Sports are more than a bunch of games.

People who have little interest in athletics or think others take them too seriously often say, “What’s the big deal? It’s just a game.”

Too seriously may be the case if you take winning and losing to an unhealthy level or lose perspective on more important things in life, such as your family and loved ones. But for the most part, sports are much more than a game.

Sports provide so many things for so many people. They give people an escape, a profession and all too often they serve as a topic of conversation.

You hear all the time about how athletics are able to get troubled youths off the streets or out of horrible situations.

How often throughout America, in both rural and urban areas, do children turn to the after-school pick-up game in the empty lot or playground to avoid going home to a world of hurt?

Athletics give promising young athletes, who would probably end up working a minimum wage job, the chance at a college education with the aid of scholarships. And the chosen few actually make a nice sum of money in the professional ranks.

The dedication of these athletes is hard to fathom for most of us who occasionally muster up the ambition to drive to the Rec Center and possibly play a pick-up basketball game, or if the mood strikes us, go lift or jog consistently for a month or so.

But this only happens when we can find time between playing video games, watching TV and napping. And I’m as guilty of this as the next person.

There also are people who get very little for their dedication to a less-marketable sport. Many less popular sports, such as many Olympic games, have athletes who give up years of their lives only to fall just short of the sport’s pinnacle in the crucial moment of competition.

Athletes themselves merely scratch the surface of sports. Coaches, trainers, doctors, administrators, executives and the media also have lives that revolve around sports.

For coaches, winning, losing and having a quality team make livelihood.

Too often fans and boosters have little patience and call for the coaches’ heads after a couple of bad seasons, not realizing it takes some time to turn a program around.

Recently, athletics at the professional and big-time college levels have turned into multi-million dollar businesses that employ thousands of people ranging from department heads to secretaries.

Finally, there are people like me who either want be involved or are currently involved in covering sports in various media markets.

Once again, this is what they do for a living. Covering the everyday activities of a team is their main source of income to support their families.

A person could write an entire book on all the different ways sports affect people’s lives.

When people look at this soft topic as something of unimportance, I know they are ignorant of what truly goes on in the world of athletics. It makes me angry at times when people fail to appreciate all the hard work done by people involved with athletics.

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Scott Johnson is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Holstein.