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?