We will engage in most games for a modest financial incentive, for the glory of victory, the traditional reward at the amateur Greek Olympics.
Then horses, tripods and gold were added to the prizes, and, inevitably gambling 'made it all more interesting' and stripped athletic competition of any lingering appearence of integrity.
Sportsball and other realistic athletic competition is no longer about personal excellence, about grace, but about winning the prize, the money.
We compete for baubles of all kinds, for social status, to be told we're better, or somehow different, unique, among the millions of others just like us all doing the same thing. We are fighting to be part of the story. We become someone else in seeking to be ourselves.
What happens to the young athlete who discovers his astonishing victory by knockout over the reigning champion was arranged by his management? When he learns that adverse powers behind the mob bookmakers control not just every aspect of his favorite Sport and every other Sport, the government, the sham churches, Cocaine and – all of it?
Is this the kind of revelation that might make a proud man reject his country, its established laws and religion(s) , refuse to be drafted, convert to Islam or become a clown in a house of mirrors?
Of course it is, it did; and every athlete of any merit knows that the greatest glory is not only fake, it can come with a helicopter crash and a single inoppprtune remark about dark mother Hilldawg and the cultist is swinging by a scarf from the big hall doorknob.
Not every mobster is a criminal. Joining an criminal organization, or 'crackpot' religion for protection against the government, against the FBI, another pedovore cult, or predatory MK operators is a matter of survival.
Many people join gangs for protection in prison for similar reasons, so many enlist in organizations offering or purporting to offer real or imagined protection.
To survive on a prison planet we must avoid being mistaken for prey or predator. Don't act like either, but learn to recognize both and to identify those others, who recognize and choose to ignore the RULES OF THE GAME.