Our jobs here in the toy department consist primarily of watching talented adolescents play children’s games.

There are worse ways to make a living, not the least galling of which is watching fully-grown millionaires do the same thing.

In that world of scores and highlights supplemented by life lessons, we deal daily with that elusive, inexact science known as sportsmanship.

Somewhere along the way, the educational hand-wringers made it the be-all, end-all of youth athletics, and who am I to argue with them? When our society lost its moral compass and people started assaulting and killing one another over this stuff, that enhanced emphasis was probably a good idea.

Almost every game we attend now starts with the reading of a fill-in-the-blank treatise over the public address system. It seems to grow longer every year and covers the spectrum from sensible (no verbal lambasting of the officials) to silly (no heavy breathing during free throw attempts) to symbolic rhetoric (“Sportsmanship: The only missing piece … is you … you loud, obnoxious jerk.”)

There are unintended consequence of all this. Fans, that slimmest percentage of borderline insane spectators for whom these non-specific paeans to sportsmanship were intended, now believe it is their divinely ordained right to impose and enforce them. Inmates running the asylum, you know.

And that leads us to one of my new favorite pearls of mob wisdom. It has been bellowed above the dull roar at nearly every contest in every sport I’ve covered this school year, usually by a man or a woman with a cowbell in one hand, a convenience store coffee in the other, and a scowl of disdain stretching across the face.

“Take a knee!”

Yes, it inspires vigorous head-scratching when you hear it out of context. Why would someone demand that an opposing player genuflect in the middle of a sporting event? Heck, most men don’t even touch the ground when proposing marriage anymore. Depending upon your denomination, you might not even hit the deck at your place of worship.

Taking a knee has become the only apparent accepted way to acknowledge that a game has been halted due to injury. Whether the potential malady is a concussion, a cramp or shredded knee ligaments, the unspoken requirement of a current high school athlete is to make like a golfer who just heard “Fore!” from 250 yards away.

You can set your watch to it. No, make that a stopwatch. What started as a sincere show of respect has devolved into such a charade that if the healthy players aren’t wallowing in the mud in 1.8 seconds or less, they’re going to hear it from that goofball in the grandstands.

There’s part of me that sees this as, yes, comical, but at least moderately dangerous. It joins a growing list of activities in our world that stress symbolism ahead of substance.

It is, after all, entirely possible to be doubled over with mirth at someone’s misfortune while balanced on one knee and to have your eyes well up with tears at his plight while standing up. So, as has become the unfortunate norm, we’re again indirectly teaching kids that how they perform superficially is more important than what they produce inwardly.

Part of this is irksome because it smacks of adults bringing a tired element of professional sports into the youth equation: Playing the disrespect card where it doesn’t exist.

“Hey, can’t you see he’s hurt? How about a little respect?”

Again, putting yourself on the ground with the injured player doesn’t demonstrate a lick of true respect. Playing the game at a high level after his departure does. Sending her a social networking message later to make sure she’s OK does.

I’ve seen an entire team kneel three feet from the sideline in order for its coach to half-whisper instructions, turning the opposing player’s misfortune into a glorified timeout. Is that respect? Probably not, but Joe and Jane Fan are satisfied because everyone’s knees are dirty.

The primary reason this emphasis on bended knee strikes me as hollow and absurd is that we have so many legitimate sportsmanship issues that demand resolution. Issues that exclusively involve — you guessed it — spectators.

Fisticuffs have been all but eliminated from high school sports. I witness a coach getting ejected for berating an official once a year, if that. But at every game in every sport, without fail, an ignorant fan still makes a jackass of himself.

He hurls invective at the referee even though he couldn’t spell “traveling” or “illegal procedure” on a bet. She harasses the 20-year veteran coach over her child’s playing time and vows to start a petition drive to find a new one.

One of these days, I’m waiting for one of the targets of these self-imposed sportsmanship police to turn his head toward the bleachers, calmly remove his mouth guard and respond: “Take a pill!”

And then it’s my knees that will buckle, under the weight of unrestrained laughter.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].