noncompetitive) bicycling and family camping. It might be surprising that the team sports of football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer have fluctuated between seventeenth and twenty-ninth on the same survey(s) over the same time frame. The bulk of our schools' physical education budgets, contrary to these facts and figures, go to the team sports that the professional teams scout for talent to perpetuate the proliferation of professional baseball, basketball and football - and no one denies that illgotten, tax-free proceeds from illegal betting is the reason. Amerika has no monopoly on sports betting; in nations where such sports such as crewing, cycling, fencing or rugby are more heavily wagered for, those games are nearly as widely publicized and as highly financed as Amerikan football ("futbol" means "soccer" in every other country in the world), baseball and basketball.