Sportsmanship is the Antithesis of Sports

There is nothing cornier in all of sports than listening to losers complain about the winners winning by too much. The entire point of playing sports is to beat your opponent’s ass. There should be no such thing as ‘running up the score’. If you don’t want your opponent to score points then stop them from scoring points. It’s that simple.

In the closing moments of the final game of the 2023 NFL season with the New Orleans Saints up 41-17 and the ball on Atlanta’s 1-yard line, Jameis Winston lined up for a game-ending kneel and instead, handed the ball off to Jamaal Williams for the quick touchdown.

The Saints set up in victory formation in what looked like it would be a kneel down and then handed it off to Jamaal Williams for a TD. pic.twitter.com/Spz8oKCkji

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) January 7, 2024

Congrats to Jamaal Williams for recording his first touchdown of the season on Sunday and shout out to Jameis Winston for bypassing head coach Dennis Allen’s lame kneel play and deciding to get his guy a touchdown.

I’m sure Winston knew how important it was for Williams to score. Imagine all the work and sacrifice he put into this season and the whole thing almost ending without him making it into the endzone once.

But Falcons head coach, Arthur Smith, uh, wasn’t feeling that shit.

WOW ARTHUR SMITH IS PISSED ABOUT THE SAINTS RUNNING THE SCORE UP

HE SAID TO DENNIS ALLEN “THATS F—KING BULLS—IT”
pic.twitter.com/yiIcUMJJZi

— JPAFootball (@jasrifootball) January 7, 2024

I’ve said it before and I’ll never stop saying it: If the Falcons didn’t want the Saints to run up the score, they should’ve stopped the Saints from running up the score.

What is even the point of “Sportsmanship”?

Sportsmanship was created by losers to guilt winners into taking it easy on them.

Games don’t end until the clock runs out or the last out in the 9th inning.

Yet for some reason, the team winning has to completely stop attempting to score to avoid embarrassing their opponents to show how classy they are—and classiness is not a currency that can be exchanged for anything of value. Being classy is a worthless endeavor.

Why should players give any shits about their opponent’s feelings? It should be wartime from the opening tip to the final whistle.

We praise Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant for their relentless quest to win by any means. Michael Jordan punches his teammates in the face and it’s cool. He’s just super competitive. Kobe Bryant treated his teammates like shit but it’s cool. That’s just his Mamba Mentality, I thought.

And at the same time, players are expected to show mercy and not win by too much.

In baseball, you only get 3-5 at-bats a night but If you’re up double digits late, you have to stop swinging and destroy your season averages because sportsmanship.

There is nothing classy about treating your opponents like helpless babies after beating the brakes off them for an hour and a half. Sportsmanship goes against what sports are.

In high school, I played Lacrosse. I sucked. The team sucked. One year, we lost every game. We were getting blown out so badly that the other teams would essentially stop trying to score and play keep away for the final 7-8 minutes of every game. I promise you, it pissed me off more when teams treated us like children than when they kept playing to the final buzzer.

It feels astronomically more disrespectful for Jamies Winston to kneel and drain the clock at the 1-yard line than to actually just run a play and score a touchdown. The Falcons had already allowed them to score 40 points. The fuck is the huge difference if they add 7 more points?

And I don’t want to hear “Someone could get hurt.” Yup. And that is true every single second of the game prior. Players can always get injured at any point of their day. If you are sooooooo concerned about this potential injuries then maybe don’t watch sports at all.

I watch sports to see the greatest athletes in the world turn into winning-obsessed psychopaths for two hours. I have never watched a game to see the handshake line afterward.

Sportsmanship is just a concept manufactured by losers to shame winners into being kind to them. It has no place in professional sports. If you don’t want the other team to run up the score on you then simply stop them from running up the score on you.