
Imagining an America Without Sports - pappyo
http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/imagining-america-without-sports-98627
======
austinl
Noam Chomsky has an interesting section about sports in _Understanding Power_
– he essentially asks: "what would society be like if all the attention given
to sports was put towards politics?"

 _When I 'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that
what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone
conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and
it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into
that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated
details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made
the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not
professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in
these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know,
understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say,
international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality
that's beyond belief... _

[http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-
so-m...](http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-so-much-
about-sports-so-little-about-world-affairs)

~~~
jordanpg
I've always enjoyed this quote, but I disagree that there is much in the way
of serious "analysis" happening when ESPN talking heads are arguing about
football game outcomes.

This Onion classic has always nicely summarized the seriousness of these sorts
of conversations for me: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-will-suffer-
humiliation...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-will-suffer-humiliation-
when-the-sports-team-f,10804/)

------
kylec

        Last week, on the first day of the fall term, he asked the students in his
        Cultural Politics of Sport class for their thoughts.
    
        “The students said they would see an America without sport as a world
        that is deficient. Almost none of them said something good about it,”
        King says, also noting that in a class of 50 students, only one didn't
        have an active relationship with sport—watching or playing—in the
        last week.
    

Students in a "Cultural Politics of Sport" class are hardly unbiased when it
comes to sports. It's unsurprising that they all watch or participate in
sports and feel that they'd be deficient without them. I'm sure I could round
up 50 peopke that hate sports and want them banned, but they wouldn't be
representative of the general population either.

------
jessaustin
_It’s very telling that there have been very few proposals from feminists or
kinesiologists or sports marketers to come up with a way that men and women
can compete together, or men and women can compete on a different kind of a
playing field._

This has puzzled me for decades. There are some sports in which men and women
compete together at the highest levels (e.g. horse racing), and there are some
efforts at other mixed competition at lower levels. However, these seem to be
minimized by everyone, and not even referenced as a benefit of which we'd like
to see more. I can't think of any arena besides sports of which that could be
said, although perhaps it might almost be said of the military. Even the
military is criticized _to an extent_ for the opportunities it denies women.
Yet, sports get a complete pass.

It is true that many sports would have to change in fundamental ways to allow
women and men to compete together at the highest level. That isn't really an
excuse, though, is it?

~~~
rglullis
Seriously asking, what opportunities are denied to women in sports?

~~~
jessaustin
Is there a single woman on any of the teams in any of the leagues listed at
the following?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_lea...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue)

~~~
EpicEng
It's a list sorted by _revenue_. Female sports don't make a fraction of what
male sports do. Female's in general are not as interested in sports as makes
are. Whether cultural or not is debatable, though I imagine at least a large
part of it is. However, a list like this is not proof that women are not
allowed the _opportunity_ , only that, when given the opportunity, they have
failed to capitalize on it. Look at the WNBA.

I of course admit that the argument can get circular. Current culture ->
unsuccessful female sports -> reinforcement of current culture.

EDIT: Care to comment? What about this is factually incorrect?

~~~
DanBC
They get paid less; they don't get to set their pay; but it's somehow _their_
fault that they get paid less?

~~~
rglullis
It's the same for men in fashion. It is just a matter of market value. We are
talking about opportunities here, not how valued they are.

~~~
jessaustin
You can talk about whatever you want. When I kicked off the thread, it was to
point out how the _structure_ of sports in our society puts women in a ghetto,
in ways that e.g. the admittedly imperfect tech industry doesn't even
_approach_ , and yet sports get a _complete_ pass on this. Even many outspoken
feminists settle for Title-IX-style resource-grubbing rather than challenging
the basic structure of the ghetto.

 _Any_ argument you might make defending the sports status quo would have
applied to any sexist cultural institution ever. Case in point: every single
sentence in the comment to which this is a response.

~~~
rglullis
I guess we are talking about very different things. I am talking about
opportunities in sports, not about the state of the sports industry.

The men's basketball medal counts just the same as the women's in the
Olympics. They both had to train and practice the same to get to that point.
That's all I care when I think about opportunities.

------
jordanpg
Why do we care about a hypothetical that is about as likely as an alien
invasion?

The more interesting questions are the sociological ones which ask why anyone
cares so much about sports in the first place. I don't care about sports in
the slightest, but I can keep myself entertained indefinitely with an internet
connection or an IDE. I don't think that's true for most people.

Sports seem to me to be a reflection of the modern human's boredom and need to
fill all of those hours with something exciting, dynamic, and community-
oriented.

~~~
thret
There's nothing modern about sports. We are much LESS* excited about them -
than the Romans were. We also don't pay our sports stars anywhere near as much
__.

_[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VPENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA56&dq...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VPENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA56&dq=history+of+the+decline+and+fall+of+the+roman+empire+greens+massacred+blue&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mSDEVKj2GoTMmwWr84GoDQ&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=history%20of%20the%20decline%20and%20fall%20of%20the%20roman%20empire%20greens%20massacred%20blue&f=false)
_*[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942699/Wealth-
of-todays-sports-stars-is-no-match-for-the-fortunes-of-Romes-chariot-
racers.html)

------
rglullis
Oh, Pacific Standard... good job, you actually managed to get me to read more
than half of it before getting to "white privilege".

~~~
hackuser
> "white privilege"

It's frustrating that it's mentioned so often, but perhaps that's because it's
so frequently present in our society. That's what frustrates me. I look
forward to a day when it's so rare that it barely needs to be mentioned.

------
decentrality
Sport, like culture, is not about any one individual, or any one kind of
participant: the "observation" that physically powerful male individuals
dominate sport is a) a fallacy, because it's b) a snapshot of a microcosm mis-
framed, because of a certain bias. Sport and culture ought to be a perfect
balance of the individual and the group, so if the society around it is out of
balance, sport will reflect that: not "perpetuate" that. Feels like people are
pointing at a mirror here and chastising it, not taking note from it and
changing something on this side of the reflection directly.

If anything, "America" needs to consolidate its sport habit and just not
dissipate so much, because by doing that it gets diluted and has a hard time
competing with the rest of the world. Other subcultures "master" a sport with
more depth across the group, versus being so spread out across so many
specializations and being an inch deep and a mile wide.

And by compete I don't mean "be better than" or "best" them, I mean "adhere"
to the well balanced state of play and acuity mixed together, along with the
deep immersion in one of the best schools teaching "human nature" in a way one
can actually learn from and do something with, versus behavioral sciences
which are theoretical or abstract and usually lead to political or
pharmaceutical work. Sport and "street smarts" go together, but on a total
scale -- one can "grok" an entire nation by assessing its sport programs,
provided the population is well enough represented in that program... complete
with laying bare the governmental and artistic, even religious underpinnings
of a subculture of this planet/lifeform we all find ourselves being.

------
gurp
It would be nice to see a country without such institutional tribalism. I
still can't get over how much of my college fees went to athletics.

------
thret
I think sports are great, good exercise, good fun, team work and strong
friendships and a healthy night out each week.

Watching strangers play sports is insane. Without some personal vested
interest, where is the point? The answer is sports betting: when you add
betting into the mix it does indeed make sense again.

~~~
splat
I don't know. I personally see it as being more like going to watch a pianist
perform. Sure, I can play a piano piece and it will be good fun and a
fulfilling experience. But a professional pianist who has devoted their life
to the art can do things that I am not capable of, and it's wonderful to
watch. Likewise, sometimes it's just amazing to watch professional athletes
showcase what the human body is capable of.

------
bdcravens
It may be popular to be all super intellectual and look down upon sports as an
activity of brute simpletons, but how much of the development culture uses
sports terminology and idioms?

"team" "winning" "hit a home run" "move the goalpost" "sprint" "scrum"

~~~
stewartbutler
How much of business culture uses military terminology or idioms? If sports
were eliminated I'm sure we would find something to fill the gap.

------
nsxwolf
This is funny. A bunch of nerds upset that millions of people like something
they don't understand.

~~~
itg
I don't see anyone being upset. It's a hypothetical that asks a few people
what would be the impact if sports didn't exist or play a major role in
American culture.

------
jbeja
I don't hate all sports, just the one that doesn't make much sense, like
baseball.

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revelation
This seems like on overreaction. It's only in the US that sports are so
laughably and harmfully bundled with education.

~~~
gurp
That's false. In Canada, I had to pay for my university sport teams.

------
ape4
No _pro_ sport would be fine.

~~~
jessaustin
I submit that college sports are far more damaging to society than pro sports.

------
fallingmeat
i'm for it

