The Living World vs. Sports

There’s something deeply strange about the world we’ve built. You can walk into nearly any bar, café, or home and find a screen blasting some form of sport—baseball, football, basketball, soccer. People obsessing over scores, player stats, fantasy leagues. Millions of hours poured into memorizing statistics, and player’s names, and watching strangers throw balls back and forth. 

If only we put all that brain power, time, and energy into the real world we live in.

We live on a planet so complex and astonishing that you could spend a hundred lifetimes studying it and still barely scratch the surface. Evolutionary arms races between cactus spines and herbivores. Fungi trading minerals with trees through underground networks. A bird navigating 3,000 miles across an ocean using the Earth’s magnetic field. The natural world is real magic—and yet, most people can’t name a single native plant growing in their own neighborhood.

Instead, we worship games designed to steal our time and money.

Let’s be clear: modern sports aren’t about health or community. They’re billion-dollar businesses designed to extract your attention and your money. Giant corporations use them to rake in profits through advertising, merchandise, and overpriced tickets. They sell you a sense of belonging, a manufactured rivalry, a momentary thrill. And what do they give back? The illusion of meaning. A jersey. A bunch of bobble heads that collect dust on your shelf. Probably a lifetime of hangovers.

Meanwhile, ecosystems collapse.

Ask someone about the playoff bracket, and they’ll go on for hours. Ask them to explain the water cycle or identify a local pollinator, and you’ll probably get a blank stare. We’ve normalized this imbalance. We’ve created a society where knowing how many touchdowns someone scored is considered normal, but knowing how your food grows or how soil forms is niche—“for nerds.”

This isn’t just a waste of time. It’s dangerous.

Sports tap into primal, tribal parts of our brain: us vs. them, winners and losers, loyalty without question. It’s a psychological tool that keeps us distracted and divided. While we’re busy arguing about teams, politicians and corporations are making decisions that will affect our water, air, food, and future. But hey, at least your team made the playoffs, right?

Imagine if we redirected even 10% of our sports obsession into learning about the land we live on. Imagine if we knew native plants the way we know team rosters. If we cheered for ecological restoration like we cheer for a slam dunk. If we saw environmental literacy as a form of strength and connection—not some optional hobby.

The world doesn’t need more superfans of millionaires in uniforms. It needs people who give a damn about what’s real. About what’s alive. About what keeps US alive. About what we’re losing.

Start encouraging people to turn off the game, go outside, and start learning about what actually matters.

If you are interested in bringing awareness of the living world to all the screen-gazers out there, check out some of our merch. Be the walking billboard the world deserves.