Technology, sport and the fan

It's tough to imagine yourself in a time period as you are living through it. I'm sure Americans in the 1850s were saying to themselves, "Wow, can you believe we're living in the Industrial Revolution?" And while I am sure the devastation was all around them, Americans in the 1920s and '30s were not saying to each other, "So how about this Great Depression? At least we'll be in the history books, huh?" \nBelieve it or not, we live in the Age of Technology. Just open your eyes. Laptops, cell phones, iPods and the Internet have launched our entire being into another stratosphere. \nCan you imagine yourself without a cell phone? Without the Internet? Absolutely not. As soon as something becomes common with people, we learn to work it, live with it and eventually factor it into our daily routine. \nSure, the use of technology has been around since the beginning of time or, as I'd like to refer to it, B.S. -- Before Sports, but the magnitude in which we are building and using technology these days is astonishing. In ten years the iPod will seem archaic.\nAs technology has grown, so have television and the cameras that cover every inch of this Earth. Television cameras just mean more eyes are watching. \nWhile I have yet to don a rocking chair and a walking cane, everything we witness now with sports -- whether it is the claustrophobic coverage with cameras or the millions of dollars one man can make just by putting a ball through a circle hoop -- it'll all get worse. Like technology, one day sports will be larger and louder, while our grasp on its simple pleasures will grow limper. Already it is too expensive for a family of four to go to the ballpark. Athletes receive endless amounts of cash in paychecks as their poor performances are punctuated into punchlines. \nIt is difficult for me to say, at the age of 21 and with a future in the industry ahead of me, that I have become disenchanted with sports. My problem is that as time, like technology, inevitably progresses, it will be the fan that becomes disoriented by the depth of coverage and disenfranchised with the dollar signs. \nThere was a time when a group of college students, bored with their studies and craving competition, came together to play a game. That game would become sport. Today, sport is not without sponsors, while both are nothing without the fans. \nWhy is it that we love sports? What makes us return every season for every second? What motivates us to jump for joy or furiously flip furniture? It is that every fan, unlike every athlete, cares. There is no money in it for the fans; in fact, it takes money out of their pockets. \nWe do it every year for that one moment -- the moment. The jump shot with less than a second left. The home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. The Hail Mary that soars through the sky as the clock clicks down. The penalty shot that rises just above the goaltender's glove. \nIn that moment -- the moment -- technology, sport and the fan co-exist. And my faith in the future is once more renewed.