The Society for the Advancement of Poetry and Poetry Scholarship (SAPPS) recently released a list of the top 34 reasons promising young athletes should consider a career in verse-making.
•Poets are not often asked to debase themselves by endorsing products or businesses in exchange for lucrative reimbursement.
•Although experts and failures alike will criticize poets’ work, it won’t be criticized by morons whose only qualification is that they can sit and hold onto a beer at the same time.
•Poets are not usually pursued romantically solely because of their incomes.
•Poets are not usually pursued romantically because they’re seen on television every week.
•The professional failures, missteps, and embarrassments of poets aren’t usually nationally, or even regionally, televised.
•The personal failures, missteps, and embarrassments of poets aren’t usually written about in national magazines or blogs of universal appeal.
•Poets, when arrested for a DUI, usually don’t see their names dragged through the mud. If they teach, then maybe they’ll be dragged through the mud, but this is almost always due to the academic appointment, not the writing.
•Although some poets are washed up by the age of 35, or even 30, many of them aren’t.
•Poets aren’t generally required to wear jerseys, let alone throwback jerseys.
•An MFA graduate of great promise who fizzles out upon turning pro isn’t usually insulted 5,000 times a day in a very public manner.
•The start times of readings and other poetic events aren’t determined by TV networks.
•When a poet sidesteps a professional risk it’s almost certain that tens of thousands of people won’t call him or her a pansy.
•Rarely do poets face violent injury in the course of their work.
•If a poet receives effusive praise, it is often clear, articulate, effusive praise.
•Poets aren’t required to take drug tests.
•No poet has yet been harmed leaping into the stands after completing a stanza.
•The smell of ink can have a mild narcotic effect, while the smell of stale perspiration is generally considered displeasing.
•Poets almost always have day jobs, and even multiple day jobs, so their lives are more interesting than football players’ lives.
•Although the children of poets might in fact think the poets suck, they don’t have to overhear other people talking about said suckage.
•The parents of poets rarely have to worry about their children being concussed or exposed as dirty cheats every weekend.
•The biggest writers conference on the planet will still be less crowded than the Super Bowl, or even a divisional playoff game.
•The accomplishments of athletes are regularly surpassed as science advances and training regimens improve, while poets’ work is often most appreciated long after they’re dead.
•“Vinnie from the Bronx” has never called into a radio talk show to comment on a poet’s performance the night before.
•A poet isn’t likely to require anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction before her twenty-fifth birthday.
•If a poet gets involved in a nightclub brawl, his fans will think he’s a god.
•A poet can fumble all the words she wants, and critics will praise her fearless high dive into the avant-garde.
•At least since the time of ancient Athens, poets have not had to worry that their greatest successes could be undercut when fans riot in the streets, overturning vehicles and trashing storefronts.
Advantages Future Poets Have Over Future Football Players
•When in high school, unless they have physical features that are attractive to the extreme, future poets are often undistracted by ubiquitous romantic attention from others.
•Future poets aren’t catered to by coaches, teachers, and administrators to the point that they can get away with blatant rule-breaking, law-breaking, or other transgressions (unless they’re smart enough and resourceful enough not to be blatant, and therefore avoid detection in the first place), and due to all of this often learn better how to fend for themselves than do future football players, who often develop a sense that the world should meet their every whim and desire, like they’re a bunch of babies weighing anywhere from 180 to 350 pounds.
•Future poets don’t have to be concerned about being distracted by cheerleaders while they perform.
•Smoking, or the use of alcohol or other drugs, can’t get future poets kicked off the poetry team. There is no poetry team.
•Future poets don’t usually have to sit in the living room and hear college recruiters lie to them and their parents.
•When visiting prospective colleges, future poets rarely have to deal with hyper-attractive people being sent their way to entertain them.
•Undergrad poets can accept unlimited gifts and perks from highly literate and wealthy alumni without risking violation of any labyrinthine rules.
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