Sports and socialism

I tend to lean to the right side of things politically, though I have some left wing beliefs. It's like Chris Rock said, no one can ever be just one thing. The trouble is, not everyone can admit it. Including a lot of conservatives. Case in point, the "should we spend money funding athletics?" debate.

Stories of professors fudging grades to keep athletes on the field, phony classes to pump GPAs, players and staff getting away with wrongdoing, and more recently a school spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a stadium in a time when people scream that everything must be cut, abound. Yet it isn't the deficit hawks who demand that schools keep sports in perspective, financially and otherwise. In fact, they tend  to be the ones who criticize those who do.

See what I find interesting is that this is literally the only type of school spending you can get conservatives to support. When someone suggests diverting athletics money to improve education and letting the athletes join the debate teams in doing their own fundraising you'd get the following.

"It teaches leadership skills!"
"It fights childhood obesity!"
"It's the only way some kids get out of poverty!"

But of course, try getting these same people to support funding afterschool activities of the non athletic variety, building more rec centers and playgrounds kids can readily access, improved gym equipment and school lunches, or funding education better, up to and including making education more affordable for students, athletic or not, suddenly you get:

"That's socialism! It's not in the Constitution! Private enterprise will do it better!"

That last one is funny because we've been doing something we all know the "private enterprises" could do better. The NFL, MLB, NBA, etc. are run by billionaires. Plural. They can pay  for their own farm system. They can pay for recruiters. They can do all the stuff  they claim colleges and high schools just have to do.  The claim that there will be no NFL etc. kids will never learn leadership skills or get exercise and poor kids will never get out of  poverty is ludicrous. It would simply be in the hands of the oh so great free market.

But what is with the change of heart? I have a theory.

Conservatives tend to have a few overriding beliefs re: kids in relation to this. First, that kids must always be physically competing (debate teams and such don't count. Supporting them and any non-physical competitions is still that evil socialism thing). Second, without said opportunity to compete, kids will become weak girly men (to put in layman's terms).

Then there's fact that many of the defenders of taxpayer funded athletics are often former athletes themselves. There's a nostalgia filter in place blinding these deficit hawks.

And finally, sometimes it's just a matter of being contrary to the other guy. Let's be honest, the people who bring up the idea of putting sports back into perspective tend to reside on the left end of  the spectrum. Is there any other reason that fixing up schools so that the roofs are not at risk of falling on students' heads is seen as horrible socialism while running the farm system for billionaire owned major league sports teams is seen as social good?