In Defense of Sports Ball

I enjoy watching the NFL. I’m not obsessed with it and don’t pay much attention outside of the games, but I’ve watched the Patriots for over 25 years and I’m not going to stop this year. I do think about the game differently though, and I see some of the fiat shenanigans a lot more clearly than I used to. This article isn’t about the money side of the NFL though, instead I want to talk about the rules of the game.

Sports is one of the last areas of normal society where everyone knows the rules and fully expects them to be followed and scrutinized relentlessly. The off-the-field rules are a totally different story, and that’s where all the fiat games and politics come into play, but on-the-field rules are sacred. There will be over 50,000 people in a stadium and potentially millions more at home, absolutely losing their minds because a referee 10 yards away couldn’t see a half inch difference in where a player’s foot may or may not have landed. Did his knee hit first? Was he across the goal line? We’ll rewatch the play in slow motion from 15 different angles, all to settle, with certainty, if the rules are being applied correctly.

Where else are the rules given that level of respect? Out in the real world there are no rules without exceptions or selective enforcement; there is special treatment granted everywhere it seems. Enforcement on the field obviously isn’t perfect, but the fraction of violations that get correctly penalized seems much higher than in other areas of life. I can’t name an industry that doesn’t have some risk-reward calculations skewed in favor of rule breakers over rule followers. In the judicial system certain people will always get special treatment, and in virtually all courtrooms, if you throw enough money or political power at a case, you can get almost any result you want.

Ultimately, I think we all want consistent rules and enforcement; we want fairness, but even more than fairness, we want predictability. Sure, there is some entertainment value in watching the physicality and athleticism of sports, but I believe the reason why people live and breathe this stuff is that sports are one of the few areas where the rules are fairly and consistently enforced. When all our other media coverage is filled with unfairness and lack of justice, I think we start to crave seeing fairness in practice.

And, of course, to take it back to bitcoin, we now finally have a system where the rules are perfectly enforced and stay extremely consistent over time. In bitcoin, nobody has to worry about the ref who doesn’t get the call right; every single transaction follows the exact same rules, and they’re perfectly enforced.

So, I can somewhat understand why some people are obsessed with sports ball. Maybe there are even some similarities to why some of us are obsessed with the consistency and the deterministic perfection of rule enforcement in bitcoin.

Go Pats!

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