This has definitely been a season companies and organizations trying to convince us that they are in the right and the other guy is wrong. Now, if you live in Manhattan, and other places in New York City, the basketball you thought you had back from the strike is gone again. Madison Square Garden and Time Warner Cable are fighting to, depending on which side you are listening to, keep our cable prices low or keep our local sports on the air. Time Warner is attempting to pacify their customers by offering us NBA TV and NHL Center Ice for a month and telling us they are working on it. MSG has mostly just told us to switch companies. Unfortunately, New York is one of those city’s that does not give everyone that option. So, in this game of impression management, it seems likely that only Time Warner can leave a good impression.
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A Class by Himself
The discussion has been all but put to bed on whether Eli Manning is an elite quarterback in Tom Brady’s class. Yet each time Eli completed a game, this season, his comments from the Michael Kay Show were again raised and either confirmed or questioned.
Despite all the controversy, this was truly a question of class intervals. There are some who complain about statistical research, and its presentation, because you can make the data say whatever you want. While this is not entirely true, data can be manipulated to support a particular perspective. If Eli Manning was even just the tenth best quarterback in the league, you could have quarterback rating or attempts and completion data arranged so that Eli and Brady are in the same category. The space between them might be large, but data can be arranged so that they are in one grouping and there is at least one other grouping containing quarterbacks who rank lower than Eli.
As it turns out, the data probably does not need to be manipulated so drastically but, its important to understand that, even at the beginning of the season when the interview occurred, Eli wasn’t just speaking to speak. He truly could place himself at the top of the class.
Knocking it Over
I watch some hockey, generally my local team and, more during the playoffs or if there are no other sports on. But I will admit that I was kind of cheering for the Canucks. They hadn’t won and I’m always in favor of anyone beating Boston at anything but…wow…was I surprised by the riots. Perhaps—despite my intention to always exhibit cultural relativity and see each culture as a member of that culture would see it and not as a representative of my own—I held a few stereotypes of Canadians as a whole (even with the understanding that, like us, they are a large and diverse country). As Americans, we often see them as nice, quiet people…and certainly non-violent. But, they can riot with the best of them. And I was extremely surprised to hear this wasn’t the first time this had happened.
Sports riots are really interesting examples of collective behavior. I wish I could have seen it unfold. Does it begin with one individual who accidentally sets fire to something? Does it start as aggressive chanting while watching the game? The behavior of a crowd usually begins with an emotion and there is little that is more emotional than a crowd of people forced to react to “their team” for hours with each other. Seeing others participating in the same behavior can also make it seem less deviant and, one often assumes, more anonymous. I’m sure it was surprising to everyone when participating individuals started to be identified online…
By My Merit
Yesterday
, I heard a conversation about how sports were one of the few places with a true meritocracy. That is, people are rewarded for good work and move up through the ranks (from high school, to college and eventually to the professional level) based on their skills rather than other characteristics that might have an effect on someone’s chances for promotion in other arenas. This was a surprisingly similar point to one that was made in a conversation I had a week ago with a friend. If sports are truly a meritocracy–one thing out of many that the ideal American culture strives for–can we find other cultural ideals in sports? Do sports represent all that America has been presented as on the world stage and all that we wish we actually were?
Think about the ideal American values of independence, achievement, material comfort and competition, these are all represented in the sporting world. The folklore of “rags to riches”, “man vs. machine”, “man vs. nature,” the Cinderella story and the norms of hard work and persistence are all things we strive to as Americans and that we can find in sports. Where sports fall short, however, is when we think of the values of democracy and education. Both of these are important in America but minimized in sports. Players unions give players some input into what occurs and there are a few very powerful voices in each sport, but, for the most part, we tend to think of athletes as the silent employees of a sports corporation. Education is not only minimized in sports but many of us chastise our athletes who choose to stay in school and complete their education once they have fulfilled their collegiate requirements. Should we change sports so that it does become a representation of ideal American culture or is what we have now as close as we’re ever going to get to it?