Wide World of Sports

For many, this will not be a popular post to The Shiloh Insider. It covers our culture's unhealthy addiction to the world of sports, and how those unhealthy addictions have led to destructive behaviors.

Do not get me wrong, I have been a sports fan. I enjoy supporting the St. Louis Cardinals, the Indianapolis Colts and the Indiana Hoosiers. It is not that I do not enjoy other sports, but these are the teams with whom I have had a more direct sports relationship. I attended and graduated from Indiana University, so I cheer for the Hoosiers, especially their basketball team. I lived in St. Louis for better than three years, met a woman from the area, and have been married to her for thirty years (as of January 18). It is somewhere in the wedding contract that I had to become a Cardinal's fan. I am originally from Indiana. The Colts were an easy choice, particularly in the early years of the franchise.

I have noticed a disappointing trend, however. What used to be healthy competition between teams of respectful, honorable and, at least occasionally, mutually supportive groups of persons has now become a battle. That which once built character and nurtured development has now stunted growth and lead to devastating and destructive behavior.

Consider the doping scandals that have taken place in several sports. Think for a moment about the abuse allegations that have been so widely publicized of late. What of the concussion statistics in football? Every year, college sports programs throughout the country are suspended, fined, even terminated, for engaging in illegal and/or unethical practices. Increasingly, the damage of unrestricted competition has eroded the foundation of youth sports, extra-curricular school activities, community recreational leagues and Little League. Parents and fans fight in the stands. In Dayton, last week's high school basketball games were played without fans in the stands because of violence.

The wide world of sports is out of control in our culture. I wonder how much time and money we spend on attending sporting events, buying the gear of our favorite teams, watching games or matches or rounds on television? We live in an age when teachers make only a scant fraction of what we pay professional sports figures, when even the most productive scientists are barely known in comparison to the starting offensive line of the Bengals, and when we skip important functions, scheduling our lives around sports schedules.

Then came this past week's wild-card game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh's Steelers. It was ugly from before its start. During warm-ups the game officials stood in a designated "no-man's zone'" in the middle of the field, between the two teams. They feared pre-game violence between the two teams, as such was the case the last time the two had met. The game was a pitiful portrayal of rule-bending, excessive roughness, trash talking, childishness and immaturity that I had witnesses. Most of it took place on the field, but the fans in the stands followed suit. It was embarrassing. It was a game devoid of any redeeming value, lacking even the most basic potentially positive components of sport.

But we are addicted. We swallow the world of professional sport, filling our veins with its partisanship and having to degrade those who are our enemies' fans. We call names. We fling cans and bottles. We deface opponents' wear and defile their banners. We adhere little pissing characters on our automobile windows, urinating on the name of a competing city's team. We swear and yell and throw fits. We scream at our high school kids and charge the field of our little leaguers. We abuse referees and umpires and officials. Coaches are only so good as their records of wins and losses, despite other, more important, components of sport.

It has become ridiculous. It is completely out of control. Like our politics and our economics, sport is eroding the fabric of who we are as a people. It is time that we get a handle on our addiction, that we wean ourselves from its allure, that we break our unhealthy reliance on what the wide world of sports has become. It is time to focus on much more important facets of corporate life and community benefit. We tried the sporting world and it did not work to build us. If anything it continues to tear us down.

Let me see. Maybe spirituality will better serve us? I don't know. It may become the same competitive, divisive, destructive influence that we see in the wide world of sports.