Team sports are quite a mammoth matter -- they are engaged in all over the world, and quite often -- especially in the United States -- involve multi-millionaire athletes performing their especial art in heavily staffed massive multi-million-dollar facilities, with soaring expenditures on such sundries as medical care, field maintenance, training equipment, even meals and music and modems for in-house computers.

But imagine if instead of (or in addition to) these usual sports teams, cities had teams competing against each other to see which could accomplish the most in the four corners of a game-time to help people greatly in need. Imagine if a "home" game meant that the town's team, and a comparable cohort of visitors from another town, were competing to see who could be fastest to build a home for homeless people. Imagine if instead of the game resulting in the accumulation of bunch of abstract "points," it instead resulted in the creation of a concrete structure. Imagine if instead of trying to carry balls the farthest, the competitors were trying to carry food to the most hungry children.

This is not even so absurd a thought. The amount a top athlete is typically paid for any single game in their season is enough to build a row of houses, cultivate acres of gardens, and clothe a multitude against the elements. The amount spectators pay to watch these events adds up to amounts able to aid millions. Consider, in the most game-heavy sport of baseball, each team plays 162 games per season, a total of 2,430 games across the season (not including the post-season), each one going for several hours. If for each of those matches, the teams were each to complete construction of one small but decent house for the needy in a designated area, that would be over 4,800 houses assembled per season -- with preseason and practice games and friendly matches, this would go well over 5,000; with minor leagues and college and high school and pee-wee games added to such a "sport," those numbers could rise into the tens of thousands.

And if such an activity really was competitive, with stars having stat lines and fans following the action, the good deed would be paid for entirely by spectator interest (no doubt buoyed by philanthropic intent). So what are we waiting for? Let's draw up the rules of this competition and make good deeds a sport.



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For THE IRON NODER CHALLENGE: 9 FAST 9 FERROUS

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