THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET ABOUT COMPETITION:
BIASED AND PHONY SPORTS COMPETITION DOESN'T PREPARE YOUNGSTERS FOR COMPETING IN "THE REAL WORLD"

  1. Sports fanatics often quote the Duke of Marlborough saying that the Battle of Waterloo. which defeated the great Napoleon, was "won on the playing fields of Eton". But the Duke said this was a joke to get rid of the reporters.
  2. Mathematics shows that competition fails as an order measure because of intransitivity.

  3. Mathematics shows that sports tournaments are rank-biased in scheduling -- for example, in "round-robins" -- so competition is always suspect, since the "next-best competitors" may never meet. And that can certainly affect what "happens next year".

  4. Class and ethnic biases have always existed in sports.

    • The two greatest athletes of my time -- the Native American, Jim Thorpe, and the African-American, Jesse Owens -- were trashed by the Sports Establishment, The Media, and the Public.

  5. The growing phonyness of amateurism leaves young athletes open to manipulation by business advertisers and by class and ethnic leaders and by parents.

  6. TV has transmogrified many sports into showbiz, distorting the image of competition projected to youngters.

  7. The "pluses" and "minuses" of sports competition do not correspond to the "pluses" and "minuses" in business and work competition and in life-in-general, so sports competition provides little preparation for nonsports activities.

  8. A 2000 book, Nonzero, The Logic of Destiny, by Robert Wright presents evidence that EVOLUTION WORKS BY NONZERO-SUM GAMES (in which MANY COMPETITORS WIN), rather than the ZERO-SUM type (in which, SOME ON WINS ONLY IF SOME ONE LOSES),which flourishes in Sports. (The famous phrase, "Survival of the Fittest", was not coined by Darwin or any of the evolutionary scientists, but by Herbert Spencer, the founder of The Liberatarian Political Movement!)