488: Today’s Game Count

488.  That’s the number of organized sporting events being held in America today, according to ESPN’s daily "Game Count".  The daily Game Count is the total of all college (Div I, II, III, nerf) and pro sports events held each day, every day, across the country.  It changes day to day, depending on the number of events being held each day across the country.

It’s a great little barometer on America.  Even though it is simply a number, it says a ton.  It says a ton about the role that sports plays in our society.  

Sports is huge.  And I am not just talking about the big-time-money sports of baseball, football, basketball, tennis, etc.  I am talking about sports generally.   Yes, this sports blog – like every sports section in every paper around the country – focuses heavily on the “big sports”.  And that makes sense, as the writers and readers of this blog, just like the writers and readers of sports pages across the country, pay more attention to the “big sports”.  

That being said, it is worth remembering – as ESPN's daily Game Count helps us to do – that sports is simply everywhere in America, at all times of the year, every day, at every level.  Big cities, small towns, men, women, adults, kids, you name it. And, if one were to somehow add in all the sporting events that happen every day at the high school, grade school, club, amateur and individual level (a number that would have to be in the tens or even hundreds of thousands), it would clearly indicate that sports, at every level, is part and parcel of who we are as a people.

Sports is everywhere in America.  Why?  Well, I have a theory.  In my mind, sports in our society offers us, as Americans (at least in theory) one place in our lives in which one’s abilities and desires and talents are the only things that matter.  Not who one knows, not one’s wealth, or status, or gender, or race or sexual orientation. 

Sports, in theory, offers Americans the closest that we are every likely to get to that mythological “American dream”, the one that says that our society is predicated on the inalienable rights (and, by extension, opportunities) due each and every individual.  This, I think, must have something to do with our national love with sports.

488.   That’s a hell of a telling number.

(Photo: Getty Images)

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A Cubs and Northwestern fan, Joe Moag is a major sports junkie, and although he still runs, he hasn't been able to dunk anything more than a donut for decades.

Unless otherwise stated, no particular sexual orientation of anyone depicted is implied or should be presumed.