My true calling might be writing articles like this one I found on slate.com.  Josh Levin takes a two minute Saturday Night Live skit, albeit a fantastically funny bit, and assigns cultural significance to the two white boys rapping.  He makes some good points about how the piece worked not because of the humor (though, as I said before, it was fantastically funny), but because it was actually excellent hip hop music.  Sure, the visuals of two incredibly dorky white guys trying to act hard while rhyming about cupcake consumption is funny.  Levin talks of how, lyrically, it is no less serious than most of Eminem's pop tracks, and how, stylistically, it harkens RUN-DMC and the Beastie Boys.

"Come on!" someone will say (actually a lot of people probably), "it was a goofy bit done for laughs on a comedy show, no less."  That is precisely what makes the article brilliant.  Assigning relevance where none exists is what makes the internet, itself, relevant.  If it were not for the vast expanes of cyberspace, an essay such as Levin's would only be underappreciated by a freshman comp G.A. somewhere, and instead, millions have access to a serious article about an entirely unserious topic.  Once I win this "Next Great Sportswriter" contest, it will be me filling computer screens with faux philosophical entertainment.

Already, I have shown a penchant for this, and I am not referring to my freshman comp term paper where I dissected the meaning of "Casey At the Bat" as a ditty about American society seeking a hero in a post industrial revolution world.  Just yesterday, I pondered the cultural significance the first openly gay male athlete will have on society in general.  Before that, I discussed how Adam Morrison's disrespect for his own race is letting down his own liberal cause.  Tomorrow, who knows?

A lot of people probably dislike the notion of mixing sports with heavier topics.  Look at the flack Dennis Miller took when he had the audacity to use literary allusions in his Monday Night Football color commentary.  Most people see sports as an escape from the real world.  Even I do, most of the time.  When political elections fall in a way that I see as the wrong direction for the only country I care to be a citizen of, I notice my reading habits tend to skew more toward sports publications and away from meatier discussions of what is happening on Capitol Hill.  When the tragedies of life are too much to bear or comfortably discuss, I can always rattle off some pointless commentary on the current football season.

Of course, that is why sports cultural impact is important, and why there is an unmet demand for people like me who wax philosphical on the topic.  When terrorists knocked down the twin towers in New York, sports stopped.  The commissioners of the games were given nearly universal praise for delaying or cancelling events, and when a high school or college chose to continue with life as normal and play on, they were typically criticized unless all the money was given to victim's charity.  I think it was the lack of cultural awareness on the importance of these games as an escape that probably harmed a good portion of America's society.  After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt reminded everyone that "the only thing to fear was fear itself." Cancelling everyday activities after 9/11 cultivated fear.  If we could not feel safe going to watch Oklahoma State play Northern Iowa in tiny Stillwater, Oklahoma, how could anyone feel safe anywhere?  By the time George Bush tossed out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium in the 2001 World Series, which many proclaimed as the moment we told the terrorists "We aren't scared of you," we as a country were already immersed in our fear of them.

That is just one example of how sports transcends itself.  The impact of Jackie Robinson playing a simple game and how it spurred a movement that killed "Jim Crow laws" is another.  For some reason, it is okay for historians to comment on these things, but when a contemporary talks about current events as more than a recap of events, it is being too intellectual.  Perhaps we could all use a little more thought about the games we love.