Sports: Talent & Income

Sports are an integral part of our lives today. They are a major asset of socialization. They offer an avenue for both leisure and exploration of talent. At the same time however, sports are sources of livelihood to many people, both in income generation and career wise. Today, there are many sporting activities that people engage in; football, basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer, tennis, the list is long. Different people engage in different sporting activities due to different reason. For some, it is talent, others; interest.

Reasons range from income to social benefits yet still long. Sports have the largest versatility of organisation today, allowing the most local arrangements to the highest international organization yet capturing interest and involvement on many people.

Success in the academic life is an amalgamation of many factors. Fitness is a major part of this amalgamation, covering both body and mental fitness. According to the University of Missouri health care (Benefits of sports, 2014), team sports are good for learning accountability, dedication, and leadership, among many other traits.

Sports are important in teaching teamwork and helping us achieve our set goals. Pushing for a common goal, fighting the same struggle, together with team mates, the coach, the manager, the fans or the people with whom one is engaged with during such competition and involvement, enables synergy of instructions, expectations, teamwork, organization and effective communication that leads towards winning. These values and skills acquired are important in life, application either at the places of work, at home or at school.

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They give sports persons an upper hand in organization and realization of set objectives.

Engaging in sports boosts one’s self esteem. The confidence acquired when set goals are achieved, offers strength to achieve higher. The social interactions during sporting; the responsibilities in each role and fulfilment of each role as expected and even better, gives a sense of worth, belonging and command, that sets the esteem high.

Sporting boosts social life. It allows interaction with different people. These people are of diverse characters and preferences. But during training, engagements with coaches and manager and people who have engaged in such a sport before, the sports persons get to learn how to interact well with people, how to react to different situations and how to handle some demanding situations. Interacting with different people enables us master the skills of interaction and socialization that strengthen the way people socialize. Furthermore, these interactions enable making of many friends, creating a network that can be supportive in many different ways, including sharing of opportunities.

In regard to Social Learning Theory, personality is not a stable characteristic, but constantly changing and a result of our experiences of different social situations. It is unlikely that an individual will behave in the same way in different situations. The theory is that individuals learn in sporting situations through two processes: modelling and reinforcement. Modelling states that individuals are likely to model themselves on people they can relate to, like individuals in the same sport or of the same gender, and that as they observe their behaviour, they attempt to copy it. Reinforcement is important because if an individual’s behaviour is reinforced or rewarded in some way it is likely that the behaviour will be repeated. (BTEC 2014)

By such interactions and making of friends, sporting is a great way of managing stress and depression. Through exercising, tress levels are cut down thus minimising probability of illnesses associated with stress and depression. Apart from exercising, talking to friends and sharing such experiences, go a long way in reduction of stress and even finding solution to situations of fix.

Sports, especially those that involve physical exercises are important to the body. They keep the body fit; burning calories and cholesterol, enhancing blood circulation, stabilizing the body’s metabolism thus keeping illnesses at bay. Learning processes require good health and good state of mind. Keeping the body healthy as such, allows for comfortable learning, a fresh mind that allows quick understanding and grasping of concepts.

Through sports, there is expansion of opportunities that lead towards development. There are many Universities and Colleges for instance that offer sports scholarship. This is a direct entry to the college and one is therefore able to learn in their chosen field. Such scholarships cut down or totally eliminate the cost of tuition fees in the case of partial scholarship, or minimise all costs when it is full scholarship. Such scholarships have enabled some students to gain access to colleges that other students only dream about, just because of their involvement and great per performance in a particular sport.

College Scholarships USA Ltd. (College Scholarships USA, 2014) for instance, provides opportunities for students with talent and prowess in athletics from all over the world, to study in the American Universities as they compete in the college sports in their respective fields. It is reported that since 2007, through this company, more than one thousand students have gained admission to the Universities in the United States through scholarships in sports. This means that with good performance, zeal and productivity, there are high chances of getting a scholarship from anywhere in the world; an opportunity to study without caring much for tuition fee.

In their research in Social and Behavioural Science on Comparison of personality characteristics athlete and non-athlete student, at the Islamic Azad University of Ahvaz, (Social and Behaviour Science, 2011), Marina Shariati and Sabah Bakhtiari concluded that there was significantly different between athletes and non-athlete students in neuroticism, extraversion and conscientiousness. In a study titled connection between personality type and sport on athletes from four different sports (three individual and one team sport) and non- athletes found that this research indicates that sports may stimulate mental acuity. Athletes surveyed had a higher GPA than non-athletes. The higher GPAs might be the result of the athletes having developed a higher level of organization and time management skills.

Discipline learned from sports, combined with innate competitiveness, would easily carry over from playing the sport to the classroom. Social and behavioural science) People who engage in sporting activities therefore have several advantages over those who do not engage in sporting activities. Health wise, they are fit. With continuous exercising, feeding habits as per requirements of good performance. Such continuous exercising and feeding habits develop a healthy body, with strong body metabolisms and stable immunity. They thus are not prone to diseases and infections that may come often by diet or body system functionality. They instead live a healthy life as compared to people who do not engage in sports.

Socially, people who engage in sports have a greater advantage over those who do not. The skills of teamwork, organisation, communication and articulation enable them to relate better with other people, thus ceasing more opportunities that come by in life because they know how to go about it; it’s a game and not a process as in the view of people who have not yet mastered such skills; people who do not engage in sports. Sports persons are getting rich every day, earning their living so easily, gaining much in a very short period of time, while other people work so hard, for a long time, just to earn what a sports person earns in a week.

According to Forbes for instance, Cristiano Ronaldo, a twenty nine year old Portuguese footballer earns as much as fifty two million dollars per winning, a figure that is rare to gain out of sports. In Olympics, winners in Marathon earn as much as twelve million dollars in less than three hour, much of which someone else can make in years, besides sports. Tiger Woods stands at earnings of sixty two million dollars as per June this year according to Forbes. Sport is a multi-faceted profit engagement with its benefits overwhelmingly spread. It therefore needs no convincing in asking someone to engage in sports.