Using Sports to Avoid a Career of Political, Economic, or Social Change...

I recently encountered a ticket salesman for a local sports team that told me of attending a "sports marketing academy" this year. The "camp", as he described it, ran for two weeks and more or less functioned as a job placement service.

The cost?

$3500!

Is this the going rate of elaboratedly named temp. agencies? Of course not.

For just $3500, he was now selling tickets for a minor league sports team. He indicated that even these seemingly ordinary sales jobs were in high demand. He was just one of the many men at this sports marketing seminar that were hoping to land any kind of job in the sports entertainment industry.

I am in the same age bracket of this generation of males that are retreating to a career of sinecures in the sports industry to avoid being challenged with positions that require political, economic, or social responsibility. Jobs in the sports industry provide these recent college graduates with a safe sinecure that allows them to put to use their lifelong exposure to sports and mass media messages.

It's sad, but obvious that my generation of fellow males have never had their ideas and beliefs challenged. They were never asked to argue for any political or social philosophy; they've never had to take a stance on a economic platform. Sports is the only arena they're comfortable debating in. They are unable to supply criticism to theories and campaigns that focus on anything but bats, balls, pucks, or pigskins.

As if the modern internship experience wasn't humiliating enough, now entertainment corporations are making these expensive seminars part of the pre-requisite for getting your foot in the door.