Every once in a while, I think that I am real idiot. Not a full -fledged moron, just an average, unintelligent, unimaginative type of guy. Today is definitely one of those days.

I have come to a drought as far as column ideas go. Actually, I should clarify — it’s not that I have no ideas — it’s just that my ideas are not substantial enough to translate into 20 inches.

Luckily, this column is my last of the year, but I still need to write this one. It being the last one, I would prefer that it not suck.

You see, I have plenty of short ideas that would work great if I were writing snippet columns of about two to four inches apiece. They all are somewhat loosely connected, but not quite enough to enable collecting them in coherent paragraphs. And as if you did not see this coming a mile away, this week’s writing will consist of these ideas that just did not quite make it.

1) Sports are not just games. Anyone who tells you they are just games obviously is a communist. Well, maybe they are technically just games, but they encompass so much more than that.

They teach the value of hard work and the fight between good and evil. They create a topic of conversation for males everywhere, without which we would sit in dead silence for half our lives. Sports allow us to live out our athletic fantasies through athletes and teams that are far more talented than us or any other human we have ever known.

2) However, sports do not provide a metaphor for life. As a Daily columnist pointed out earlier this semester, the sports world does not allow for the gray areas that exist in life, and unlike sports, life is not a game with a winner and a loser.

Sports metaphors can be applied to a few certain life situations with ease, though. There is no way that is more crude or boyish (or entertaining) than describing sexual encounters by using the “baseball” metaphor, which I am sure needs no explanation. But beyond that, people who try to draw direct comparisons between life and sports are obviously communists.

3) Sports, politics and show business are basically the same business involving different types of people. These three industries give us more stars than the Virgo cluster. However, Hollywood is for good-looking people, politics is for unattractive people who wanted to be in Hollywood, and athletics are for people (either unattractive or attractive) who can run, jump and hit better than the rest of us. Don’t you see the similarities?

The connection is that all three businesses require more luck than skill, all involve a lot more work than anyone will ever give them credit for and all pay a lot of money. Sure, the three categories are all based on different concepts, but they basically boil down to playing the same game with slightly different rules and with different individuals. Anyone who tells you differently is obviously a communist.

4) It is impossible to watch a game without cheering for one side or the other. When viewing a game, one of the teams usually has a distinguished spot on your list of favorites. And if it does not, inevitably you will pick one of the sides to root for just so you can be rooting for someone. Personally, if I don’t like either team, I always pick the underdog because I have always been a fan of the little guy. The reason you cannot just sit and watch the game is because that is not what sports are about. Sports are ultimately and definitely about winning and losing. If you do not root for one side or the other, how do you know how to feel after the game? You neither lost nor won, and that’s not sports. And the people who tell you differently are obviously card-carrying communists.

If you haven’t figured it out, the loose connection between these ideas is that they all deal with the very nature of sports (and communism). That is a topic that books have been written about, so I won’t pretend to be able to sum it up in four unrelated paragraphs and wax poetic in my conclusion about how great sports are for society.

The truth is, I don’t really understand sports any more than the next guy, even if the next guy is Bob Costas, because the sports world is an entity that defies explanation. Why we become obsessed with these silly little games involving sticks, balls, helmets and pads is beyond me. All I can do is enjoy these games for their enormous entertainment value and pray that they keep stomping out communism.

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David Roepke is a freshman in journalism and mass communication and astronomy from Aurora.