It never did anything else but play an important role in sports. Nations create big cultural habits around sports. Nations start wars because of it. Sports create modern forms of slavery, sports is business, sports is madness. All this is highly political. And even the boring sports are sleeping pills for those who seek to escape the daily dose of local political mess, which makes the boring sports an essential political sport. The question is not if politics should play such a role, the question is how one possibly could pull sports back to the harmless level of childhood fun.

no and I get annoyed with playing of anthems and patriotic displays and shit, sports people get high off their own smug farts or some shit, taking themselves way too seriously...sports is just show business, nothing more - don't expect shit from Lebron James that you wouldn't expect from Tom Cruise or whoever

Though they say it shouldn't but it does anyway. The World Cup in Qatar clearly confirms it. Like you're not allowed to do lots of stuff inside stadium because Qatar's laws don't allow them.

Also, to piggyback on what Scott said, as long as the Islamic regime holds power in Iran, I won't support Iran's so-called "national" team. The regime uses football as a tool to further its propaganda and don't like that at all.

How would that work?

I think watching sports should not play any role in everyday life.

No, but we don't live in a perfect world

Eh

I feel like that would be a major no