Sport and media

People have always loved watching sports and it seems sports are now more popular then ever. One important reason for our love of sports is the fact that we can pretty objectively decide that someone is the best. When a sports figure does something great we can instantly realize that we are witnessing something great, if of course we are familiar with the rules of the sport. That is not really the case with for example music or film. A certain combination of notes or shots does not necessarily make a great song or movie. Some may think it's great, others may not. That may make movies and songs more interesting to talk about, but it also makes sports more universal. Everyone who is familiar with football will realize that Maradona's famous goal against England is a great goal.

We love to witness great achievements. One reason for it is the fact that our forefathers were witnesses of great achievements and told us about it. We've heard joyful stories about how great it was to see Star Wars in the cinema, the Beatles in concert or Michael Jordan playing. And we hope that one day we'll be able to tell such stories about greatness. As to confirm, at least to ourselves, that we lived in interesting, great times.

In the times we live in though it's much tougher for a sportsman (or a director, actor, singer, etc) to achieve greatness. Pele, Maradona and Cruyff were only compared with their peers and since they were a lot better then them, they were considered great. The current star-footballers are not only compared to their peers, but also to Pele, Maradona, Cruyff and all kinds of other footballers that were considered stars and to be considered great they have to probably be better than 99% of them. This is because of the emergence of all kinds of new media. On YouTube we can see the highlights of most great sportsmen whenever we want. Obviously this was not the case when Maradona or Cruyff played. Occasionally there might be shown some highlights of older players on television, but that was it. They only really had to compete for exposure and greatness with their peers.

Perhaps even more importantly, we saw less sports. For example in tennis the Grand Slams were watched, in football you had once a week a live game from the European Cup and the World and European Championships. In basketball you could see one game from the NBA. And the broadcast games were of course the ones featuring the best players. So great moments were rarer and therefore more special. On top of this, it were usually the same players who were seen doing great things.
How different is it now. We can watch every tennis tournament, any NBA game we want and footage from almost any slightly relevant football league. And on top of that a lot of footage from lower leagues or even amateurs. We have a great moments-overkill. We see a lot of great moments by a lot of different players. And because we have access to so many great moments, a great moment has to be a lot greater to be considered really great. We're not satisfied any more with a half-court buzzer beater, since we've seen hundreds of them. Some even by 12-year old nitwits on YouTube. And a player has to have a lot of really, really great moments to be considered great.