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Sports is the greatest form of reality television. It makes its own drama. It's all about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
I think oversimplifying what an athelete does contributes to your lack of appreciation of a sports entertainment value. You understand that Koby is a great basketball player, but you don't follow basketball enough to understand why people think he's one of the greatest players ever. There's more to sports than just running (unless it's track and field, but even those events involve more than running). It's part chess match, part stare-down, part pressure cooker. Who steps up in the big moment, who folds under pressure. It's those elements and much more.
Why do we admire a particular player or team? Different reasons. Some admire a player based on talent alone (like Kobe). Others admire a player because he gets by on grit and effort to make up for talent (like Cal Ripken, Jr.). Still, others like a player because he relies on intelligence and wits to make up the former two (like Chad Pennington). It's true that there's always going to be somebody greater than that player, but how often will that somebody come along? Look at how long it took the NBA to find it's next Michael Jordan (and think about how many people came and went that everybody proclaimed was going to be the next Michael Jordan). Great atheletes don't come by as often as we think they do.
In the grand scheme of things, he's not out there saving the world. He's just making it a bit more fun to live in.
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Cameron originally envisioned the Terminator as a small, unremarkable man, giving it the ability to blend in more easily. As a result, his first choice for the part was Lance Henriksen. O. J. Simpson was on the shortlist but Cameron did not think that such a nice guy could be a ruthless killer.
-From the Collector's Edition DVD of The Terminator
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