Sports Pages #4--Sport in the Ancient World

In ancient Greece, the sports played were mostly the olympic sports of today. Discus throwing, wrestling and track and field were some of the major events. The Greek athletes were very highly regarded and competed in the nude to show off their impressive physiques. The spectators thought very highly of the athletes, almost as gods, and almost anybody could compete provided you had the ability. Most of the events were not contact sports, however, and in that they differed from the Romans.
The Romans engaged in much more brutal and violent sport. They fought to the death and the emphasis was less on physique and more on killing ability. Romans also liked to race their chariots, but even those contests could get violent. Ultimately, both the Greeks and Romans placed high value on winning and triumph.
The rules of the sports were very different between Greeks and Romans. Greeks were controlled, rule-oriented and precise. There were set rules for each sport and the audience and athletes alike new them and followed them. There was much more structure in Greece, an ordered timeline of things. In Rome, it was more about win or die. The public would show up to the arena and people would fight to the death--those were about the only rules.
In Greece, sport functioned as a much more religious institution than in Rome. The Greek athletes were competing to show respect for Zues and the other Greek gods. Out of reverance for them, their athleticism was an attempt to show the gods that they've been using the bodies given to them well. In Rome, however, the games were much more for the entertainment of royalty and commoners alike. Also, Roman games probably served a political function as a great spectacle to behold and a forum for lots of political compromise much like the golf course serves business today.
The participants in Greek games were males of any age. Women were generally not allowed to play. The Romans used mostly slaves or captives as gladiators. They were forced to keep athletic bodies and train and were treated badly because their ultimate fate was death. They were also mostly men, but there's evidence women competed sometimes.

Sports Pages #3--Sport, Sociey & Me

A) Sport has had a connection of varying strengths to me throughout my life. Growing up sport was a big part of my life (as it was for many). I played a sport for every season of the year, sometimes playing multiple sports in a season and on two occasions playing in two different leagues for the same sport (baseball) during the same season. That experience was pretty rough and, as a pitcher, contributed to the right shoulder issues I deal with today.
By the time I got to highschool I was almost burned out on sport. I still played football my freshmen year but baseball had wrecked my arm, hockey had become unappealing because my friends were put in a different age class, basketball had lost interest on me and soccer, well soccer was never a big part of my life.
Being from the city of Chicago, though, I've always been a huge fan of all the local teams. And especially since coming to Colorado for school, my fandom has only increased because I like to represent my city and teams even more. It's more special to me because it's one of the few connections to home I have left (my parents divorced, sold the house and moved away since I've come out here)

B) Sport in the US can be both hugely positive and negative. It can give hope to disadvantaged kids who might otherwise have no opportunity to succeed in life. Some of these kids can turn into huge superstars and support their family and friends for the rest of their life. But on the other hand, sport can reinforce racial stereotypes and has provided an environment for severe bullying and conflict among both kids and adults.
Sport, overall, is important in American society mostly in that it's a huge money-making machine for a lot of people. Sport is entertainment and has made lots of people into millionaires and billionaires. But it's important for the fans, too. They feel a sense of solidarity and belonging both with each other and the players. The ups and downs of a season are exciting and exhilarating and provide entertainment and fun for the whole family.
Athletes hold a funny position in society. The currently playing athletes are at the top tier, they're "cool", they hang around celebrities (heck, they ARE celebrities) and spend the big money for the cool things. The instant an athlete retires they plummet social ranks until most of them are close to the bottom within a decade of retirement. Maybe it's cruel, maybe it's fair considering the huge social privilege they enjoy growing up. But as long as they are playing (well) and winning, they will be respected role models of kids and adults alike as long as they don't have some big scandal (which they always seem to)

Final Reflections

Before I took this class, my perception of US sport was that there is a lot of money involved, there's a lot of ugly things going on that are invisible to the common consumer, and that I knew there was a dark side to sport but never really looked into the actual details of it. As a fan, it can get easy to get washed up in everything about sports and not take a critical look at how mass entertainment can influence our values and the way we think about the world and each other. I've definitely grown in how I understand sport, but almost more so from the athletes in the class themselves. I used to be on a highly athletic path and I could just as easily see myself in their shoes; various circumstances have put me where I'm at and them where they're at, and I have enjoyed seeing how our perspectives have changed and developed over the years since I've left the realm of participating in sport and crossed into the consumer realm.

It's hard to predict the influence this class will have on whether or not I will ask more critical questions concerning sport moving forward. On the one hand, consuming sport and being a sports fan can be a very fun and engaging hobby (or way of life, really) and to acknowledge a lot of the things we talk about can serve to diminish the pleasure one gets from consuming their sport. But not to acknowledge some of these things is to turn a blind eye and be an ignorant sheep, a part of the herd. It comes down to enjoying the sport we love while doing what we can ourselves, as fans, to help these issues find solutions.

I'm not sure of the applicability of skills from this class to my future career. For one, I'm still not entirely sure what I want that career to be, and two, I've taken a couple other sociology classes and the general skills are similar, differing in what they're applied to. But I can say that as a psychology major, if I pursue a career in psych I will definitely be a better informed psychologist having taken this class. Intersectionality is a huge take away for me, from all sociologically-minded classes including this one, and I think it will be an important concept to keep in mind throughout my life, as a young middle-class white male able-bodied person, in assessing to what degree my accomplishments are wholly merited or thanks in part to my social privileges.

Why the 'Mans Mans' Game is an Insult to Men

In the documentary Training Rules, the coaching tactics of Rene Portland are used to illustrate widespread homophobia in women's collegiate sports. Portland's three rules were No Drinking, No Drugs, No Lesbians. An important point the movie notes is that even though Penn State passed non-discrimination policy in 1991, which included discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, Portland was allowed to continue her policy of dismissing any player found out to engage in lesbian activity.
Sport is not, at the moment, a safe place for an LGBTQ athlete to occupy. I might guess that there are a small number of coaches and teams in the US who foster a safe environment for the LGBTQ community, but I would also guess these coaches and teams to be in specific leagues/places whose mission is to provide such a safe place. In other words, no school teams, travel teams, pro teams, or any team traditionally consisting of "normal" athletes have tolerant coaches and atmospheres. Although this is shifting--Jason Collins and many other pro players are now openly gay--sport is still not a safe place. Maybe in 20 years, if this paradigm shift continues unhindered, sport will be able to be a safe space for LGBTQ athletes.

Hockey and football still lack any players who have openly come out as gay. The NBA's Jason Collins came out last year, and so did soccer's Robbie Rogers. Michael Sam is an NFL draft prospect who has come out, but no current NFL player has come out. However, several NFL players have been quoted that sexual orientation would pose no threat in NFL locker rooms. It's like race or religion, Clay Mathews of the Packers said. He detailed that it doesn't matter what color a person is, or what religion they follow, or what their sexual orientation is. For him, it's all about the production a player makes on the field; whether or not they actually play well. This is an admirable viewpoint, but can we assume the majority of his fellow NFL players agree?

I think not, because if that was the general sentiment throughout the league we would have already seen a current NFL player come out. Clearly there's still some prejudice and discrimination going on an NFL player still doesn't feel comfortable being the first openly gay footballer and accepting all the attention that comes with it.

The primary strategy I would use in making sport more inclusive isn't as much a strategy but a phenomenon, a paradigm shift, and we are seeing the beginnings of it now--players coming out to the public and feeling comfortable doing it. Since the first straw has broken (Jason Collins), many many more will follow and soon everybody will know just how common gay pro athletes are (and maybe society will realize how common homosexuality might be). An environment of tolerance and inclusiveness must start with the players and extend up through the coaches and into administrations and owners. Eventually, tolerance will be the norm (hopefully).

Sports Pages #13

Sport can have a large influence on the culture of African Americans. Some African Americans come to rely on their athletic talents to get them an education. Black players can get into feeder and private schools they might not otherwise, due entirely to social and economic factors, have the opportunity to attend. For instance, I went to a private college prep high school in the suburbs of Chicago and there were a number of black student-athletes who took the bus from the inner city every day. They were probably recruited for their athletic talent and economic need.

The Blind Side is a movie which, to some extent, accurately portrays the experience many black professional athletes endure in their road to stardom. Many black players come from disadvantaged backgrounds, having little opportunity and less money. But it can just take one scout, just like in Hoop Dreams, to believe in a players talent and give them an opportunity to shine. But not all players are perfectly built for their position and enjoy good health and make it all the way. Hoop Dreams shows this reality--that injuries and family issues can and often do throw a wrench in a players hopes and dreams, and despite their hardest effort and insurmountable motivation they can't make it big.

While sport has allowed many African Americans to enjoy prosperity and recognition, it is likely that for the rest of black Americans, the 99.99995%, sport only furthers stereotypes and preserves the myth of race as biologically and significantly different. The prevalence of blacks in some sports and whites in other sports contributes the the false idea that there is some biological difference in athletic ability and intelligence, which is not entirely true (while genetics determines race, there is no single "race gene") This leads to people thinking that there is some inherent difference between races--that some should be valued for certain traits more than others, when the truth is that traits are largely randomly distributed among all races.

"You Throw Like a Girl": Sports, (Wo)men & the Gender Order

In a commercial for Adidas sportswear, Derrick Rose is shown battling with Spanish bullfighters in a foreign looking arena. Basketball in hand, he charges the fighters' red capes as if he's a bull but instead of aggressively trying to gore the matadors, he puts on the moves and jukes them. After he makes the last matador look silly, he speeds towards a conveniently placed basketball net and dunks the ball in slow-mo fashion. Cheers erupt and flowers are thrown.

 

 The first gendered aspect I noticed about this advertisement is that Derrick Rose is being directly compared to an animal. Bulls are very strong and very large, they can be very aggressive and intimidating, and they can easily maim another human being. Those traits, therefore, are valued today in sport as being preferable to other types of strength such as discipline, intelligence or sensitivity.

This comparison of a player to a bull, in this commercial, only takes into account what we perceive to be the traits associated with bulls that we also like to see in players. We like to see toughness, grit and resistance to pain. But there are other aspects of bulls that we wouldn't want to associate with players, and this ad tries to keep those traits from coming to mind. For instance, we fatten bulls to slaughter them so they're tasty. The difference between this ad and real bullfighting is that the bull is killed for the entertainment of the audience at the end. Am I to assume Derrick Rose is to be maimed following his epic dunk?

Another way this commercial is gendered is through the roles males and females play. There are no women in the ring, on the field. The picadors on horseback and the matadors with their capes are all white men (there's a racialized aspect, too, in that they're versus a black man). It's not until a shot is shown of the crowd jumping on their feet that a woman is shown. And it doesn't even show her face. All we see is her shoulder and breast and some hair as she jumps up and roses fill the air.

This commercial reinforces gendered stereotypes and roles through its depiction of Rose as a bull and of women as only spectators. Although the content of the ad itself doesn't explicitly state this, one can analyze these messages from looking more closely at the roles of all involved and at thinking about what isn't shown and what's not on screen.

Once the cheering stops: The life of a retired pro-athlete

We all like to think that after a pro athlete retires they live a glamorous and easy life. Not only do we LIKE to think this, but most of us really assume that somebody good enough to make it to the professional level will make the big bucks and live off their pro earnings the rest of their life. The reality is that most pro athletes are flat broke within 5 years of their retirement.
The life of most retired pro athletes isn't the prettiest. Many of them continue their high spending habits and risky financial investments. Many of them have trouble finding their niche and redefining themselves outside the context of football. And they have a greater chance of living in poverty than similarly aged, college-educated people.

Players face many challenges in their transition to the retired life. They are no longer bringing in big bucks so they have to think more long term about savings and about budgeting. Players think they are shoo-ins for TV and broadcasting jobs and don't realize the skill and training required to succeed in that job. Retired players don't always fully comprehend that they don't have access to their pensions until they're 45 and they can't touch their 401(k) until they're 59 and a half. They have a couple million in their bank following retirement and they don't see that the math doesn't work out when they're spending twenty or thirty or forty thousand dollars a month.

A big reason athletes struggle so much is that they are coddled and enabled by their peers and family all their life. They're told how great they are and they often don't have to deal with real world consequences because their privilege as a gifted athlete often precludes them from actual punishment or consequence. Because of this, and not really through the fault of the athlete, they attain a glorified and unrealistic image of themselves, and they view themselves as invincible. When they finally retire, all of that vanishes in an instant and they are suddenly smashed in the face with the realization that they were a commodity, used for their ability.

Various pro leagues have started to offer their current and former athletes programs and services aiming to improve their life after sport. The NFL has a player engagement division which tries to ease the transition for its players by holding boot camps and "mini-MBA" programs and advising them. The NBA assigns former players to each team as "ambassadors" to guide them in the pro and retired life. But either these programs are not utilized by enough players or they aren't of good enough quality because money is still a huge issue for players after retirement.

I remember hearing these types of stories many years ago because my father was a fan of the Intellectual Assassin, Ron Mix. Every kid player had dreams of becoming pro and most of us come to the realization eventually that we won't become pro and make millions; I distinctly remember feeling great comfort in the misfortunes of retired athletes: maybe it wouldn't have been worth it.