Stumbling the Walk

Take This Bracket And Shove It

By Chris La Tray, 3-30-07

A headline caught my eye this morning about Greece following in Italy’s footsteps to suspend all professional sports activities for a specified period of time in the wake of a fan’s death in a riot before a women’s volleyball match. The ban will last until April 13, and includes basketball, volleyball, soccer and other professional team sports. I repeat, professional sports.

Italy’s incident involved the death of a police officer and multiple fan injuries during a riot at a soccer game between Serie A rivals Palermo and Catania. It was the second soccer-related death in Italy in a week. The previous was when a fourth-division team manager died from injuries sustained while trying to stop a brawl during a game. The Italian soccer federation suspended all games indefinitely at the time. Keep in mind how big soccer is in Italy. They are the reigning Champions of the World, after all.

It would take disaster of utmost magnitude to shut down professional sports across the board in the USA, wouldn’t it? 9/11 did, briefly, if I recall. The brawl between fans and Indiana Paces players in Detroit a couple years ago didn’t slow the NBA down; still, nobody died so I suppose that is understandable. The only way I could even see a volleyball fan dying in a riot is if the arena was next door to Wal-Mart the day a new gaming console goes on sale.

I used to be a sports fan, but I’m not anymore. This past year has been the one where I successfully took my final steps away from it. It used to be something I couldn’t avoid because that was all anyone talked about in the office. Since there is no more office, there are no more sports on my radar. I didn’t watch a down of the NFL, nor did I see a single pitch of the World Series. I didn’t even watch the World Cup final, though soccer has always been my favorite. And I have not seen one tip-off of this year’s edition of March Madness.

Tomdispatch Jock Culture Correspondent (and former New York Times, CBS and NBC sports journalist) Robert Lipsyte says:

“This is the mud season of the sports calendar. While we await blessed baseball and its promise of renewal, here comes the National Collegiate Athletic Association Men’s Division I Basketball Championship—the Big Dance for sportswriters, the Bracket Racket for gamblers, a frat-rat party, a racist entertainment, and a subversion of higher education, perhaps democracy as well.”

It all boils down to this weekend, and I really couldn’t care less.

That’s about as un-American as hanging Old Glory upside down, I know. It all started for me in the late-90’s when I was living in Seattle. At the time the Kingdome was the home of both the Mariners and the Seahawks, but a movement was afoot to get rid of it. Between building a new baseball stadium and a new football stadium, the numbers being tossed around included a price tag of damn near a billion bucks, much of which was to be funded with taxpayer money. I don’t know how that ultimately turned out, but I do know there are two big shiny stadiums right next to each other just off I5.

The stadium shuffle that owners play, the “You better build it or I’ll take my team somewhere who will!” game, is just one example of what I find off-putting. Between the cost of stadiums and what it takes to pay the athletes who play in them, the common fan is being taken right out of the stands, despite what they are paying in taxes to keep it all afloat.

Am I the only one fed up with sports? Are Titans and Bengals fans happy to be paying these guys to be thugs? Are Cleveland Cavaliers fans proud of the house they are buying LeBron James? That reminds me; I wonder if he still drives his hummer? Hey, I know a lot of professional athletes do a lot for their communities, and I’m not one to say they are obligated to do so. It does bother me though the way our culture has created a cult of personality around celebrity jocks. Being superhuman at a sport just really isn’t that big of a deal to me. I know I’m one of a minority on this issue, however.

The Super Bowl is still huge, and gets more and more overblown every year. Hell, there is a movement afoot to make it a national holiday! Lipsyte’s critique of the NCAA tournament cites a number of statistics about the growth of March Madness that were mind-boggling to me. Neither the NFL nor college football and basketball seem to be suffering at all. If they went away tomorrow, though, I wouldn’t lose one moment’s sleep. Don’t tell anyone, but if I never had to read or hear the terms, “Go Griz!” again I would die a happy man.

Baseball struggles with an image problem, and deservedly so. Labor problems, jackass owners and steroids scandals have left a bad taste in many mouths. But are steroids in baseball really something the government needs to host hearings over? And they say impeachment hearings for Bush and Cheney would be a waste of taxpayer money! It also really bums me out that Steve Earle is a Yankee fan. Isn’t he a guy who sees himself as fighting for the downtrodden? Shouldn’t he be like a Milwaukee Brewers fan instead, then? What about the Minnesota Vikings “Love Boat” scandal a couple years ago with booze and hookers? What do these guys think they are, rock stars?

If sports weren’t such a big deal, would we still see so many parents beating up coaches and referees? Would overweight guys still wear goatees and flat-tops to bluster about nobel prize analysis instead of draft analysis? What would it take to make band kids cool? I’m reminded of a conversation I had at the company Christmas party last year with “the new guy” in our department. I work for a company in Ohio, and the day of the party happened to be the day USC was playing UCLA in college football; all of my co-workers are pretty much Buckeye fans. If USC won the game then they would play OSU for the National Championship, otherwise it would be Florida (and we all know how THAT turned out). Anyway, the New Guy was getting game status updates via text messages on his phone every couple minutes. Meanwhile, he was ranting about how if he ever has kids, he will disown them if they choose to play in the band rather than play sports. Finally, he turned to me and asked, “What sports did you play in school?”

“I was in the band,” I said.

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