It sickens me a little bit when some of my self-proclaimed intellectual friends decry the uselessness of sports. "A useless distraction," some call it. "A waste of time when you could be doing better things that are useful to society," they also say. I have even seen some call sports an accepted outlet for men to vent their primal, animalistic aggressions and take glory in others' accomplishments to compensate for their perceived inadequacies in life. Really?
But to defend sports on purely a recreational basis isn't enough. There's fun to be had in reading a book or watching a TV show alone. Without a doubt, allegiance to a sports team or sports city can be a form of tribalism. As a sports fan of Philadelphia sports teams, I'll acknowledge for a little bit that we can be a little unreasonable, belligerent, and borderline assholes about the success of our teams (when they do come). However, I'm not planning on being any less annoying, belligerent, aggressive, or whatever else you might want to call it about the 76ers especially.
Ultimately, it comes down to being a part of something that's much bigger and more important than yourself. Even as a Division III cross country runner who doesn't often score at meets, the slightest notion that I pushed my teammates to do better is a great feeling. I derive inspiration not from my teammates' successes, but from how they persevere through adversity, how someone is so injured they can barely walk one day, and a few weeks be better than they ever were.
In high school, I once broke some journalistic convention and wrote an article for my high school newspaper about my friend and teammate, Charlie Theiss, who would come to summer runs and be dropped by the seniors on the team less than 20 minutes into each run. But he came to every single one, when some may have not have run all summer. By his senior year, Charlie would become arguably our best runner, running a half-mile in 1:53 and a mile in 4:18. My senior year, I saw my teammates text in our group chat and wake up at 4:50 a.m. to do a double, a second run of the day. My teammates' passion, commitment, and hard work to our team meant that I had to give no less. To this day, you can argue that I work hard to a fault, but I know my teammates in college do the same, on and off the track. And I'm pretty damn proud of them.
This sports tribalism fills a deeper need for in-grouping with people we normally don't expect ourselves at all to associate with. On my high school track team, we often found an extremely motley group of athletes: people looking to stay in shape for other sports, people who got cut from other sports, people whose moms forced them to do a sport, and people who had run since they were 10. In a rise of populism and age where almost everyone seems to be politically polarized, we can at least unite in the mutual hatred of people like Tom Brady. But this in-group, mob-like mentality is arguably superior to that which might result from, say, politics because of how much we perceive is at stake. Not everyone on my team has the same political views, needless to say.
There is so much of value that people associate with politics: their economic security, identity, and freedoms. Quite frankly, no one is that adversely affected if their favorite baseball team is shut out, or if their football team goes 0-16. At the end of the day, every sports fan has enough awareness to realize "it's just a game" and credit their opponent's abilities. No one doubts Tom Brady's ability as a football player, and don't lie, you would absolutely love to have him on your side. To conservatives: it was pretty nice to have David Sutter on our side too. But when it comes to our legislators? Our president? God, it's not just a game anymore.
Recently I was heavily disheartened by the protests against Charles Murray at Middlebury College. Unfortunately, it seemed like the protesters lumped Murray, who co-wrote the The Bell Curve (a controversial 1994 book linking intelligence to race and class), into a series of monoliths. The same type of monoliths that we apply to President Trump's voters as bigots. Chants of this nature called Murray racist, sexist, anti-gay, and a white supremacist. He was silenced for speaking and forced to move to another location. After they moved the debate to another location, the liberal professor that hosted Murray, Alison Stanger, received a concussion when trying to protect Murray.
Never mind that Murray has a doctorate from MIT, and he was there to discuss another book: Coming Apart. Never mind that he's not actually anti-gay. According to Stanger, "some of my faculty colleagues had rendered judgment on Dr. Murray’s work and character without ever having read anything he has written." The protesters chose to combat Murray's questionable and possibly hateful ideas by denying him a platform, by denying him a face. It's easy to render judgment and even violence when you rob what's human of an individual and paint the person as a caricature. The same way Trump may have caricaturized Hillary as a criminal, Muslims as terrorists, or Mexicans as illegal immigrants, were the tactics used by Middlebury's protesters in challenging Murray.
I grow a little disillusioned whenever I'm reminded of this incident. My views coincide with many of the protesters, but not the way they expressed them. If this is what it means to be liberal and part of this "team", then I'm not sure I can identify as a liberal anymore. I want democrats to win. I always will. But this is not the way to do it. There's a reason why "liberal" is one of the most hated words in America right now.
But I digress. So why should we start focusing more on sports? To unite our country.
In Clint Eastwood's Invictus, Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) is released from prison after 27 years on Robben Island. Four years later, he becomes President of South Africa, the first black president in the post-apartheid era. He focuses much of his attention on the 1995 Rugby World Cup hosted in South Africa, to the frustration of many of his advisers, who told him there were more important issues to deal with.
The South African rugby team, the Springboks, were often seen as a symbol of apartheid. The new South African Sports Committee wishes to change the name and uniform of the Springboks, but Mandela urges them to support the Springboks. The captain, Francois Pienaar, urges his team to support Mandela's recommendations that they tour South Africa and teach rugby to kids. At the end, the team wins the World Cup, and Mandela hands Pienaar a Springboks jersey. South Africans of all colors cheer in celebration.
Yes, Invictus is a little idealistic. No, a rugby game didn't fix all the racial tensions in South Africa. But few will argue that our current political climate is near the same level of division as South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a step towards unity, and a crucial one at that. Divisions will never be completely cured in a single stroke. The film showed many South Africans looking each other in the eye and hugging for the first time in ages. They stopped seeing each other as caricatures and as humans, and that is a very, very important step for our country today.
Logistical problems present themselves in American sports: liberals and conservatives don't like watching the same sports as much. Liberals like the NBA more, while conservatives are more likely to watch NASCAR and the PGA Tour. However, college basketball falls squarely in the middle. In the midst of March Madness, I've noticed in my own bubble and inner circle, I haven't heard politics brought up as much. I haven't heard the word Trump brought up the whole weekend. It's a small distraction, but seeing everyone reveling Duke's loss to South Carolina brought a smile to my face.
In the end, maybe those naysayers were right. Sports are a waste of time. They are a distraction. They likely won't fix any of our real problems. But they can surely help unite us, even just for a moment and see the humanity in each other. And even if it's just in the hatred of Duke.
