Everybody talks about holding politicians, athletes and weathermen accountable , but what about Santa Claus, the jolly, judgmental ol’ elf?
Here’s a guy who every year gets to decide who’s been naughty or nice. He doesn’t even make all of the toys anymore, but I guess being the worldwide overnight shipping kingpin gives him the right to put whatever he wants into millions of stockings.
Has anyone ever asked him how he comes to these conclusions? What are his criteria? I’m not saying he’s bad at it. I’m not still bitter about the time he left me a plastic General Lee from Dukes of Hazard that broke 10 seconds after I started playing with it. I’m just uncomfortable with one person making what on the face appears to be an arbitrary decision that can either make or ruin a child’s Christmas.
This carries over to sports, too. When did everybody get so invested in who deserves to win everything, and who appointed them the arbiters of sports justice?
Don’t get me wrong, for sports to work as an endeavor and entertainment, victories should be earned more often than not. Much as I’d love to quote Will Munny and growl “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it,” athletes, coaches and fans need to know that it does. Factors such as preparation, skill, effort, discipline and execution should be the most consistently influential on the outcome, otherwise nobody would bother to practice and there would be little to separate organized sports from Saturday afternoon pick-up games.
But it’s gotten to the point where after every close game or one with a controversial ending, an army of self-appointed sports appraisers comes out of the woodwork to declare that someone didn’t deserve to win.
I can cite countless examples across all sports, but I blame the 2013 Patriots for escalating it to nauseating levels, what with all of their close games, unlikely comebacks and controversial endings.
The most egregious example was the Monday night loss at Carolina. The Patriots were undeniably outplayed by the Panthers yet still had a chance to win on the final play of the game when officials inexplicably picked up a penalty flag on a blatant pass interference that would have given New England the ball at the 1-yard line with one more play.
Patriots fans were livid, and rightfully so. But barely seconds after they started expressing their outrage, the judges declared the Patriots unworthy of victory and advised everyone to stop their belly-aching.
It happened again a week later in the comeback win over Denver. Goodness knows we couldn’t revel in one of the most amazing comebacks in NFL history without a reminder from the Judge Judy’s of the NFL that the team that won the game lost the first half, got lucky on a botched punt return in overtime and therefore didn’t deserve to put that one in the ‘W’ column.
Two weeks ago, another unbelievable comeback against Cleveland, another undeserved win. This one is my favorite because my Twitter timeline was filled with some people complaining the Patriots didn’t deserve to win because of a phantom pass interference call and others arguing the Browns didn’t deserve to win because they couldn’t recover an onside kick.
So how about we just turn everything into figure skating or American Idol and appoint a panel of judges to decide who deserved to win? We’ve already got youth leagues all over the country who stopped keeping score, so everyone should be used to not having to look at the scoreboard during the game. Just keep us all in suspense until it’s over, then have the judges hold up a card with the deserving team’s logo.
Why not? Because sports isn’t figure skating (ergo, figure skating isn’t a sport). It is often just as much about luck and karma, momentum and resilience, flukes and unfairness and all sorts of moments that leave us screaming “What in the name of Dan Issel?”
That’s what makes sports so great and so much more entertaining and unpredictable than anything “reality” television has or will ever produce. If it always came down to who played better, it would be about as fun as watching bodybuilding.
So the next time someone tells you your team didn’t deserve to win, tell them they don’t deserve to make that call, and Santa has something special prepared for their stocking.
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