People is puzzling

The news is dominated today by the chemically enhanced cyclist and the linebacker with the imaginarily dead imaginary girlfriend. Both stories have a certain amount of intrinsic weirdness but it got me to thinking that all the world over, people are obsessed with sports. The popularity of particular games is as definitive of cultures as religion and cuisine; and the civic unity of cities and nations is as much about sporting teams and iconic athletes as it is about political institutions and nationalist mythology.

I don't have any deep explanation of this. It's like music -- nobody really knows why we like it so much or what it really means. I'm as much a fan as anybody, looking forward to the AFC championship game on Sunday even knowing the awful truth about what it's doing to my heroes' cerebrums. Oh well.