Paul Thomas: Sport matters too much

Cameron Smith of the Melbourne Storm runs with the ball during the round seven NRL match against the Warriors. Photo / Getty Images

One of life's big decisions is whether or not to take sport seriously. And if so, how seriously?

We know what taking sport too seriously can lead to: the deranged fan, puce and bug-eyed, screeching profanities at the referee or the opposition or the TV set; the beer cans and detritus hurled at John Hart's horse at Addington Raceway after the 1999 World Cup.

Or self-styled proud Kiwis switching their allegiance to Australia when Robbie Deans became Wallaby coach; the trainspotter with a head full of useless information; the jockstrap sniffer who'd be a stalker if he wasn't so upfront about it.

As sport becomes harder to ignore, these questions become ever more pressing. Once predominantly local and confined to the back pages, sport now regularly gate-crashes the front page or the international section of the newspaper.

In the past fortnight these stories have made the front page or made news around the world:

* The Melbourne Storm's systematic rorting of the NRL salary cap.

* Members of the French soccer team employing the services of an underage prostitute.

* Allegations of match-fixing and money-laundering in the Indian Premier League, which came hard on the heels of bomb blasts at a stadium in Bangalore before the start of an IPL game.

* Demands for the New Zealand Rugby Union to apologise to Maori over its decades-long acquiescence in the South African apartheid regime's unwillingness to host All Black teams containing Maori players.

* The claim, disputed by another team member, that the New Zealand Maori XV were pressured by the Government to throw their match against the 1956 Springboks.

* Wellington Phoenix owner Terry Serepisos' $2 million debt to the Wellington City Council.

There are several dimensions to the drama of Serepisos and his unpaid rates, not least the fact that it effectively makes Wellington ratepayers' part-owners, for the time being at least, of the Phoenix.

With the subsequent allegations of bounced cheques and slippery business practices, it hints at a divergence between image - philanthropist, man about town, Donald Trump lite - and reality.

But if it's true that he's amassed a personal fortune in the region of $140 million, Serepisos must be congratulated for taking on board what appears to be the guiding principle of 21st century capitalism: privatise profit, socialise debt.

And, of course, the biggest running story of the past six months - dwarfing US health care reform, Greece's fiscal crisis, global warming and even Auckland's transformation into a Super City - has been Tiger Woods: his exposure, his disgrace, his repentance, his comeback.

The entertainment industry - which sport increasingly resembles and rivals - tried to distract our attention with the Sandra Bullock-Jesse James soap opera, even throwing in the ultimate Hollywood accessory: an adopted child.

It simply showed how off the pace show business is: we don't care about this tawdry fiasco because unlike Bullock (who should change her name to Goose) we didn't need to find out the hard way that marriage to a heavily tattooed ex-Hell's Angel was bound to end in tears.

Sandra and Jesse barely rate a footnote in popular culture, and only then because of the amount of body ink involved.

We don't expect anything better from entertainers because by and large - a notable exception being poor old Roman Polanski - we accept that they aren't constrained by what passes for contemporary morality.

And while politicians don't have that luxury, they do have the benefit of low expectations.

People expected more from Woods because they'd made him into a hero.

Sport has become so pervasive that it runs the risk of over-exposure.

Outside the USA, where the size of the market enables some sporting codes to operate on the basis that less is more, the trend is to shoehorn more competition into an already crowded playing calendar.

No doubt there are sound financial reasons for doing so - meeting the ever-expanding wages bill for starters - but when contests become meaningless, people stop taking sport seriously.

Times columnist Simon Barnes argues that "sport's very point is that it doesn't matter at all". I would put it differently: sport's point is that it matters intensely, but only for a very short while.

You can't overdo the celebrations or wallow in despair indefinitely because there's another game or tournament or series or season just around the corner.

No matter how gut-wrenching the failure and how wretched the aftermath, sport always offers another chance, a shot at redemption.

That hope of better things to come, sometimes so hard to cling on to in what we call real life, is why many decide that sport is worth taking seriously. But hopefully not too seriously.