By John M. Miller
A Series of Lectures for People Who Prefer Pondering to Pandering
I begin with a demurrer; no, it is not a demurrer at all, it is instead an admission. I am a sports fan. I have always been a sports fan. That may not always be apparent in what I shall say herein, but it is true. I am about as athletic as a cow with a crutch, but I confess that I nevertheless have always had a strong interest in sports. Maybe it is because I am such a klutz that I am such a fan. However, I am a complete ignoramus about sports compared to my wife. She knows more about sports than 99% of the males of our species. If you want to know anything about any sport, even ones she doesn’t like, except maybe bowling or boxing, ask Lois.
At the most fundamental level, there is something deeply psychological about sports. There is something visceral, something extra-rational, about sports. There is something that is ultimately a total mystery about sports.
Why do some people feel sports, and others do not? Why do some people live sports, and others do not? Why do some people live and die by sports, and others do not?
Without question, this lecture shall be of far greater interest to some of you than to others. That is because of psychology, and viscera, and extra-rationality, and mystery.
Here is what the psychology part may mean. I can’t validate this scientifically or objectively, but I strongly believe it is true. For many people, sports represent an outlet to a human activity for which they may or may not have much talent, but they receive immense vicarious pleasure in seeing someone excel in physical prowess. It transports them out of themselves and into that athlete or that sport. They are incapable of achieving at that level, but in watching someone else do it, they become, to some degree, that person, that athlete, that star.
However, that also may be completely ephemeral nonsense. People who like sports like them, and those who don’t, don’t --- right? Maybe. But I believe there’s more to it than that. And I believe the US of A has a full-blown obsession with sports. Other nations share a similar obsession as well. But our obsession is particularly a mystery. Why are some very intelligent people enthralled by sports, and other very intelligent folks are completely indifferent? Who can explain it; who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons; wise men never try.
The word “amateur” come from the Latin verb amare, which means “to love.” Amatus is the past participle. When applied to any human pursuit, “amateur” came to mean that one did it simply for love of the activity, rather than as a paid profession. Thus there are amateur archaeologists, amateur astronomers, amateur astrophysicists, and amateur genealogists.
Until a century ago or so, nearly all sports were amateur sports. There were no paid professionals. Even now, for every professional golfer, tennis player, football-, basketball- or baseball player, there are a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand amateurs. What that suggests is that millions of Americans, and millions from other nationalities as well, participate in various forms of sport. Throughout the world, “football” is by far the most popular sport for younger athletes, though that particular game is what Americans call soccer. Soccer has never really caught on here, although it is slowly gaining popularity over time. But about American football I shall have considerably more to say in a while. And why we call it football is an enigma, because feet contact the ball only on kickoffs and punts. It would better be called throwball or runball than football.
Sports are relatively unimportant in the great scheme of things, except that they are invested with great importance by millions of people. Therefore they are important. Even if there are those for whom sports are unimportant, sports are a major part of our culture. Whether we like of not, sports command keen interest in multitudes of Americans.
To an indefinable and unknowable degree, sports represent a quest for what Plato called thymos, which means a desire for glory. There is far more thymos for the athletes who participate than for the spectators, but there is also glory which spectators somehow feel is showered upon them as they watch from the stands. When I was a senior in high school, our basketball team got to the state championship --- and we lost by five points. When I was a sophomore in college, the University of Wisconsin went to the Rose Bowl. Three classmates and I drove out to Pasadena, where we Badgers were stomped by the Washington Huskies, 52-8. Nevertheless, in both defeats, I, sitting in the University of Wisconsin Field House and then in the Rose Bowl, felt bathed in thymos. Irrational? Undoubtedly. Strange? To be certain. Real? Most assuredly. Go figure.
Researchers at Georgia State University discovered that both soccer players and extreme soccer fans had the same levels of increase in testosterone after victories, and similar levels of decrease after losses. One thing this implies is that males of our species are more likely to be avid or even rabid fans than females. You can probably verify that by your own acquaintanceship with the men and women you know. Are sports fans nothing more than walking hormone machines? Perhaps so. More research is needed to authenticate this notion.
Last February, after the Giants won the Super Bowl, Joel Stein of Time Magazine wrote a column about the Giants’ team chaplain, George McGovern. (He is not to be confused with the recently deceased Presidential candidate.) The irrepressible Mr. Stein quotes the chaplain about what he says to the team and coaches on the day before each game. “It’s not a pep talk. It’s not a ‘God, help us win tomorrow.’ I’ve never heard a player or coach ask for victory. It’s always thanking God for opportunities or health or ‘Give us the strength we need to play with passion,’” said George McGovern.” Joel Stein wrote, “I did not like the sound of this. From what I know about the Old Testament, God doesn’t respond to the soft sell. He’s more of a tie-your-first-born-to-the-altar kind of guy.”
Why do some teams kneel in prayer before games? What do they say? Do they imagine that God is a fan? Does He (or if you prefer, She) care who wins? And if He is a She, is She therefore by dint of gender less likely to care who wins? Does God agree with that ancient trope, “It matters not whether you win or lose; it’s how you play the game”?
Speaking of God, there seem to be more and more violations of ethics in sports. (I say that based on the assumption that God favors ethical behavior.) Lance Armstrong, for years the golden boy of cycling, was also alleged for years to have taken performance-enhancing drugs. For over a decade he beat the rap. Finally he was found guilty of taking hormones, even without scientific proof, and he was stripped of all his Tour de France victories, plus many other trophies as well. Now he has publicly admitted he used dope. Travis Tygart is head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which receives part of its funding from the federal government, and found Lance Armstrong guilty. Of his crusade he says, “It’s not personal. That totally misses the point. It’s about a mission and the belief that the rules should be upheld and that athletes want to compete clean and should have that right.”
Obviously not all athletes do want to compete “clean.” Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mark McQuire and others may never get into the Baseball Hall of Fame because they are strongly suspected of or have admitted to taking hormones. Do sports fans want their heroes to be dope-free, or do they want them to use drugs to break records? The answer is Yes. Yes, some want drug-free athletes, and Yes, some have no problem with pharmaceutically-assisted performances. The more testosterone, natural or synthetic, the better, say some sports fans. Juke up the records as high as they can go. That, I think, is a Very Bad Idea.
Human growth hormones (HGH) were developed to treat rare growth defects in children or other uncommon conditions in children or adults. But they have been utilized by athletes who want to get a leg up on the competition. Look, for example, at video clips of Barry Bonds 25 years ago and recently. His head and feet grew greatly, as did the rest of his hormone-enhanced body. Most professional sports organizations have been very lax in confronting this issue. Baseball and football are notoriously hesitant to act. League contracts not only allow but may tacitly encourage abuse of hormone-assisted performances.
Scandals of various sorts in sports are not new, however. In 1919 there was the Black Sox situation with the Chicago White Sox, where several players threw the World Series against their own team. In the Thirties there were widespread allegations over various infractions by members of the Ohio State football team (so what else is new?). In 1951 the U.S. Military Academy had a big brouhaha among members of the West Point football team. And so it goes, year after year. As long as there are athletes, some will cheat to get ahead.
Then there is the matter of salaries for professional athletes. In 2012 there were 15 Major League teams who were paying at least three players $10 million apiece. In 1999 the Yankees payroll was $88.1 million. Last year it was $195 million. Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees was paid $30 million last year, whether he was able to play or not, and often he was not able. C.C. Sabathia, who pitches for the Yankees, made $24 million. If you break that down into how many games he starts, it comes out to about $725,000 per game, or $7250 per pitch, whether it’s a strike or a ball. There were 14 Major Leaguers who made at least $20 million for the season. Last year the average Major Leaguer received $3.45 million per annum for playing baseball. For playing baseball, for heaven’s sake! Not for creating anything, or making anything, or even investing in anything; just for whacking or chucking or catching a baseball. A New Yorker cartoon shows two outfielders close to the fence who have just allowed a fly ball drop between them. The one says to the other, “Whaddaya want for nineteen mil?” Yeah, what?
In NBA basketball they play about half as many games as in baseball, but on a per game basis they get more money. Kobe Bryant of the Lakers pulls down $28 million, and LeBron James of the Miami Heat, whom I think is a considerably better all-around player, gets a measly $16 million. Those who play in the National Football League on average receive less than baseball or basketball players, but they play only 16 games in the regular season. They do get more compensation per game than in baseball or basketball. But they also get far more beaten up in the process. The average NFL player survives for only two years or so.
Is there something fundamentally amiss when the best athletes make more money than many of the best business leaders? Athletes create widespread interest in their abilities, but they produce nothing of substance. There is nothing manufactured by them, nor are there any services rendered in a normal economic sense. And yet professional athletes make bundles of big bucks. Is it economically or socially or even ethically proper?
Remember Gordon Gekko, that Wall Street icon from the movie Wall Street? “Greed is good” said Gordon: remember? Greed is the leading force in salary decisions in all professional sports. The players are greedy, and the owners are greedy. The cost of tickets has gone through the skybox roof to underwrite the greed.
Greed has all but killed the National Hockey League season for 2012-13. For months the players and owners could not agree on which side gets what percentage of the total take, or even how to calculate the total take. This is the fourth NHL lockout since 1992. They will have missed 113 games, and will get in only 48. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg! People in professional hockey seem determined to destroy their sport. And if the players feel they should get more money to play such a body-crushing sport, here’s an idea: Don’t play! Or become an amateur, somebody who loves the sport for the sake of the sport itself, but doesn’t want to maim or be maimed in the process. Play for fun, and let the locals watch for free, not spacious indoor arenas in places like Atlanta or Los Angeles or San Jose, but outside on natural ice in Maine or Minnesota or Manitoba.
Or how about the salaries for the coaches of big-time college or professional teams? Eight major college football coaches got $3.5 million or more for the 2012 season, and scores got $1 million or more. Nick Saban of Alabama topped the list at $5,476,738. Not counting post-season play, that represents roughly $450,000 per game. The average new hire as a football coach in a major university was paid 35% more in 2012 than his predecessor was paid in 2011; 35%. What does that say about the educational values of university administrations which allow that to happen?
When head coaches leave one job and take another, recompense often must be paid, but who pays it? It depends on what the lengthy employment contracts say. With the recent shuffles of coaching positions in late 2012, colleges will have to cough up $50 million in additional funds just for the privilege of obtaining new coaches. Fifty million for non-profit institutions simply to cover the costs of unpredictable coaching chess moves! Players and coaches in the pros are paid far too much for their social worth to the larger society, but college coaches are given utterly indefensible salaries. Besides, when one university lures a star faculty member away from another university, is the stealer obligated to pay compensation to the stealee? Whoever heard of such a thing? But it happens all the time for college coaches.
This trend, however, is not new either. In 1891 Amos Alonzo Stagg became the coach of the University of Chicago football team. (This was back when Chicago played football.) His salary was higher than that of any tenured professor. He also became one of the most successful football coaches of all time. Most great coaches are outstanding psychologists and motivators. But do outstanding politicians or CEOs or educators who also are great motivators make as much as the best coaches? Some do, but most do not. What does that say about our values as a society? Is our sports obsession worth what we pay for it? Or continuing to pay for its escalating costs, are we eroding our basic values? And anyway, what did Vince Lombardi really mean when he said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing”? Without additional explanation, that statement is beyond justification. And I’m a lifelong Lombardi Packer-Backer!
Practically all college football bowl games are sponsored by not-for-profit, tax-exempt organizations. Of the twenty bowls that made public the salaries of their executive directors in 2010 (the last year for which such figures are available), the highest paid made over $750,000, there were six who made over half a million dollars, and the lowest paid received over $115,000. To be sure, they worked more than a few days or weeks, and maybe worked a good part of a year to make their bowls jell. Very few bowls are sell-outs. And half a million or more for the directors of these bowls, which are not-for-profit? Is that moral? Is it ethical? Is it right?
It is universally recognized by everyone who follows college sports that football is the fiscal engine for every other college sport, including basketball, which generates the next highest revenue for the various colleges. Nevertheless, many if not most athletic departments operate in the red, not in the black. And why? - Because for most institutions it is unthinkable not to have intercollegiate athletics in almost every imaginable sport, and for both men and women. (By the way, Title IX was a good thing for sports. Hip, hip, hoorah to those who originally turned it into law.) But regarding so many teams in so many sports, if they do it, we surely must do it too!
Must we? Must they? Must so many sports be on the intercollegiate level? Must there be full scholarships for hundreds of athletes at every large university? Is that a requirement for a genuinely excellent overall education at an excellent school? Might the costs of tuition go down if there were far fewer costs associated with intercollegiate athletics? And do the athletic programs at jock institutions truly enhance the educational experience for all students? Would colleges be better off if most of their teams were intramural or club teams, groups of students competing with groups of students at the same school just for fun, for the love of the sport, for amateur prowess rather than costly semi-professional prowess?
Have you noticed how many college football teams now have several uniforms they wear in a season? The costs to put more than a hundred players in just one uniform is in the high tens or low hundreds of thousands of dollars. So why does any team need more than two uniforms, one for home games and one for away games? Couldn’t that money be put to better use, even if it is donated by very wealthy fans? Has our sports obsession caused us to lose our minds, to say nothing of untold dollops of dollars?
No other nations spend as much as Americans spend on sports in universities and colleges; none. That is because in most other nations collegiate sports are club sports, not intercollegiate rivalries. It is as simple as that.
Money is corrupting athletics at all levels, both professional and – quote – amateur. But are big-time collegiate athletics really amateur? Most students who receive a full or partial scholarship do so directly because of their high level of proven scholarship. However, almost all athletes who receive “scholarships” – in quotes -- receive them because of their athletic prowess, not their scholarship. Furthermore, thousands of athletes in major university football and basketball programs could not make it through four years of education without Herculean assistance from tutors, and many of them leave to go professional before “earning” a degree, if in fact many of them properly did earn their degrees. In addition, countless college athletes might be in prison if they were not on the football field or basketball court.
Would the quality of collegiate athletics remain as high if there were no athletic scholarships offered? Without question the answer is no. And would fan interest remain as high without paying for the education of the athletes? Again, no. But is either higher education or intercollegiate athletics truly better off because of the billions of dollars generated by television and radio contracts, ticket sales, concessions, and the unvarnished shakedown of fans who often must pay several hundreds or thousands of dollars for the mere privilege of shelling out, in addition, the actual 80-dollar ticket price for each actual game? Intercollegiate athletics, at least in Division I schools, and in football and basketball, is not amateur; it is professional. And because football and basketball funds are used to provide athletic scholarships for other sports, those other sports are, in essence, also professional. Should public or even private institutions of higher learning be involved in the promotion of professional athletics?
In professional baseball, league rules permit high school graduates to be recruited. Would that be a better, or at least a more honest, system for all professional sports? To be sure, pro scouts are assisted by observing athletes in college for one to four or more years, but why should colleges become the primary recruiting pools for pro sports?
The lure of money has also reached down into the high school ranks, but in quite a different way. A year ago Ben McGrath had a lengthy feature story in The New Yorker about the Don Bosco Preparatory School in Ramsey, New Jersey. Don Bosco draws students from all over the New York metropolitan area, and some of the football players commute up to two hours one way to get there. They play games against teams from California and elsewhere throughout the US. There are more than a hundred students on the team. Out of a hundred and twenty boys from the freshman class, more than half tried out for football. A game in Bradenton, Florida cost nearly $50,000 for the air charter, lodging, food, and incidentals, and it was all paid by a wealthy fan. Could that amount of money have benefited society better if given to charity? Would it have been given to charity? Almost certainly not.
State high school athletic coalitions have started to allow corporations or others to sponsor state or national high school championship games. Is that a good idea? Ought anyone pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to underwrite high school games of any sort at any level? Is it worth it to anybody to do that? If so, who, and why?
Why are such absurd things as this happening in high schools? It is because high schools are where college recruiters go to find their players, and outstanding players want to play at high schools where the recruiters pay the most attention to them.
It is obvious that many billions of dollars of economic activity is represented by college sports. It would be potentially disastrous to decide, cold turkey, that all sports in all colleges should instantly become amateur. But it is inimical to higher education, as well as to sport itself, that so much money is invested in something which ultimately is sport. Sports are interesting, they are captivating, they are even fascinating, and many of us would feel bereft if they were not pursued with excellence. But ultimately, they do not matter. They really don’t. Oh, I know they do, and I firmly agree they do, but they really don’t. Not in and of themselves.
Sports add immeasurably to joie de vivre, to participation and anticipation and excitement and ineradicable memories. But somehow, the money spent on big-time sports needs drastically to decrease. We spend far too much money for the social value received. And please understand: I realize I am pointing to a major problem, but I am proposing no solution or solutions. And in a way that is poor sportsmanship. I am throwing a yellow flag or declaring a foul without reference to any rulebook. However, if you make me the Lord High Commissioner and Czar of the sports world, I’ll write a new rulebook, and do it for free, even.
Since that is an unlikely eventuality, allow me to do just a bit more meddling. Are collegiate athletics the tail now wagging the dog? Has the evolution of sports become a detriment to higher education, or even to secondary education?
Robert Witt is the president of the University of Alabama. When he first came into his position ten years ago, he fired head football coach Mike Price before Price had even coached a game. When challenged by a member of the board of trustees for doing that, Dr. Witt forthrightly said, “It’s either me or him.” Now that Nick Saban, the highest paid coach in college football, has won three national championships in the last four years for the Crimson Tide, could the university president get away with firing Nick Saban, if he thought it was necessary?
Susan Herbst was president of the University of Connecticut when coaches Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma were winning national basketball championships for the UConn Huskies in men’s and women’s basketball. She courageously said, “It’s wrong to have one revenue stream that’s not an academically-related one driving university decision-making. If the revenue stream is from, say, a faculty invention that one can market – a drug or a vaccine – and the university is greatly benefited by royalties and patents and that kind of thing, that’s great. But if it’s something that’s very much apart from – and often in tension with – the values of the university, you’ve got to be super cautious.” Brava, President Herbst! I hope somebody “has your back,” as they used to say in the sports world and now say in many other contexts.
It isn’t sports per se that is corrupting higher education. It’s the size and cost and questionable benefit that is doing the corrupting. College sports have become far too large for the overall good of the universities and colleges which sponsor them. Coaches become monarchs, and presidents or chancellors are sometimes treated like underlings by the alums and the public.
The biggest college-sports scandal of our lifetime occurred at Pennsylvania State University in 2011-12. No one familiar with Penn State football could ever have imagined what happened there. Penn State is one of the finest public universities in the country. I will not take time to cover events with which most of you already familiar. But suffice it to say that one of the truly greatest college football coaches in history, Joe Paterno, was likely a primary enabler, if not the primary enabler, in what were correctly judged in a court of law to be ongoing pedophile crimes. Jerry Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator for Penn State, had been molesting young males for years, and doing it in PSU football facilities. Even after he “retired,” (forced out by higher-ups who knew of the crimes, perhaps?), he continued to bring boys into the shower room. Although his criminal acts were reported to higher-ups by a few individuals who observed his crimes, nothing at all was done. And that breach of responsibility happened under the watch of the then-president, Graham Spanier, a vice-president, and the athletic director, who, probably with the knowledge of Joe Paterno, covered it all up to protect their famous football program.
Economically, State College, PA would be badly damaged if football were abolished at Penn State. For that same reason, the economies of scores or hundreds of other campus communities would be at least somewhat adversely affected if big-time sports became relatively small-time. But might the quality of the educational enterprise increase were that to occur? It would be foolhardy to stop instantaneously, but would there be some wisdom in slowly scaling back into a more modest, and healthier, sports culture for colleges and universities?
In 2014 the national championship football game will top $500 million dollars in revenues: just that one game. That doesn’t mean the winner gets it all, or the two teams split it. That means the money will be divided up among five so called power conferences: the ACC, the Big 10, the Big 12, the PAC 12, and the Southeastern Conference. One half a billion dollars. But by no means is that all these conferences will receive. They also will get many hundreds of millions from other bowl games. This is not money that will go to non-profit educational institutions. It will go to the athletic programs of these non-profit educational institutions. But will they do with those proceeds what non-profits normally do? Will they feed the hungry or heal the sick or house the homeless? Or will they even educate the ordinary uneducated? No, they will not. The athletic departments will allocate most if not all that money to themselves, and little or none to the institutions themselves to educate ordinary students.
Only 22 universities generate more income from athletics than they spend. Texas brings in the most: It was $150 million for the 2010-11 season, and they turned back $$16.6 million to the university. Kansas State did the best overall: they generated $70 million in revenues, and gave $20 million back to KSU to do with as they saw fit. With the exception of those 22 universities, none of the athletic programs of the other hundreds of universities or colleges derived more income than they spent. University of Texas president William Powers has wondered aloud whether this suggests the “profit-producing” (so-to-speak) athletic programs should be in one category, and everyone else in another. That’s an interesting idea. Either you pay your way, or you play with the also-rans. Hasta la vista, Wisconsin! Ciao, Stanford! Auf wiedersehen, Clemson!
Smaller colleges and universities pay a heavier price for competing in athletics than big schools. It costs them relatively much more, for instance, if they are one of the 68 schools who make it to the Big Dance in March Madness. They have to get the money to do that from somewhere, either increased student fees, increased ticket costs, or receiving help from the colleges themselves. Might it be that sports cause some schools to charge their students more just to attend those institutions? And if so, is that fair for those uninterested in sports? Is it ethical?
A few outstanding universities do not participate in intercollegiate sports very much, if at all. The University of Chicago doesn’t. New York University doesn’t. Brandeis and Tufts don’t. MIT, Cal Tech, RPI, and Johns Hopkins don’t, either. Those institutions of higher learning are by no means dwindling. They have a worldwide influence.
A study was just published which said that most universities and colleges in the biggest athletic conferences spend from five to ten times as much for each student athlete as they do for all other students. Of course most of that money comes out of the athletic program income, but not all of it. In the Southeastern Conference, which spends the most per athlete, the various universities subsidize ordinary students $13,390 per year, but the athletes receive $163,931. There is a word for that, and it is this : obscene. How can a university possibly justify that?
Several years ago former University of Arizona president Peter Likins was the chairman of an NCAA panel which looked at the cost of college sports. Summarizing the panel’s findings, he said, “Athletics doesn’t go bankrupt at a university that can’t keep up with the success of (other athletic programs). It just is obligated to draw even more heavily on its parent. That creates stresses that I think will ultimately break the system apart.”
If he is correct in his assessment, how can universities cut down on athletic expenses? Here are some ideas. Instantly pay all the coaches at every level in the program a third to half of what they currently receive as salaries. Play every game in the football season against schools in their own conferences, rather than playing patsies or playing serious competitors located half a continent away. Re-create conferences that are reasonably regional, rather than irrationally national. Continue with intercollegiate football and basketball, plus a very few other sports, and make all other college sports intramural or club-oriented.
Let us turn from amateur professional sports in college to professional professional sports in the National Football League. The Atlanta Falcons are wanting a new stadium. Their current venue, the Georgia Dome, opened in 1992. The owner and management of the Falcons suggest the new billion-dollar stadium would be financed in a 30-70 public-private split. The citizens of Georgia would come up with $300 million, and the Falcons would pay $700 million. Upon completion, the State of Georgia would own the stadium, but the Falcons would retain all revenues: parking, concessions, and so on.
In order to help acquire their 70% of the money, the Falcons would issue what are called Personal Seat Licenses, or PSLs in sports-talk. The idea is that you pay several thousand dollars each year for your PSL, and then you are given the privilege of paying whatever seasons’ tickets cost, which is a very sizeable number. Sixteen other NFL teams sell PSLs, some for a paltry $1000 per season, for lousy seats, up to $80,000 for very good seats in the new 49ers stadium in San Francisco.
Quite apart from the proposed financing of this proposed new stadium in Atlanta, why do the Falcons need a new stadium, when the one they use now is only 20 years old? Are the Falcons trying to keep up with the Cowboys, Giants, Jets, Colts, and 49ers, with a new stadium? Is there venue envy, among other types of envy in males? Why not do what the Packers and Bears have done: update stadiums which were built shortly after the Mayflower sailed? Soldier Field and Lambeau Field are both outdoor stadiums, and those who play there are Real Men.
What is the essence of American football, as compared to global football, which is really football. Here’s how our football works: Really Big Galoots get the ball, and other Really Big Galoots knock them down. Then they get up and do it all over again. They do this for 60 minutes on the game clock, but it lasts three and a half hours by the time all is said and done. The primary physical necessity for this athletic pursuit, besides big-galootedness, is testosterone, and the more the better. Testosterone is what it’s all about. American football is the epitome of insanity, and millions love it. (That’s the psychology part to which I referred in the beginning.)
But on the other hand, is it truly wise, or even sporting, for very large grown men to smash one another to the extremely terra firma? Is there something inimical to health and well being in such an activity? As I said, the average tenure in the NFL is two years. Look at RGIII and his right leg. Or look at that other Washington Redskin, Joe Theismann, and the compound fracture he suffered years ago in his leg before millions of fans watching on Monday night in a never-to-be-forgotten game. That was visually the worst injury in an athletic event I have ever seen. The New Orleans Saints were fined severely for approving a pool of money set up to injure others players. Every years scores of football players, some famous and other not so well known, limp off or are carried off the field, never to return again. For what? For fame? For glory? For thymos? Where is the glory in living in pain and debilitation for the rest of your life? Does the rush of testosterone that brings on the injury make it all worth it?
For many players, for most I suppose, it does. It’s football, and it’s what they do. Nobody put a gun to RGIII’s head and told him to get out there against the Seahawks. He did it because he wanted to do it. It’s a jock thing, a male thing, a hormonal thing. And it isn’t like playing basketball or baseball or hockey or any other sport, except perhaps boxing or kickboxing or any other equivalent which promoters dream up. Americans should play the kind of football you kick with your feet, fusbol, as they say in Spanish. Dare I suggest it? – Football should voluntarily be banned, since it cannot and should not be outlawed. But that will never happen: never. To millions of sports fans, it is utterly unthinkable.
Head injuries in football are increasing, despite greatly improved helmets. CNN reported that 33% of NFL players have brain damage, according to a recent study. Boston University scientists did autopsies on former NFL players, and discovered that 33 of the brains they inspected had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). In an 8-month stretch of 2012, 4 current or former NFL players committed suicide. Suicide is very common among those with CTE, however they acquired it. The incidence of suicide is much higher for professional football players than for the population at large. It is theorized that head injuries are the cause. Their brains are robbed of the ability rationally to face the stresses of life.
The NFL is being sued by 4000 players, plus 1500 of their wives and children. They claim the league “deliberately ignored and concealed information” about the high incidence of concussions. If the NFL loses the suit, it may be the first in a needed series of events to change the rules of football in a major way. That would be a very good thing, despite the fans. We need to pay more attention to the players, even if the players refuse to pay attention to themselves.
In addition to this, there is no end to stories of athletes gone bad. There have been scores of arrests for crimes and misdemeanors, both for amateurs and professionals, and in most sports. Metta World Peace, who used to be Ron Artest before he changed his name, has been banned from the NBA for life. Before the 2012 college football season began, Allen Pinkett made a most unfortunate remark. He broadcasts Notre Dame games via radio. He suggested that the Fighting Irish would probably do better if they allowed more players of questionable educational or moral background onto the team. Mr. Pinkett was very sorry he said that, for he was taken to the woodshed by the powers that be in South Bend.
In the main, however, most sports at all levels attract good citizens who happen to have outstanding athletic abilities and abilities as coaches and managers. And there can be no doubt how much the lives of the fans are enhanced by their zeal for their chosen teams. The vicarious adrenaline rush they receive when their favorites hit a home run or throw a 78-yard touchdown pass or hit a game-winning basket at the buzzer cannot be scientifically measured, nor can it be psychologically dismissed. Nevertheless, it is real. It counts. It matters.
Sports teach lessons in life, and they do so for the athletes and coaches as well as for the fans: teamwork, the importance of discipline, the value of trying to perform at one’s maximum level, the depth of friendships engendered, the memories which shall last until the last gasp of breath passes into elderly and worn-out lungs. Even losses represent necessary lessons, because life, like sport, inevitably incurs loss.
Between Addison Street and Waveland Avenue in the city of Chicago there stands one of the greatest monuments to sports in the history of the world. Wrigley Field has been the site of thousands of National League baseball games, but it has been a thousand years since the Cubs last won a World Series. Still, day in and day out, year in and year out, decade after decade. 35- or 40,000 gather in hopes that this, this, this will be the year. In the past millennium it hasn’t happened, but maybe, just maybe…. Hope springs eternal in the Cubs fan’s breast.
There was a very long article in the Nov. 28, 2011 issue of Sports Illustrated. It was written by Terry McDonnell, who is the editor of the magazine. It is called “In My Tribe.”
Here was the opening paragraph. “In the fall of 1980, when SI senior writer Lars Anderson was nine years old and living in Lincoln, his father took him to the Florida State-Nebraska game. With less than a minute left in the fourth quarter, the highly favored Cornhuskers had the ball on the Seminoles’ three-yard line, trailing 18-14. That’s when heartbreak visited Nebraska: Quarterback Jeff Quinn fumbled. Florida State recovered. Game over. Then, as Seminoles coach Bobby Bowden and his team walked off the field, the crowd rose to its feet in appreciation of the underdogs’ hard-fought victory. At first it was just polite clapping, the kind you hear at a golf tournament, but then fans started cheering for Bowden and his players, building to one of the loudest roars of the day. Tears of disappointment rolled down Lars’s cheeks as his father put his arm around him, pointed to the red-clad fans in full throat and said, “Lars, this is as good as sports gets.”
How true it is. The ecstasy of victory, and the agony of defeat. Life played out on a gridiron, or a diamond, or a hardwood floor. The bitter and the sweet, all part of the essence of what happens out there.
“It’s not about scores and stats; it’s about stories,” Terry McDonnell said. How true that is as well. The fifteen-year-old girl gymnast who wows everyone in the Olympics. The indomitable woman who leads her team to victory in the biggest women’s football (which is to say, soccer) game of the century. The college wrestler with one leg who won the NCAA. The basketball player who comes out of the projects to become a great star in college and the NBA.
Sportswriters and sports screenwriters are some of the greatest journalists ever to set words to paper. The Boys of Summer. The Old Man and the Boy. The Pride of the Yankees. Bang the Drum Slowly. And this marvelous long piece in Sports Illustrated ends, as it began, with memories of that day in Lincoln, Nebraska. “The rearview mirror has always been the best oracle when it comes to sports. More than 30 years after Lars Anderson saw the Florida State-Nebraska game with his father, he was reporting a story about spring football and had lunch with Coach Bowden….Near the end of the conversation, Anderson mentioned that he was from Lincoln. The coach’s eyes lit up. Without prompting he recalled that day three decades earlier when the fans of Nebraska cheered him off the field. ‘What a moment,’ Bowden said, a grin spreading over his face. ‘Wow.’ And these two men, two generations apart, just looked at each other until Bowden spoke again. ‘The classiest thing I ever experienced.’”
And then Terry McDonnell finished with one two-letter word: “Us.”
We who love sports have lives that are exponentially richer because of our watching or our participation in various athletic endeavors, despite the huge monetary excesses. Sports aren’t for everyone, but for those for whom they are something, they are really something.
If you have detected some ambivalence here, your impression was correct. Money is corrupting sports at almost all levels. Nevertheless, sports are a major factor in what makes human beings human. Winning isn’t everything. But what a privilege it is to watch people try!