When I was young, I thought sports — and especially school sports — were mostly pointless. A waste of time and money that could be better spent on other things, like more resources for education and the arts. I think this is a common stance for bookish teens, like I was back then, who cling to any ways in which they can feel superior to those who are actually good at sports.

But as an adult I grew to recognize that sports play a valuable role in culture, too. They’re a communal experience that unites people across dividing lines in shared rituals and a mutual pride in their cities. There’s a reason sports have been around since ancient civilizations. We may have invented basketball, but cheering for the home team is timeless.

My feelings towards sports in general evolved along with a growing love for my favorite sport, college football, which if you’ll quickly indulge me, I believe is objectively the best because:

One, It’s a lifelong loyalty that you personally decide to opt into, which is at least theoretically based on some set of attitudes or ideals, versus being determined purely by birth or proximity.

Two, college football is a precious limited resource. There are only about a dozen games per year, with maybe a few more if your team does well. That scarcity means that each game is a special event. Something to be relished. It also means that being a fan doesn’t come with the huge time commitment of any other sport. It’s a win-win for people with other interests, like, say, film or literature or the outdoors.

Three, football games are broken down into a series of discrete decisions that play out with a mix of strategic planning and luck, action and reaction, which to a nerd like me makes it the sport that’s most like a board game. Every play has clear intent behind it, with a setup and a resolution, and every game is a series of plays that add up to success or failure, making each contest exciting on both the micro and macro level.

Then this week I found out that, for the first time in my adult life, my favorite sport is just… not happening this year.

So whether I like it or not, I’m going to have to put that time and energy somewhere else until 2021. Which has me thinking again about my old idea… do we really need sports?

Especially when you zoom in on what also makes college football the most problematic of the major televised sports, it’s worth examining seriously: Here we have young, unpaid athletes risking permanent damage to their health for the enrichment of a league that exploits them, under the guise of school spirit and raising funds for educational institutions.

Is it not worth wondering if there’s a better way to entertain ourselves?

In favor of sports, of course, there’s the economic argument: that sports is an engine for billions of dollars and millions of jobs, from athletes to shoemakers, security guards to hot dog vendors. And there’s the local and cultural argument: that cities need something to rally around and cheer for as a collective. A logo to put on a hat to show civic pride. A broadly approachable common interest to bond over with neighbors.

And of course it’s obvious that we love, and maybe even need, competition. Humans have always wanted to root for their city, region, or country to win at things. But are there other things we can compete in that both provide entertainment, but also contribute more to life in our communities? Without all that money, manpower and attention directed to the massive sports leagues of today, what else could we turn into sports that leaves us better off?

Could we replace baseball teams with squads of aspiring restauranteurs and make Top Chef a seasonal sport, where its participants go on to build up their city’s culinary industry? What could we create if we cheered for debate teams the way we do basketball players, while setting up rising stars to succeed in local politics? What if groups of young coders and engineers competed in an innovation challenge that we treated with as much importance and celebration as playoff season?

It’s a crazy notion, I know, but in a year where everything’s changing against our will, maybe it’s worth considering what we rebuild in the years that come after.

How would your life, and our society, change without sports as we know them today?

What would be a more productive alternative that still fulfills some of those same cultural needs?

If you could only keep one sport alive, which would you save, and why?

Like most people in the sports-starved world of 2020, I devoured every episode of ESPN’s 10-part series, The Last Dance, as they aired over the course of five weeks. 

Especially if you grew up in the 90’s (like I did), and extra-specially if you spent those years in the greater Chicago area (like I also did), this was a glorious nostalgia-bomb that beautifully captured the thrill of witnessing one of the most exciting dynasties in sports history.

But after the thrill of all those championships fades, and the more I think about the story of Michael Jordan — Michael Jordan the man, the human being at the heart of this documentary — the more I’m amazed. Both that this series exists, and by its message about what it takes to be the best at something.

To give it credit, the series admirably highlights the contributions of players like Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and Steve Kerr, legendary coach Phil Jackson, and even maligned GM and strange little man, Jerry Krause, who in their own ways all propelled the Bulls to their historic dominance. This show knows, and says explicitly, that you can’t achieve greatness alone.

But the central theme the series keeps returning to is Jordan’s compulsive competitive drive. It shows up in games, in the locker room, how he treats teammates at practice, and in his love of gambling — all the way from big money golf games to quarter-flipping contests with his security guards.

Jordan didn’t just want to win, or like to win. He needed to win, and crucially, to beat everyone else. It’s important to keep in mind, Michael Jordan’s own company helped produce this film. It’s built on archival footage and interviews he willingly participated in, and probably even blessed to a certain extent. That means The Last Dance is not an expose; it’s the story that Jordan, at least in some ways, wanted to tell about himself.

And again and again, that means rewinding to pivotal moments in his career, and not just focusing on what he achieved, or how hard he worked, but why. What motivation did he draw on to push himself harder than anyone else?

More often than not, in his own words, it came down to petty rivalry. Jordan’s desire to prove some doubter wrong, bury some opponent who’d talked trash, or show a world who might consider someone else his equal that he could blow that player out of the water.

THAT’S what seemingly pushed Jordan to all his highest heights. And they were higher than anyone’s.

A charitable way to frame this is that he just cared that much more than any other player. He talks occasionally in classic sports mantras, like wanting to give the audience the show they paid for, or how there’s no point in playing at all if you’re not going to leave everything on the court.

But the show, quite purposefully, is not content to live within those kind of cliches. It goes out of its way to build up these grudges and then connect them to his moments of greatness.

Michael Jordan is compelled to compete above all else. Winning consumes him. Winning is all that matters. He wanted to defeat every opponent, demolish every obstacle, destroy every record.

And once he did, he was finished.

The other, subtler theme of The Last Dance is an undercurrent of sadness. The loneliness of fame. The solitude at the top of the mountain. The stats, the highlight reels, the posters and ads and collectible sneaker line…Michael Jordan changed the world. He left his mark on the universe, no doubt about it.

But this show doesn’t feel like a celebration of greatness. Not entirely. It feels like a reckoning with the cost of a life lived only for competition. After the trophies are kissed, what comes next? Once the records are broken, what do you choose to build?

The series leaves us not with images of what happened afterward — a happy family, charitable works, business success, or lifting up a new generation of players — but, like another story of a man whose only drive was to win at all costs (no, not the 45th president, I’m thinking more Daniel Plainview).

It ends with a man, alone in his castle, wondering what else is left once you’ve supposedly won everything there is to win, and vanquished your last opponent.

And at that point I can’t help but wonder: do I want to “Be Like Mike”? Should any of us? After watching The Last Dance, I’m not so sure.

What about the world we live in makes compulsive competition such a winning trait?

What might the world look like, for better or worse, if more of us were so totally driven by our sense of competitiveness?

What’s a personal flaw of yours, like Jordan’s compulsive competition, that might actually work to your advantage in some situations?