Good, now that I’ve got your attention, cool your rage for a second and hear me out. What follows is not an attack on the noble sports of basketball or football or baseball, or for that matter, fencing, shot put, or lawn bowling. Sports, in and of themselves, are tremendously rewarding pursuits both to watch and to play. The trouble they pose is the disproportionate percentage of our national consciousness they command.

The world of sports is a strange and confusing place. The progress of teams is the topic of lively conversation in living rooms, on the streets, around the water coolers. We’ll spend hours watching large men pummel each other over and over again on TV. People automatically flip to the sports section of the newspaper in the morning, passing over news of the real world for an artificial reality of batting averages, box scores, and win-loss records. All of this for things that are, when the layers of hype and corporate sponsoring are peeled away, only games.

Ironic, is it not, that we devote so much energy to following professional sports when obesity rates in America are among the greatest in the world and showing no signs of slowing down?

This irrationality filters down into college sports, though with possibly more detrimental effects. Since the 1980s, NCAA basketball and football (the “revenue sports”) have become big business. Rick Neuheisel makes $1.3 million a year, more than double the average college president’s salary of about $475,000, while rank and file professors hole up in dinky apartments. College athletics departments are almost completely separate franchises from the universities whose names they bear. Big broadcasting companies profit from kids who aren’t even paid and, after their four-year term of service, are likely discharged without the high level of education that non-athletes can expect. Because let’s face it. These “students” are basically professional athletes, minus the multi-million dollar pay packages.

There’s something vaguely revolting about rich white guys getting richer off poor black kids who aren’t paid a cent for their sweat, and who have been told ever since high school that they can’t do anything except play sports.

A few weeks ago, three counselors at Franklin were accused of changing the grades of about 55 students. A few of the changes, at the time of this writing, are suspected to have been for the purpose of cleaning up struggling students’ transcripts enough to let them play in an important tournament. District high-ups deny that the problem is systemic, talking down the inevitable question: who’s next?

The counselors may have had the kids’ best interests at heart when they whitewashed those transcripts. But for those that were for the purpose of saving academically struggling students athletes from disqualification: why must all their hopes for the future rest on one athletic contest? Why is there the feeling that, if I’m not at the game when the scouts are coming to see us play, I might not get to college? If students and their counselors believe that athletics are their only way out, they have been failed by their school, their family, and by society as a whole.

There are others who bear at least part of the responsibility for this sad situation. I cringe when I hear that the Seattle Times has a “great commitment to high school spots coverage.” Glamorization of high school sports (besides enriching major media outlets) does nothing but increase the number of young lives totally given over to their teams, detracting from what they really need: a complete education. Pressure from coaches and parents is equally to blame: healthy competition has gone too far when a high school runner’s sport becomes a danger to her health after a coach makes a passing remark about how a little dieting would make her times that much better.

Such experiences are the signs of a culture rotting from the inside out. Kids should be allowed to be kids. Sports fanaticism has infected our nation’s schools, and it’s showing adverse effects every way you turn. Grade changes have shown that if you might bring your school a championship, the academic part will be taken care of. But what a cruel lie this is, for in all likelihood your athletic prowess is never going to make you any money, and you can’t cash in an endorphin rush.

This nation’s priorities have been turned on their head. America deifies athletes, while those who are using their brains to make actual contributions to society labor in obscurity. It is indeed an unhealthy obsession, for our student athletes and for their friends whose nonathletic accomplishments fall by the wayside.

So tomorrow morning, read the front page first. Because some things are more important.