5 ms·

Imagining an America Without Sports

44 points by pappyo 12y ago

fallingmeat 12y ago
i'm for it
kylec 12y ago
Last week, on the first day of the fall term, he asked the students in his Cultural Politics of Sport class for their thoughts. “The students said they would see an America without sport as a world that is deficient. Almost none of them said something good about it,” King says, also noting that in a class of 50 students, only one didn't have an active relationship with sport—watching or playing—in the last week. Students in a "Cultural Politics of Sport" class are hardly unbiased when it comes to sports. It's unsurprising that they all watch or participate in sports and feel that they'd be deficient without them. I'm sure I could round up 50 peopke that hate sports and want them banned, but they wouldn't be representative of the general population either.
ape4 12y ago
No pro sport would be fine.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  I submit that college sports are far more damaging to society than pro sports.
rglullis 12y ago
Oh, Pacific Standard... good job, you actually managed to get me to read more than half of it before getting to "white privilege".
- hackuser 12y ago
  > "white privilege" It's frustrating that it's mentioned so often, but perhaps that's because it's so frequently present in our society. That's what frustrates me. I look forward to a day when it's so rare that it barely needs to be mentioned.
jordanpg 12y ago
Why do we care about a hypothetical that is about as likely as an alien invasion? The more interesting questions are the sociological ones which ask why anyone cares so much about sports in the first place. I don't care about sports in the slightest, but I can keep myself entertained indefinitely with an internet connection or an IDE. I don't think that's true for most people. Sports seem to me to be a reflection of the modern human's boredom and need to fill all of those hours with something exciting, dynamic, and community-oriented.
- thret 12y ago
  There's nothing modern about sports. We are much LESS* excited about them - than the Romans were. We also don't pay our sports stars anywhere near as much. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VPENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA56&dq=history+of+the+decline+and+fall+of+the+roman+empire+greens+massacred+blue&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mSDEVKj2GoTMmwWr84GoDQ&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=history%20of%20the%20decline%20and%20fall%20of%20the%20roman%20empire%20greens%20massacred%20blue&f=false https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VPENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA56&dq... *http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942699/Wealth-of-todays-sports-stars-is-no-match-for-the-fortunes-of-Romes-chariot-racers.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942...
jessaustin 12y ago
It’s very telling that there have been very few proposals from feminists or kinesiologists or sports marketers to come up with a way that men and women can compete together, or men and women can compete on a different kind of a playing field. This has puzzled me for decades. There are some sports in which men and women compete together at the highest levels (e.g. horse racing), and there are some efforts at other mixed competition at lower levels. However, these seem to be minimized by everyone, and not even referenced as a benefit of which we'd like to see more. I can't think of any arena besides sports of which that could be said, although perhaps it might almost be said of the military. Even the military is criticized to an extent for the opportunities it denies women. Yet, sports get a complete pass. It is true that many sports would have to change in fundamental ways to allow women and men to compete together at the highest level. That isn't really an excuse, though, is it?
- rglullis 12y ago
  Seriously asking, what opportunities are denied to women in sports?
  - bdcravens 12y ago
    Most high schools and colleges dedicate a very small portion of the sports budget to women's sport as opposed to men's.
    - iamthebest 12y ago
      No this is completely wrong. Look up Title IX. It's the reason the university I went to e.g. had a women's swim team but not a men's team.
    - EpicEng 12y ago
      Actually, they don't, but the male sports, particularly football, do pay for the female sports.
  - fhars 12y ago
    Being noticed at all at the top level? What is the difference between the price payed for an ad at the men's superbowl, versus an ad at the women's superbowl?
jbeja 12y ago
I don't hate all sports, just the one that doesn't make much sense, like baseball.
revelation 12y ago
This seems like on overreaction. It's only in the US that sports are so laughably and harmfully bundled with education.
- gurp 12y ago
  That's false. In Canada, I had to pay for my university sport teams.
bdcravens 12y ago
It may be popular to be all super intellectual and look down upon sports as an activity of brute simpletons, but how much of the development culture uses sports terminology and idioms? "team" "winning" "hit a home run" "move the goalpost" "sprint" "scrum"
- stewartbutler 12y ago
  How much of business culture uses military terminology or idioms? If sports were eliminated I'm sure we would find something to fill the gap.
austinl 12y ago
Noam Chomsky has an interesting section about sports in Understanding Power – he essentially asks: "what would society be like if all the attention given to sports was put towards politics?" When I'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief... http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-so-much-about-sports-so-little-about-world-affairs http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-so-m...
- jordanpg 12y ago
  I've always enjoyed this quote, but I disagree that there is much in the way of serious "analysis" happening when ESPN talking heads are arguing about football game outcomes. This Onion classic has always nicely summarized the seriousness of these sorts of conversations for me: http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-will-suffer-humiliation-when-the-sports-team-f,10804/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-will-suffer-humiliation...
- goalieca 12y ago
  Sports radio sounds just as retarded as politics to me. I'm a huge hockey fan and played a very high competitive level. Let me tell you that sports talk is not sophisticated. What you hear on the radio is not nearly the same level as you hear from a coach.
- carsongross 12y ago
  "what would society be like if all the attention given to sports was put towards politics?" Sounds like hell to me. What would society be like if all the attention given to sports was put towards minding our own business?
gurp 12y ago
It would be nice to see a country without such institutional tribalism. I still can't get over how much of my college fees went to athletics.
nsxwolf 12y ago
This is funny. A bunch of nerds upset that millions of people like something they don't understand.
- itg 12y ago
  I don't see anyone being upset. It's a hypothetical that asks a few people what would be the impact if sports didn't exist or play a major role in American culture.
decentrality 12y ago
Sport, like culture, is not about any one individual, or any one kind of participant: the "observation" that physically powerful male individuals dominate sport is a) a fallacy, because it's b) a snapshot of a microcosm mis-framed, because of a certain bias. Sport and culture ought to be a perfect balance of the individual and the group, so if the society around it is out of balance, sport will reflect that: not "perpetuate" that. Feels like people are pointing at a mirror here and chastising it, not taking note from it and changing something on this side of the reflection directly. If anything, "America" needs to consolidate its sport habit and just not dissipate so much, because by doing that it gets diluted and has a hard time competing with the rest of the world. Other subcultures "master" a sport with more depth across the group, versus being so spread out across so many specializations and being an inch deep and a mile wide. And by compete I don't mean "be better than" or "best" them, I mean "adhere" to the well balanced state of play and acuity mixed together, along with the deep immersion in one of the best schools teaching "human nature" in a way one can actually learn from and do something with, versus behavioral sciences which are theoretical or abstract and usually lead to political or pharmaceutical work. Sport and "street smarts" go together, but on a total scale -- one can "grok" an entire nation by assessing its sport programs, provided the population is well enough represented in that program... complete with laying bare the governmental and artistic, even religious underpinnings of a subculture of this planet/lifeform we all find ourselves being.
thret 12y ago
I think sports are great, good exercise, good fun, team work and strong friendships and a healthy night out each week. Watching strangers play sports is insane. Without some personal vested interest, where is the point? The answer is sports betting: when you add betting into the mix it does indeed make sense again.
- splat 12y ago
  I don't know. I personally see it as being more like going to watch a pianist perform. Sure, I can play a piano piece and it will be good fun and a fulfilling experience. But a professional pianist who has devoted their life to the art can do things that I am not capable of, and it's wonderful to watch. Likewise, sometimes it's just amazing to watch professional athletes showcase what the human body is capable of.

44 points by pappyo 12y ago

i'm for it

kylec 12y ago

Last week, on the first day of the fall term, he asked the students in his Cultural Politics of Sport class for their thoughts. “The students said they would see an America without sport as a world that is deficient. Almost none of them said something good about it,” King says, also noting that in a class of 50 students, only one didn't have an active relationship with sport—watching or playing—in the last week. Students in a "Cultural Politics of Sport" class are hardly unbiased when it comes to sports. It's unsurprising that they all watch or participate in sports and feel that they'd be deficient without them. I'm sure I could round up 50 peopke that hate sports and want them banned, but they wouldn't be representative of the general population either.

ape4 12y ago

No pro sport would be fine.

jessaustin 12y ago
I submit that college sports are far more damaging to society than pro sports.

rglullis 12y ago

Oh, Pacific Standard... good job, you actually managed to get me to read more than half of it before getting to "white privilege".

hackuser 12y ago
> "white privilege" It's frustrating that it's mentioned so often, but perhaps that's because it's so frequently present in our society. That's what frustrates me. I look forward to a day when it's so rare that it barely needs to be mentioned.

jordanpg 12y ago

Why do we care about a hypothetical that is about as likely as an alien invasion? The more interesting questions are the sociological ones which ask why anyone cares so much about sports in the first place. I don't care about sports in the slightest, but I can keep myself entertained indefinitely with an internet connection or an IDE. I don't think that's true for most people. Sports seem to me to be a reflection of the modern human's boredom and need to fill all of those hours with something exciting, dynamic, and community-oriented.

thret 12y ago
There's nothing modern about sports. We are much LESS* excited about them - than the Romans were. We also don't pay our sports stars anywhere near as much. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VPENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA56&dq=history+of+the+decline+and+fall+of+the+roman+empire+greens+massacred+blue&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mSDEVKj2GoTMmwWr84GoDQ&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=history%20of%20the%20decline%20and%20fall%20of%20the%20roman%20empire%20greens%20massacred%20blue&f=false https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VPENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA56&dq... *http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942699/Wealth-of-todays-sports-stars-is-no-match-for-the-fortunes-of-Romes-chariot-racers.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942...

jessaustin 12y ago

It’s very telling that there have been very few proposals from feminists or kinesiologists or sports marketers to come up with a way that men and women can compete together, or men and women can compete on a different kind of a playing field. This has puzzled me for decades. There are some sports in which men and women compete together at the highest levels (e.g. horse racing), and there are some efforts at other mixed competition at lower levels. However, these seem to be minimized by everyone, and not even referenced as a benefit of which we'd like to see more. I can't think of any arena besides sports of which that could be said, although perhaps it might almost be said of the military. Even the military is criticized to an extent for the opportunities it denies women. Yet, sports get a complete pass. It is true that many sports would have to change in fundamental ways to allow women and men to compete together at the highest level. That isn't really an excuse, though, is it?

rglullis 12y ago
Seriously asking, what opportunities are denied to women in sports?
- bdcravens 12y ago
  Most high schools and colleges dedicate a very small portion of the sports budget to women's sport as opposed to men's.
  - iamthebest 12y ago
    No this is completely wrong. Look up Title IX. It's the reason the university I went to e.g. had a women's swim team but not a men's team.
  - EpicEng 12y ago
    Actually, they don't, but the male sports, particularly football, do pay for the female sports.
- fhars 12y ago
  Being noticed at all at the top level? What is the difference between the price payed for an ad at the men's superbowl, versus an ad at the women's superbowl?

jbeja 12y ago

I don't hate all sports, just the one that doesn't make much sense, like baseball.

revelation 12y ago

This seems like on overreaction. It's only in the US that sports are so laughably and harmfully bundled with education.

gurp 12y ago
That's false. In Canada, I had to pay for my university sport teams.

bdcravens 12y ago

It may be popular to be all super intellectual and look down upon sports as an activity of brute simpletons, but how much of the development culture uses sports terminology and idioms? "team" "winning" "hit a home run" "move the goalpost" "sprint" "scrum"

stewartbutler 12y ago
How much of business culture uses military terminology or idioms? If sports were eliminated I'm sure we would find something to fill the gap.

austinl 12y ago

Noam Chomsky has an interesting section about sports in Understanding Power – he essentially asks: "what would society be like if all the attention given to sports was put towards politics?" When I'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief... http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-so-much-about-sports-so-little-about-world-affairs http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-so-m...

jordanpg 12y ago
I've always enjoyed this quote, but I disagree that there is much in the way of serious "analysis" happening when ESPN talking heads are arguing about football game outcomes. This Onion classic has always nicely summarized the seriousness of these sorts of conversations for me: http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-will-suffer-humiliation-when-the-sports-team-f,10804/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-will-suffer-humiliation...
goalieca 12y ago
Sports radio sounds just as retarded as politics to me. I'm a huge hockey fan and played a very high competitive level. Let me tell you that sports talk is not sophisticated. What you hear on the radio is not nearly the same level as you hear from a coach.
carsongross 12y ago
"what would society be like if all the attention given to sports was put towards politics?" Sounds like hell to me. What would society be like if all the attention given to sports was put towards minding our own business?

gurp 12y ago

It would be nice to see a country without such institutional tribalism. I still can't get over how much of my college fees went to athletics.

nsxwolf 12y ago

This is funny. A bunch of nerds upset that millions of people like something they don't understand.

itg 12y ago
I don't see anyone being upset. It's a hypothetical that asks a few people what would be the impact if sports didn't exist or play a major role in American culture.

decentrality 12y ago

Sport, like culture, is not about any one individual, or any one kind of participant: the "observation" that physically powerful male individuals dominate sport is a) a fallacy, because it's b) a snapshot of a microcosm mis-framed, because of a certain bias. Sport and culture ought to be a perfect balance of the individual and the group, so if the society around it is out of balance, sport will reflect that: not "perpetuate" that. Feels like people are pointing at a mirror here and chastising it, not taking note from it and changing something on this side of the reflection directly. If anything, "America" needs to consolidate its sport habit and just not dissipate so much, because by doing that it gets diluted and has a hard time competing with the rest of the world. Other subcultures "master" a sport with more depth across the group, versus being so spread out across so many specializations and being an inch deep and a mile wide. And by compete I don't mean "be better than" or "best" them, I mean "adhere" to the well balanced state of play and acuity mixed together, along with the deep immersion in one of the best schools teaching "human nature" in a way one can actually learn from and do something with, versus behavioral sciences which are theoretical or abstract and usually lead to political or pharmaceutical work. Sport and "street smarts" go together, but on a total scale -- one can "grok" an entire nation by assessing its sport programs, provided the population is well enough represented in that program... complete with laying bare the governmental and artistic, even religious underpinnings of a subculture of this planet/lifeform we all find ourselves being.

thret 12y ago

I think sports are great, good exercise, good fun, team work and strong friendships and a healthy night out each week. Watching strangers play sports is insane. Without some personal vested interest, where is the point? The answer is sports betting: when you add betting into the mix it does indeed make sense again.

splat 12y ago
I don't know. I personally see it as being more like going to watch a pianist perform. Sure, I can play a piano piece and it will be good fun and a fulfilling experience. But a professional pianist who has devoted their life to the art can do things that I am not capable of, and it's wonderful to watch. Likewise, sometimes it's just amazing to watch professional athletes showcase what the human body is capable of.