Cheating
Sports are a just another form of entertainment that needs to attract and hold the interest of an audience so it can sell tickets and advertising. If it's not exciting it's not entertaining, and that's bad for business. The truth is that most sports, especially baseball, are just plain boring. With broadcasters competing for viewers, the pressure to increase the entertainment factor is too great. But there's just no way to make a boring sport entertaining - unless they cheat. Since the dictionary definition of the word cheat is: to deprive somebody of something by deceit, the cheaters justify cheating as depriving fans of a boring game, or to deprive themselves of losing money. Devious-minded cheaters are masters at devising a reason to cheat - and stonewalling investigations of it.
In a billion dollar industry where millions are lost or won by playing a simple game, do you think the outcome is really just left up to chance? When the stakes are so high that too many unpredictable wins or losses can cause devastating losses to some sectors of the economy, would the industry recklessly risk the possibility of accidental self-destruction? If the economic collapse of a big league organization depends on a mere fumble or strike out, doesn't the management have a fiduciary responsibility to intercede and rig the game to prevent it? If the survival of the entire industry is at the complete mercy of fate, determined by the odds of probability and changes in weather conditions, that's certainly not a sound business model. But then Sports people aren't so smart anyway.
Is it inconceivable that some gamblers who are shrewd businessmen, and in a position to throw a game - or at least do something to alter the final score - might do it in order to cash in? That scenario is well within the realms of possibility. Everyone including people who are directly involved in sports - as players, coaches, and officials, or remotely associated as fans or readers of the sports pages, or members of broadcast media and audiences - have all cheated, or at least thought about cheating at least once in their life. Thinking about cheating is the first step that leads to the development of a plan to cheat, which is the most important step toward cheating because it would be impossible to cheat without it.
So it's an undeniable fact that cheating, and plans to cheat, are done by everyone. So the reason why there are laws against cheating is because everyone would cheat if there were no laws against it. Everyone on earth who has ever played a game has either cheated or attempted to cheat, or at least wished they could cheat at some point. Most cheating is done as children, but the urge to cheat is a primal animal instinct coded into our DNA, and it occasionally resurface s- especially in sporting events where a lot of money is at stake. Most crimes of cheating in sports go undetected either because the cheaters are so good at cheating, or because those who do detect it usually wind up dead.
Despite constant reports about sports scandals, gullible fans keep on betting and losing their money because gambling is an addiction. Gambling addicts still bet even when they know they will lose. The affliction is harder to treat because the term Gambling comes from the root words Game Billing, so gamblers are prone to a hypnotic suggestion that subconsciously forces them to pay a bill for the game in the form of losing a bet.
Most sports fans refuse to admit that games are rigged, because they can't accept the fact that the thing they care most about in their life is a just a charade. To realize they've been duped would be too much of a shock. Their emotional bond to sports is so strong that they would live in a state of denial to avoid a total psychotic breakdown. If they knew the truth it would drive them mad. But that's no excuse to deny the truth, because insanity is curable, and sanity is always better than believing in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and that sports games are not rigged.
Some people who know games are rigged still watch and pretend that it's not rigged. The rigging is so well done that it's easy to forget, and viewers just accept the game as entertainment. Just like movie watchers must pretend the story is real to enjoy it, and they don't spoil the experience thinking about the fact that it's just actors, directors, and production crew. Sports are more a theatrical art than athletic competition. It's no coincidence that athletes are paid millions just like movie stars. Why would anyone pay them just to play a game?
The obsession with sports defies all logic, and marketers know this. They constantly push the envelope and sometimes cross the fine line between action and act-ing. A perfect example is "pro wrestling", formerly known as "studio wrestling".- an obvious stage show that goes way over the line featuring costume clad steroid-fed adolescent action hero figures performing well-rehearsed routines full of standardized stunts.
Though most sports fans are not known for their superior intellects, some fans honestly believe that the sport is not faked, that it's actual wrestling for real-and they bet good money on it to boot. That's not to say those fans are exceedingly ignorant morons, because that goes without saying. Pro wrestling is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many levels of fake sports with varying degrees of transparency and opacity, but as a general rule no one seems to care that it makes a mockery out of sports. This is the strangely surreal effect that sports has on society - and why sports must be banned completely.
