On our first date we discussed religion, morality and politics. And although I could accept the ideological differences, there was still one thing nagging, pressing — I just had to know before I could go on with this.

I didn’t quite know how to go about asking such an awkward question. My pulse quickened and my throat tightened, and I tried to suppress the heat from flushing my cheeks. Finally, I formulated the words into a fluid sentence.

“Do you watch a lot of sports on TV?” I asked.

I knew if he answered “yes,” it would definitely be over.

It’s not that I despise athletes or males who enjoy professional sports. It’s not that I don’t understand that there is incredible skill involved in competitive athletics. And it’s not that I don’t think a sound body is just as important as a sound mind.

It’s just that sports are not THAT important, and how people spend their free time illustrates what they value and appreciate most.

Anyway, back to the story. With a baffled expression, he said, “Well, I might watch the Super Bowl or something, but no, I don’t really dig sports that much.”

Phew. Then things might work.

The funny thing about me writing this is that I played softball, basketball and volleyball throughout high school. I have a few issues, however, with athletic culture in the United States as it stands today.

For starters, I can’t believe the amount of money, time and intense emotion that are poured into sports.

I am dumbfounded at how people can bust a lung yelling at an athletic event, how they can scream profanity at the referees and get all worked up if they miss “their” team playing a game.

I just want to press the remote control “off” button and say, “Geez, you need to just calm down.”

Furthermore, I can’t believe that’s how people choose to spend their limited free time.

Watching athletic events may stir your adrenaline and provide an emotional release, and it might alter your mood, but what does it do for your character?

There is no change in perspective that takes place, no deeper insight into life, no additional knowledge or advancement of a social issue or cause. The inherent value does not extend past a good adrenaline rush.

Back to my fragmented story again: OK, so he laughs when a bullet makes some guy’s intestines spray against the window in a Mafia murder scene, and he loves gangsta rap.

But I also catch him reading philosophy and literature while he’s waiting for my busy schedule to clear up.

I have a lot of respect for people who spend their free time discovering, learning, changing, growing, stretching, serving or bettering society or themselves. It demonstrates that they value such pursuits.

There’s not a “right” and “wrong” when you’re discussing what to do with your free time, but I do think there are better things to do than watch a fleet of football players attack each other over a pigskin — and there are more important things to analyze and agonize over than the plays of a basketball game.

The truth is, there are social issues that need to be examined, and there are injustices being overlooked. Homeless people still exist despite the decline in media coverage.

Orphans struggle to find homes. People suffer from diseases. Disabled people are treated as less than human. Children are neglected.

A woman’s face is bloodied by her husband’s fist in a case of domestic abuse; meanwhile, most of America chooses to watch a hockey player get sent to the penalty box for doing the same.

Why? Why is it that athletes get intense praise for sinking a ball through a rim a number of times, but an inspirational teacher who changes a life and directs a future is unreported in the media? Why is it that the best athletes’ statistics are more readily quoted than the insightful words of a novelist, philosopher or poet?

There are numerous skills that an athlete works hard to achieve, spending hours in sweat and toil. That effort should be appreciated, but so should the efforts of people in the other avenues of society.

Scientists devote hours to research. Scholars obtain new levels of understanding and insight. Doctors save lives. Lawyers and judges argue and uphold justice. Artists encapsulate the essence of life in a single poem, book, play, film or song.

Social workers save the psychological health of an abused or neglected child or a domestic abuse victim; a nurse makes a dying patient’s life a little brighter with his or her smile.

These people deserve just as much praise — for THEY are the ones changing and bettering the world, not the athletes who are treated as demigods by society.

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April Goodwin is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Ames.