While we often think about deviance as being a negative for society, there are many sociologists who recognize
a purpose for it. Durkhiem says that one of the four functions of deviance is to release tension, and while sporting events shouldn’t be deviant, fans do participate in deviant acts during sporting events like they wouldn’t any other place. The negative interactions that fans can have with players (like the events which led to the brawl at The Palace or Charles Barkley and the Miami fans or with each other (the Giants fan beat up in Dodgers stadium, the little kid in the Jets uniform tackled by a Browns fan represent, what we hope, is abnormal behavior in the non-sports life of sports fans. One hopes that because they have the release of the game, and the drinks and the rowdiness (or in other cultures, the hooliganism), they can control those urges in other places. I think the big question here is why are sporting events an allowable place for this? It seems as though there is historical precedence for this—the amount of rowdiness displayed by the Greek during arena fights comes to mind—but is this really why Jet fans at Gate D at Giants Stadium used to grope women and request flashing during halftime?
Archive for the 'NFL' Category
Relax…Release…
Under New Management
I’ve spoken before about dramaturgy and the fact that we represent ourselves the way we want to be seen. I mentioned the NFL owners and unions who wanted to make sure that the other person is seen as the bad guy. But what about players? What kind of impression management do they participate in? Masculinity seems to be a big one. I was surprised by the number of stories that came out, one after another, about players not seeming tough or hard or participating in some kind of behavior that is deemed not manly enough. But there are other things. What about Jay Cutler not seeming upset when he couldn’t get back into the game? Or all the times announcers say that they can tell when the team or players aren’t into it? The most recent example was last night’s game. I heard on the radio that some people felt that LeBron’s pregame speech was faked, that he was playing to the cameras. Is this something else that athletes have to do? Do they have to take each game as life and death because we fans see it that way and we want to know that they do too? And when they don’t, when they seem tired or don’t play as we expected, do we decide that they don’t take the game seriously and will therefore not have success? I wonder if this encourages them to pretend and play their role so they audience will come to their games and buy their jerseys. And if it doesn’t, why not?
Tears of a Man
I don’t know why but it’s been hard to get away from masculinity the last few posts. I’m enj
oying watching the NFL Draft (sadly, I have a Christmas-like enjoyment of the event) and I look up to the TV as I hear Chris Berman say, “It looks like he’s been selected. He’s crying in the back room.” Crying in a room, huh? Where have I heard that before?
Masculinity in sports is surprisingly contextual. There are things we accept, and places that we accept them, and there are things that we won’t. The Miami Heat players crying in the locker room is, in Brannon’s words, ‘sissy stuff’ but draft picks crying because they have made it to the NFL is okay for the ‘sturdy oak’. Barbosa and Evans holding hands after beating Orlando generates controversy within the NBA but butt-slapping during a football game, or even one time I remember Nate Robinson jumping on Steve Francis’ back and riding him like a horse, are perfectly accepted. Do new members of sporting society know what the rules are? Where the boundaries of their masculinity lie? Or do they get socialized through our reactions and hazing processes—taking them to the line which defines that which is deviant, and not masculine—and then dragging them back?
The Big Broken Wheel
The end of any season brin
gs with it player injuries. Whether the team can overcome them is often less important than whether the player can overcome them. Our first response to player injuries in all sports is “suck it up” and it is because of this response that games like Madden feel they have to promote the danger in playing with a concussion. While gender roles have changed over time, much of our perspectives on things like masculinity haven’t, especially not in sports. In the 1970s, we looked to Brannon’s characteristics of masculinity and, today in our sports, they are as true as ever. Our sports stars are always “the big wheel”—the successful individuals that we continue to look up to regardless of what they do. They “give ‘em hell” as we celebrate their aggressiveness, elbows to the face and bloody uniforms. We do not allow the “sissy stuff” and expect the “study oak” that represents being tough, hard and confident, and far away from anything that might be considered feminine. And so we expect Amar’e to play with back spasms and Kobe and Rose to play with sprained ankles. And we chastise Jay Cutler because he wasn’t study enough to not get hurt or giving them enough hell to force himself back into the game. Are our masculine expectations leading our athletes towards further damage? Or is that just the cost you pay to be the big wheel?
Mostly Homers
Watching the playoffs often means watching your favorite team through the eyes of a national audience. While many of us would deny our own analysts as “homers,” we still find a level of familiarity in them that often makes us turn to them in times of sport. As sports fans, we develop an “us” vs. “them” mentality—our team vs. their team, our fans vs. their fans. Without even thinking about it, we have defined our in-group and our out-group. Within our in-group, we have loyalty. We will follow our in-group and accept much of what they do, even if we wouldn’t stand for it from others. A foul is dirty when committed by someone in our out-group but it becomes justified, or not a foul at all, when a member of our in-group is accused. We accept criticism from our fellow fans, analysts and commentators in a way we would not from those in the out-group. Are we truer fans if we appreciate the challenge of listening to our out-group announce our games or, can we still be called fans if we find ourselves muting TNT and ESPN whenever we can?
Madden-ing
It has been reported that the new Madden includes a concussion provision. This means that when your player has one of those head-to-head or head first hits, they not only get a concussion but an explanation of what it means medically and a forced bench visit for the rest of the game. While I certainly think that this could change some of the flow of the game, I also think that it is a learning experience. I’m not someone who thinks that all violent video games lead to violent behavior (or all violent children are that way as a result of violent media) but I do believe in socialization. You can be socialized in all types of ways by different agencies of socialization (family, community, peer group, etc) and the media (in which I am including video games) is one way. I learned football from Techmo Bowl and, though I didn’t go out and think that the sport was played by tiny blurry images on the monitor I used to use for my Nintendo, Techmo Bowl brought me into football and made it part of who I was. Maybe, just maybe, the kids who grow up playing Madden 12 will associate the lessons they learned about concussions with their socialization into football and, without judgment, they will understand the results of a head-first tackle, the seriousness of the resulting injury and the “normal” response of sitting the game out.
Legit or Quit
I was glad to hear this afternoon that 24 hours were added to the NFL labor talks. Like most other sports fans, I wait anxiously every year for football to come back and a stall in labor negotiations, a NFLPA decertification and/or a player lockout would get in the way of that. For me, this process has made me realize that there is no neutral party when it comes to the NFL. The NFL, as I assume other sports do, has a legitimation crisis. Externally, we see the commissioner as upholding football, doing what is in the best interests of the sport for its present and its future. However, the person who holds this authority is also an employee of the owners. It is close to impossible to serve both masters and the legitimacy of the institution is challenged by claiming that a commissioner can. I don’t know if the various sports bodies have ever advertised the lack of separation of commish and owner or whether the general public has ever questioned it but I definitely have concerns now, as I didn’t before, when judgments are made that are supposed to make the league better. But maybe I’m the only one who didn’t realize what the score was…
Total Authority
The aspect of the total institution is that is arguably least present in sports is the qualification that “all aspects of life are conducted in the same place under the same single authority.” Each sport has a commissioner, as well as a CBA and other rules governing the sport, and all of the players involved are expected to follow that authority. Depending on the sport, or (most often in the MLB) the team, there are rules which govern dress, action and sometimes even how conversations occur on and off the field, court or ice
Where sports escape the total institution label to some extent is that, in general, they are allowed to conduct aspects of their life outside of their sport. However, when contracts include morality clauses, players’ behavior when they are not at work becomes regulated by the same authority which governs their work.
Additionally, while football players have most of the week to be at home and live their lives as they please, basketball and especially baseball players, spend much more time on the road and often have college dorm like rules that structure their awake and sleeping times (NFL training camp is run similarly). Even in the case of football players, their lives off the court can often be scrutinized by their fans, the media and the league which has a similar effect as being constantly under that authority, as evidenced by the backlash around Roethlisberger’s night out during the super bowl week.
What do you think? Can we say that, despite the option to go home and live beyond the sight of their sport, professional athletes lives are still constantly monitored?
The Inmates and the Asylum
Like others, I heard Dick Vitale last week refer to the inmates running the asylum. This was not the first time I had heard this and while it has most recently been directed at basketball and the string of free agents who have either explicitly or implicitly directed themselves towards particular teams, I have also heard it used to describe players in the NFL whose salaries have set the market and baseball players who have made contract demands on deadlines.
For me, this brings up a couple of issues. First, the phrasing of the “inmates running the asylum” takes me immediately to Erving Goffman’s book, Asylum. In his book of essays, he talks about mental hospitals and what it means to be in a “total institution” and “live an enclosed, formally administered round of life” with “like-situated individuals.” It brought me to think about whether the characteristics of Goffman’s total institution can be applied to the business of sport and the lives of the players.
Additionally, there are the race issues. In most American sport industries, the players—the workers—are minorities (usually, African American although baseball has the unique distinction of being more Latino than African American) and the owners are not. Given this power structure, to refer to the athletes as inmates and to be offended or disgusted that they are gaining some power and “running the asylum” connects too closely with the idea of a slave revolt.
My ideas around these two issues are forming slowly and I hope to express them here over my next few posts