As regular readers of normblog will know, I'm not too keen on the snooty attitude which certain people, thinking themselves 'above' it, have to spectator sport. I call it philistinism. Not being interested in sport, that's fine. Thinking it's vulgar and of no merit, that's philistinism. Anyway, one of the constituent themes of this philistinism is to say that sport doesn't teach you anything important about the world.
Yes, it does. Take the way in which a bad refereeing decision in football can determine the outcome of a game - so that, for example, a penalty given when it shouldn't have been, or not given when it should have been, can mean that a team wins or loses when it otherwise wouldn't have. Nearly all supporters moan and groan in these situations (though they usually don't moan or groan when their team gets the benefit of the bad decision). But it teaches people who follow football about a certain kind of injustice; this is injustice that isn't remediable and has to be accepted. Morally, of course, we think it important to prevent injustice and to put it right when it takes place anyway, at least to the extent that we can. But there are injustices that happen willy-nilly and which cannot be repaired. Football supporters know this in their jeans genes.
