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?
The Big Broken Wheel
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?
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?
Tiger Trials
The M
asters this weekend seemed to bring up a lot people’s feelings about Tiger Woods. His up and down play ended up in discussions on many a sports radio show about whether people were rooting for him or rooting against him. I recall one radio personality saying that since so many golfers have extra-marital affairs, why should Tiger be the person who is not forgiven. There are a couple of potential reasons for this. First, there is the racial aspect. Is it easier to forgive someone who is more like you? Who you can relate to? Assuming that most golf fans are not African Americans (or that the African Americans who do watch golf are more likely to forgive Tiger), those who cannot let him back in to their fandoms may have done so because of that difference.
For others, it may be the persona he created and the long fall from that to where he ended up. What we saw, in viewing Tiger’s “front stage”, was this perfect icon. Unfortunately, his “back” and “off stage” were less forgiving. He did such a good job at impression management that his acts shocked us so much more than anyone whose back stage we had seen peaks of over the course of their careers.
Finally, it is the idea of deviance in general. Deviance is not absolute. Every society defines what is deviant through the lens of the culture of that society. There are several factors which define deviance and separate Tiger, to some extent, from people who have done similar deviant things. To begin with, there is the degree. Cheating on your wife with one woman is a particular level of deviance, cheating on your wife with 10, 11 or 12 women is another level of deviance, juggling many of those mistresses at the same time is still another level. Similarly, the size and the power of the group deciding what is deviant is important. While much of the population (and apparently many golfers) may have had dalliances, the fact that we think of Tiger’s many indiscretions to be representative of a minority of people, and, despite his fame, coming from a member of a minority population, what he does becomes deviant because it is different from what the power majority do. Finally, we often think of deviance as part of a socially patterned process. Someone who cheats once and crashes their car has committed a deviant act (or two) but is not necessarily a deviant. Someone who shows us that cheating is a pattern, an insanely complex pattern, makes us see him as a deviant.
So, that makes him different, and for many, more difficult to forgive. Not being much of a golf fan myself, I cheer for him because I’m tired of the story and I just want golf to go back to normal and stop interrupting my other sports stories.
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.
Strangers in a Strange Land
Last week, the MLB announced that 27.7 percent of the league’s 846 players were foreign born. This number is up from the
previous year but not as high as the all-time high in 2005. This percentage leaves many people confused. While the percentage of foreign born players, such as those from Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic has risen, the percentage of African American players has gone down. According to the last analyzed census, African Americans and Latinos were about equal in the population (12.3 and 12.5) respectively, yet African Americans were down to 9 percent in the MLB in 2009. Latinos were 27 percent. What does this mean for baseball and African Americans? Does this speak to the globalization of baseball and the draw of the MLB to baseball players all around the world? Or is this a matter of institutional discrimination where the discrimination against African Americans is built into the baseball system because the Latinos, who are often immigrants, do not have the power to fight against the oppression they might face?
Wherefore Art Thou Ladies?
Often we for
get that March Madness is not just the Men’s basketball bracket but that women play championship basketball too. They also play football (and sometimes not in their underwear), hockey and…I guess…softball. And yet, women’s sports, professional or otherwise, are often ignored, made fun or subordinated to men’s sports. Are we so intrenched in our gender roles that we can’t see women in roles that don’t fit our expectations of their gender? Is this why we will accept women in sports such as gymnastics and swimming? Because they are more delicate and ladylike? Or is it that we have been socialized to believe that some sports belong to men and others to women and anyone of the opposite sex attempting to play them is an imposter?
Let me ask you this. If basketball had been a woman’s sport before it was a sport for men, would we then think that men had bastardized this sport and taken this once wonderful thing and made it violent and ugly?
Whites need not apply
Last week, after BYU was eliminated from contention, reporters asked Jimmer Fredette whether he thought his style would fit well in the NBA. It seemed to me like a perfectly natural question. However, whoever was taking over for Mike Greeneburg the next morning on Mike and Mike (I believe it was Doug Gottlieb), commented that no one asked Kemba Walker the same question. Gottlieb’s explanation was because Fredette is white and Walker is black. The idea that a white man might have more difficulty being drafted into the NBA than a black man might be referred to as reverse racism but, the way many sociologists think about is with a basis in power. The non-dominant group, which in American society is still black men, cannot be racist towards white men because they do not have the power to. Perhaps there is prejudice–the belief that one group is inferior or superior–which leads to discrimination–behavior which differentiates between people based on those prejudice but not racism.
I don’t watch enough NCAA post-game news conferences but could there also be other reasons why Fredette was asked that question? Is it also possible that someone did ask Walker the question and it just didn’t get the same amount of attention?
UPDATE: Jimmer Fredetter wins player of the year. Is this an apology for the previous racism? Or is this a way of saying he is player of the year in the NCAA but probably won’t be in the NBA?
And the moral is…
According to Emile Durkheim, discipline is the first element of morality. I am reminded of this as I have read these various stories which bring to light elements of morality in college and professional sports. We know that discipline is an importa
nt part of sports—all athletes have to have the dedication to put in the work to improve their craft—but is morality? Should programs that emphasize sports also emphasize morality? Interestingly enough, the second element of morality for Durkheim is the attachment to social groups, also described as altruism. As a member of a team, professional athletes at least have the attachment necessary to work with their social group, and many of them, additionally have the altruism that leads them to start and contribute to charities. Yet, too often, we hear stories about their lack of morality. From Miguel Cabrera telling the police to shoot him,toCappie Pondexter tweeting a derogatory term for Japanese people (among other tweets) and even Jim Tressel, and his failure to notify Ohio State’s compliance officer about the potential violations of his students. Are athletes moral? Do we expect them to be? Or are they, in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, at stage 2 (individualism) where all the good they do is for the benefit of themselves, rather than for others?
And then we have Brandon Davies dismissed from Brigham Young University’s basketball team for failure to comply with the school’s honor code. He admitted to his teammates that he had premarital sex even knowing that the result would be his dismissal. Should we wish for more of sports to uphold this level of morality? Or should we find our moral compasses in other places?