There are two basic reasons I have for this. One is that since the focus is on the the best, the majority of people now only experience it through watching sports. 2 is that it makes the majority of kids who participate in sports feel like failures before they even begin adulthood.
One, since in society, the pinnacle of sports is seeing who the best in each sport is, there can only be a few who can actually participate. The general attitude of sports goes like this. You start out playing as a child to gain skills. The older you get the people who are not as good get weeded out and even if they liked the sport, they will stop playing because there is this general message that they could not meet the level needed to keep going. And if they do keep playing, there is this idea that what they are doing is silly. If you cant get onto your schools basketball team and play on a rec team, its gonna be a joke to other people you go to school with. Then you go on to college and while there are rec leagues, its obviously seen as lesser than what the school team does. And finally we reach the pros, the ultimate goal. And at this stage only a select few still play while the majority of sports fans can only participate by cheering on their favorite player or team.
It would obviously be better for society to see sports without this end goal of being a pro but for sportsā end goal to be about personal enjoyment and physical development. Someoneās achievement at getting their 100m sprint under 12 seconds at the age of 28 should not be seen as less meaningful than an olympic sprinters achievements.
Unfortunately though, society sees achievement not as some sort of personal improvement, achievement is when one person can step on top of someone else to get to the top of the pile. And this sort of view is how society seems to view everything not just sports.
Two, this focus on pros makes kids feel like losers before they even become adults. This is mostly true only to those kids raised by parents who bring them up as tiny athletes. This is very common from how I have seen things. When a kids plays a sport, how many times have you seen some parents getting upset at their performing under their standard. How many parents tell their kids these wild stories of how they are going to be a pro someday. These kids are raised as child professional athletes. They are taken to early morning gymnastics or late afternoon baseball practices. And the goal for their coaches is not to create an enjoyable time for these kids to spend their free time. This is work. These coaches want to create athletes who will win. The goal is not about personal improvement. Does anyone really think that coaches or parents of these child pro athletes will be happy if the child improves in their sport but still gets last place? No. They will be happy when the child can step on the faces of other children to reach the top of the pile where they can get medals and trophies. These parents dont care about personal improvement or enjoyment. They will be happy when they can see that their child is superior to others. They want to brag to other parents how superior their kid is compared to others. But this applies to almost everything. How many parents brag about how happy their child is compared to how many As they get in school or how they got 3rd place at the wrestling tournament?
And every year that goes by, their is this next level where they will see if they can keep playing their sport. Middle school tryouts turn into high school tryouts and fewer and fewer kids make it to that next level. And the end goal of sport does not change from winning, but intensifies. And while winning each season is the goal for the coach and individual, the real goal for the individual is meeting that next level. And the final level to get to is being a pro.
But how many people are going to make it to pro? Not very many. And how is this going to effect the self image of these children who have been raised as child pro athletes? All through their childhood they have been brought up to be the best athlete they can. Quite often parents will spend more energy on their kids athletic life than raising them emotionally, intellectually, or socially. So when these child pro athletes finally reach a stage they cannot reach, how do you think they are going to feel. They are going to feel like a loser. They are going to 18 years old just starting out their new adult life as a failure. All that effort to reach the professional level and they werent good enough, they are inferior, they are losers.