Does jock culture dominate?

John Hodgman makes some fantastic, thought-stimulating points on baseball and jock culture in his interview with The Pitch.

Baseball is the only sport I am capable of tolerating, because of its historicity and its fundamental weirdness and slowness. And its fondness for large, sedentary men. It is essentially a vehicle for nostalgia, which is the most toxic of impulses.

[...]

Well, I don't hate sports -- I completely appreciate the passion people feel for sports, and indeed, as I say in the new book, there's a lot more in common with your average baseball stats nerd as there is with a guy swinging a foam sword around than there is not. There's a lot of geekery surrounding sports that I actually get and appreciate.

And I appreciate that it's market driven, but what I don't need is for sports to dominate every single part of the culture, including even high education. It has a disproportionate representation in the culture, but let the invisible hand of commerce guide us -- the invisible hand is apparently always adjusting its jock strap and not rolling a twelve-sided die. But that will change.

The Pitch: In what way?

I think that we are necessarily moving toward a geek culture. The health of our society is going to rely on information technology. It's going to rely on a familiarity with math and science and technology. Geekery in general is founded on questioning and proof via analysis of the actual world and not the world as we wish it to be. By contrast, jockdom -- not sports -- jock culture proceeds from a certainty you create in your mind: 'My town is the best because the incredibly wealthy owners decided to keep the team for now.' Or, 'My political team is the best because it was my dad's and they best stoke my primitive fears,' as opposed to 'They have the best policies for me and my family.'

Jockdom is very noble. It's not deliberative. It's certainly the best way to win wars. It's the best way to motivate teams of people to fulfill a goal -- not just war, but getting things done. The most important way to motivate a factory floor. But as you know, we're not as much of a manufacturing society as we were before. China and other big industrial nations are rewarding their nerds and technicians rather than creating a culture that makes fun of them -- it would be wise for us to embrace the book-smart as much as our culture has traditionally embraced the street-smart, the jock-smart. I'm not saying nerds must have their revenge; I'm just saying the time for wedgies is at an end.