As the socialist web magazine Current Affairs pointed out, the left has a long history of finding sports problematic, “irrational, a distraction from the Very Serious Business of politics, a ‘bread and circuses’ corporate spectacle.” But the argument crosses the political divide. Conservative commentator Lyman Stone has argued that sports have displaced other forms of community life, bluntly stating that “professional sports are decadent spectacles that embarrass the nation.” In the digital pages of The Spectator, reactionary writer Pedro Gonzales compared watching sports to watching pornography.

De gustibus, as they say, non est disputandum. If paleocons or socialists find no pleasure in the thrill of a buzzer-beater or the tension of the bottom of the ninth, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. But the insufferable condescension—that getting invested in sportsball is “cringe,” and that rooting for laundry is the opium of the unwashed masses—deserves to be pricked. Yes, modern-day sport is corrupt, venal, exploitative, craven, greedy, and, at times, lethal. It is, after all, made up of humans, who are all those things and more.