Sports Obsession: A Commentary On Our Society
It seems to me that we are obsessed with sports in our society, not just in terms f the United States, but worldwide among the highly industrialized and heavily communicated society. I say this as one who has played football in my younger days, and spent 25-plus years as a martial artist, with the odd barbecue softball game and horseshoe pitching contest thrown in.
When I was a kid, we watched football games on Sundays during the fall, with Thanksgiving Day being the day that occupied our dreams of filling not only our stomachs with tasty morsels of the holiday, but also six or seven great games, including one between our favorite high school team and its arch-rival. Then we awaited the Super Bowl. But most of the time we didn't watch football, we went out and played football, leaving the watching activities for those special occasions aforementioned.
Then we moved into hockey season. Here too, we had special games where we watched the games on television. It wasn't until the end of the season, when the competion for a playoff position became the fiercest, that we bothered to tune in. Most of the season we were out playing street hockey, and hoping we were good enough to get invited to play during a private game at 2:00 AM in a rented rink, or on the peewee team. Sometimes we would even find a game at a makeshift rink in someone's back yard, or on a frozen pond close to our home. Our frenzy for watching hockey only took over during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
We had a lot of folks who were into basketball, which took over our sports interests for a short while, with some overlap with hockey. But once again, it wasn't until the playoffs that our interests reached a frenzy level.
Then there was baseball season. I was never much of a baseball fan. It struck me as being a rather useless game where a bunch of guys stood around waiting for the odd pitch to be struck by the odd batter, with all the real action occuring in about 10 seconds in an effort to get on base or force the runner out. It was just too slow moving for my vote. But I had friends that were caught up in the game and played every day during the baseball season. We used to take in one or two games a season as a spectator, usually because someone gave us tickets to a profession league game or our firends were in the local league playoffs. But watching baseball games was strictly seen as an activity taken up by an older generation sitting around in a bar... a celebration of days gone by.
We also had special sports that we watched on days when it was too inclement to go outside and play. ABC's Wide World Of Sports introduced us to sports we didn't see everyday, such as competitive skiing, the Olympics, and special reviews of the past sports season.
Don't get me wrong. I like sports to a certain extent. I don't mind watching the odd game on television if I am among friends, and the activities are not restricted to just watching the games. More important than the game is the socialization and connectivity that occurs on these occasions.
A good example of this concept was the time my wife won the use of the corporate skybox for the Chicago White Sox. It was not a playoff game, but it allowed us to fill the box with friends. We had a great deal of fun at corporate expense. We watched the game in an off and on fashion, but watched the premiere of a sci-fi movie that we had been anticipating, and episode of Star Trek: TNG that was among our favorite, ate a huge number of ballpark hotdogs, consumed a large quantity of imported beer, were introduced to some of the best foccacia sandwiches we've ever eaten, enjoyed some terrific carrrot cake, and met some new people... and sung "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. I do not recall if the White Sox won or lost, but I remember the occasion with fondness.
But we have become too focused on sports. Today, sports are on every television channel. Even those channels that are usually focused on movies interrupt the normal schedule for sports. This past weekend was a wash for those of us not fixated on sports. Several of the favorite movie channels in my cable lineup pre-empted the regular line up of movies to show several of the golf outings. I understand from the recap on the news that Tiger Woods pulled off a victory and offered an emotional tribute to his father who passed away sometime last year. In my book the most important part of that victory was the tribute to his dad.
But car racing is now added to the sports events that pre-empt regular programming. Now we cannot change the channels on our 70-plus cable channel system without tuning in golf, archery, poker (is that a sport), billiards, ultimate fighting, wrestling, cheer leading competitions, soccer, baseball, curling (which took a weird mesmerizing role during the recent Olympics), weight lifeting, strongest man competitions, more golf, Nascar racing, etc. And that wasn't even the lineup for the dedicated sports channels like ESPN.
For those of us that got our cable service to watch something other than sports, it's actually quite disappointing. This is especially the case when those remaining channels were either tied up with 24-hour commentary on the news (notice I did not say news) or showing movies that should have never been produced, never mind aired on mass broadcast media. And those of us that pay through the nose for a premium movie channel like HBO are not exempt from these dynamics. The movies shown on these premium channels are repeated incessantly, occasionally interrupted with a sports show, boxing events, recaps of past sports seasons, or some other sports event.
I have studied the sociological, psychological and educational benefits of sport in our society. While playing these sports have something significant to offer our society, watching sports on television--especially to the degree and extent that we currently indulge ourselves--doesn't seem to offer these same benefits. The loss of value in sports spectating via our televisions also occurs because our obsession leads us to examine our sports teams and players in terms of their foibles, vices and flaws. We now have sports heroes that are more known for their drug use, spousal abuse and social screw ups than for their playing of the sport.
I have used Judo and Aikido to facilitate group therapy for children and teens. In my younger days I used physical activities as therapy for behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children. So, I am fully aware of the benefits a healthy involvement in sports and physical activity can have... but, much like when I was a kid, it is the activity, not the sport itself, that offers these benefits.
Movies and television dramas, on the other hand, can provide benefit to our society through the mere watching of the show. Movies like "The Stepmother," "Pay It Forward," "A Few Good Men," "The American President," "You've Got Mail," "Nuts," "Star Trek TNG: The Measure Of A Man," "All The President's Men," "Law And Order" (all of them), "Seventh Heaven," "The Gilmore Girls," "Lorenzo's Oil," "Shawshank Redemption," "Sling Blade," "The Candidate," "ER," and others offer us a moral story. Our society thrives on having our morals examined in a story. All of the great sacred literature tells us a story that requires us to examine the morality of the events and the meaning of the story. In the Bible, all of Christian salvation is told in stopry format. The teachings of Christ are best impressed upon us by the story. Even some of the Adam Sandler movies, despite the fact that he always portrays some form of idiot, moron or jerk, tells us a story and offers us a moral dilemma to examine.
Seldom is there a moral story in the sports we watch. There are some social and moral lessons to be learned from playing, coaching and participating in sports, but watching sports doesn't seem to do much for society, our collective moral character or even the individuals watching. But we do seem to get a lot of social problems from sport spectatorship... problems related to the alcohol consumed during such spectator activities, soccer fans that create riotous disruptions, fights over team loyalty, and some more latent, insipious problems. These latent problems include the fact that we pay people more to dream up the ads shown during these events than we do for people to teach our children, care for our sick (not diagnose our sick, but actually care for them), serve our elderly, feed our hungry, intervene in family crises, address addiction problems, and deal with out real social problems. We are so busy and consumed by our obbsession with sports, we haven't even noticed that big corporations have taken over our sports and hiked up the price for watching a ten-cent ballgame to over $50 for nosebleed seats and sometimes thousands of dollars for the best seats in the house... and even more for the televised version because each of those ads we watch drain our resources away from dealing with our really important matters... our relationship to our friends, families, community, nation, society and such.
When I was a kid, we watched football games on Sundays during the fall, with Thanksgiving Day being the day that occupied our dreams of filling not only our stomachs with tasty morsels of the holiday, but also six or seven great games, including one between our favorite high school team and its arch-rival. Then we awaited the Super Bowl. But most of the time we didn't watch football, we went out and played football, leaving the watching activities for those special occasions aforementioned.
Then we moved into hockey season. Here too, we had special games where we watched the games on television. It wasn't until the end of the season, when the competion for a playoff position became the fiercest, that we bothered to tune in. Most of the season we were out playing street hockey, and hoping we were good enough to get invited to play during a private game at 2:00 AM in a rented rink, or on the peewee team. Sometimes we would even find a game at a makeshift rink in someone's back yard, or on a frozen pond close to our home. Our frenzy for watching hockey only took over during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
We had a lot of folks who were into basketball, which took over our sports interests for a short while, with some overlap with hockey. But once again, it wasn't until the playoffs that our interests reached a frenzy level.
Then there was baseball season. I was never much of a baseball fan. It struck me as being a rather useless game where a bunch of guys stood around waiting for the odd pitch to be struck by the odd batter, with all the real action occuring in about 10 seconds in an effort to get on base or force the runner out. It was just too slow moving for my vote. But I had friends that were caught up in the game and played every day during the baseball season. We used to take in one or two games a season as a spectator, usually because someone gave us tickets to a profession league game or our firends were in the local league playoffs. But watching baseball games was strictly seen as an activity taken up by an older generation sitting around in a bar... a celebration of days gone by.
We also had special sports that we watched on days when it was too inclement to go outside and play. ABC's Wide World Of Sports introduced us to sports we didn't see everyday, such as competitive skiing, the Olympics, and special reviews of the past sports season.
Don't get me wrong. I like sports to a certain extent. I don't mind watching the odd game on television if I am among friends, and the activities are not restricted to just watching the games. More important than the game is the socialization and connectivity that occurs on these occasions.
A good example of this concept was the time my wife won the use of the corporate skybox for the Chicago White Sox. It was not a playoff game, but it allowed us to fill the box with friends. We had a great deal of fun at corporate expense. We watched the game in an off and on fashion, but watched the premiere of a sci-fi movie that we had been anticipating, and episode of Star Trek: TNG that was among our favorite, ate a huge number of ballpark hotdogs, consumed a large quantity of imported beer, were introduced to some of the best foccacia sandwiches we've ever eaten, enjoyed some terrific carrrot cake, and met some new people... and sung "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. I do not recall if the White Sox won or lost, but I remember the occasion with fondness.
But we have become too focused on sports. Today, sports are on every television channel. Even those channels that are usually focused on movies interrupt the normal schedule for sports. This past weekend was a wash for those of us not fixated on sports. Several of the favorite movie channels in my cable lineup pre-empted the regular line up of movies to show several of the golf outings. I understand from the recap on the news that Tiger Woods pulled off a victory and offered an emotional tribute to his father who passed away sometime last year. In my book the most important part of that victory was the tribute to his dad.
But car racing is now added to the sports events that pre-empt regular programming. Now we cannot change the channels on our 70-plus cable channel system without tuning in golf, archery, poker (is that a sport), billiards, ultimate fighting, wrestling, cheer leading competitions, soccer, baseball, curling (which took a weird mesmerizing role during the recent Olympics), weight lifeting, strongest man competitions, more golf, Nascar racing, etc. And that wasn't even the lineup for the dedicated sports channels like ESPN.
For those of us that got our cable service to watch something other than sports, it's actually quite disappointing. This is especially the case when those remaining channels were either tied up with 24-hour commentary on the news (notice I did not say news) or showing movies that should have never been produced, never mind aired on mass broadcast media. And those of us that pay through the nose for a premium movie channel like HBO are not exempt from these dynamics. The movies shown on these premium channels are repeated incessantly, occasionally interrupted with a sports show, boxing events, recaps of past sports seasons, or some other sports event.
I have studied the sociological, psychological and educational benefits of sport in our society. While playing these sports have something significant to offer our society, watching sports on television--especially to the degree and extent that we currently indulge ourselves--doesn't seem to offer these same benefits. The loss of value in sports spectating via our televisions also occurs because our obsession leads us to examine our sports teams and players in terms of their foibles, vices and flaws. We now have sports heroes that are more known for their drug use, spousal abuse and social screw ups than for their playing of the sport.
I have used Judo and Aikido to facilitate group therapy for children and teens. In my younger days I used physical activities as therapy for behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children. So, I am fully aware of the benefits a healthy involvement in sports and physical activity can have... but, much like when I was a kid, it is the activity, not the sport itself, that offers these benefits.
Movies and television dramas, on the other hand, can provide benefit to our society through the mere watching of the show. Movies like "The Stepmother," "Pay It Forward," "A Few Good Men," "The American President," "You've Got Mail," "Nuts," "Star Trek TNG: The Measure Of A Man," "All The President's Men," "Law And Order" (all of them), "Seventh Heaven," "The Gilmore Girls," "Lorenzo's Oil," "Shawshank Redemption," "Sling Blade," "The Candidate," "ER," and others offer us a moral story. Our society thrives on having our morals examined in a story. All of the great sacred literature tells us a story that requires us to examine the morality of the events and the meaning of the story. In the Bible, all of Christian salvation is told in stopry format. The teachings of Christ are best impressed upon us by the story. Even some of the Adam Sandler movies, despite the fact that he always portrays some form of idiot, moron or jerk, tells us a story and offers us a moral dilemma to examine.
Seldom is there a moral story in the sports we watch. There are some social and moral lessons to be learned from playing, coaching and participating in sports, but watching sports doesn't seem to do much for society, our collective moral character or even the individuals watching. But we do seem to get a lot of social problems from sport spectatorship... problems related to the alcohol consumed during such spectator activities, soccer fans that create riotous disruptions, fights over team loyalty, and some more latent, insipious problems. These latent problems include the fact that we pay people more to dream up the ads shown during these events than we do for people to teach our children, care for our sick (not diagnose our sick, but actually care for them), serve our elderly, feed our hungry, intervene in family crises, address addiction problems, and deal with out real social problems. We are so busy and consumed by our obbsession with sports, we haven't even noticed that big corporations have taken over our sports and hiked up the price for watching a ten-cent ballgame to over $50 for nosebleed seats and sometimes thousands of dollars for the best seats in the house... and even more for the televised version because each of those ads we watch drain our resources away from dealing with our really important matters... our relationship to our friends, families, community, nation, society and such.
posted by Jim Downey at 3:17 AM
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