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Sports Arena
The Toy Department
Who says sports are an escape from the real world?
I first heard of the horrific slaughter of innocent women and children in the nearby town of Newton, CT while listening to a sports-talk radio station in my car. My heart sank even before the grisly details of the killings were released. But my shock was quickly replaced by anger; not primarily at the then-unknown murder, but at what I knew was soon to follow.
Though it’s hard to admit, sometimes the coverage of this barbarity bothers me almost as much as the actual acts themselves; and I suspect I’m not alone in this. We are sadly all too familiar with the mainstream media’s reaction to these awful crimes: the 24/7 coverage replete with gruesome images accompanied by maudlin music and worst of all, the huge, sensationalistic headlines like “Death in Connecticut” or “A Nation Mourns.” I don’t doubt that there is true sadness on the part of the media, but one can’t help that the desire for huge ratings drives their in-your-face coverage.
Ultimately the government joins in with the plethora of reporters and descends upon the affected communities with “grief counselors” and hordes of other intrusive and unwelcome functionaries, instead of leaving these poor people alone and in peace with their families and their God.
But perhaps the worst offender in these bizarre dances of grief-for-profit is the predictable commentary from the sports world. Within seconds of reporting the shootings, the host on the sports-talk show employed nearly all of the tired clichés you’d expect: “This puts everything into perspective… we cover the toy department of life… sports are just a distraction from real life.” Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Sports are not only a part of real life, they have influenced and impacted that life in ways that are not good.
Yet many sports fans have bought in to the “toy department” myth. A common claim is, “We watch sports to take our minds off the real world.” How this can be true is beyond me, unless they consider the doings of unions, lawyers, agents, drug-testers and congressional investigators not parts of real life. Mix in the all-too-often accounts of wife-beating, DUIs, drug busts, and the occasional murder charge, and you’re sometimes unsure of which section of the newspaper you’ve wandered into.
There have always been sports. There have always been people who enjoy watching gifted athletes perform; be they the graceful ancient Olympians or those who fought to the death in the arena, the games have gone on uninterrupted down through the centuries. And there has always been violence inherent to certain sports, chief among them modern football. But to my knowledge, up until the last few decades or so, there was no steady stream of reports of violence and crime committed by athletes upon the public in general.
Now some would say that I am making an unfair generalization, that there are bad apples in every profession; but that’s not the point. When a white-collar criminal embezzles funds or when teachers or clergymen abuse children, it is highly unlikely that the folks who account for the lion’s share of their salaries are simultaneously making money glorifying similar behavior. Yet this is precisely what happens with televised sports. Watching a day of NFL football on TV this past Sunday, I saw more ads featuring casual sex and explicit violence than in my first 30 years of sports viewing combined. And yet we constantly hear from network broadcasters that sports are, after all, for the children.
Just once, I’d like to hear one of these folks encourage the following discussion between parent and child: “Son, I don’t want you wearing the jersey of that player, because he is a bad man who treats women like objects, abuses drugs and alcohol and has friends who make records about killing people.” You will sooner hear the flapping of pigs’ wings before any purveyor of televised sports comes anywhere near the truth of that statement.
Yet we who love sports are constantly exposed to the pontificating of on-air personalities like Bob Costas, who are quick to blame violent crime on inanimate objects, but oh-so-slow to point the finger at a more logical source: that from which they glean their living; their own networks, awash in the glorification of sex, drugs and violence.
But the networks are not the only guilty party here. The NFL can indeed call the shots on commercial content as they did last year with a Toyota ad that originally featured a collision of the helmeted heads of two football players, but was altered when the brass intervened. The league also prohibits running ads from the gambling industry during game broadcasts. If TV and NFL honchos wanted to address this problem, they most certainly could. But don’t hold your breath.
If the sports world is indeed the toy department of American life, then it’s time we stop letting our children play there.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (6) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 12.19.12 @ 6:51AM
I have heard people who follow NFL Football (I'm an NCAA only football fan) say that the motto of the Dallas Cowboys -- with the highest rate of criminal prosecution in the NFL-- is "No Players currently in prison." When they do occasionally hire a clean, straight, moral and religious player like Tim Tebow, both the media and the NFL relentlessly mock and jeer at him and speculate on how long it will take for someone to corrupt him. And then we have the NHL, where the minimum wage is nearly $600,000 per year, whose star player is bawling that his $100,000,000 salary JUST.ISN'T.ENOUGH, in an economy where only corporate executives can afford to attend the games he would have been playing if he wasn't too busy holding his breath until he turns blue. Recently AMC showed the movie "Miracle" again, the story of the last amateur American Olympic hockey team and its historic defeat of a professional steamroller of a Red Army Team. I was not at that game -- way too expensive -- but I was in the crowd outside when the Miracle happened, singing "God Bless America" in delirious joy because we had not only defeated a professional team that had been together for years, but American amateurs had defeated RUSSIANS. Nowadays nobody cares who wins the hockey games -- we're all waiting for the excitement of the drug test results.
Pecos Pete| 12.19.12 @ 8:58AM
A commercial featuring the Ten Commandments would not be permitted during any televised sports venue. Forward!
Al Adab| 12.19.12 @ 10:51AM
It would be a goos thing to see the leagues stop with the Viagra and Cialis ads. Every time our family watches a ball game I end up playing dumb with the grandkids (range about 5 to 12) who ask, "granpa, what's viagra do"?
Occam's Tool| 12.19.12 @ 8:42PM
Lisa, dear, fantastic lady, might I highly recommend the following book for you: "Field of Screams."
Baseball has always had its thugs and ne'er do wells. Ty Cobb and Ben Chapman are high on my list of blasts from the pasts, for example.
What bothers me, though, is the relative lack today of Christy Mathewsons, Ted Williamses (Marine Fighter pilot in Korea; John Glenn's Wingman), Stan "The Man" Musials, Jackie Robinsons, Ernie Banks, Hank Greenbergs, and the like. People you would like to buy a dinner for or have as neighbors.
The good guys are absent. Other than Tim Tebow, can you name any pro athletes in the last 20 years you would want as a neighbor? I really think "The Day the Music Died" was when Roberto Clemente had his plane crash happen while delivering relief supplies. (I'm aware of Pat Tillman, yes. I'm aware of how few there are like him, too.)
It's why I don't watch pro sports anymore.
Thom| 12.19.12 @ 9:32PM
Adams (and others) spoke to the type of society “fit” for a republican form of government and we are not them.
The one thing “social conservatives” are spot on relates to what Adams (and others) called a “moral” people. Morals they speak to go far beyond the worldly portion of the Ten Commandments that are applicable to a civilized society but just on Commandments 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 we have one political party and at least half the country that see thumbing their noses at these as “virtue”. The Leadership of the Democrat Party gets merit badges for the number, frequency and outlandish nature of their violations of these. Democrat politics is a sort of “blood sport” which may lose the “sport” part shortly. As to the non-worldly parts 1-5, Democrats have banned any concept of a God they may have to answer to from their lexicon and put a religion created by man for the worship of a few men in its place. From immoral people at the top will flow wide scale corruption and from there everything else down the toilet with certainty. I have a special place in my heart for people like Costas.
Thom| 12.19.12 @ 9:34PM
We live in a society with an unimaginable number of laws and words within the laws on the books that no one on the planet could read and comprehend in a life time. We pile on millions each year to fix the problems the last 50 years of same didn’t fix. No amount of “laws” can save us from ourselves and if we can’t all agree that violating 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 above on a grand scale brings bad things on an even larger scale upon our society, we will suffer the fate of all those before us who did exactly the same thing.
“Sports” is just a reflection of that portion of our society that will employ common criminals, brutes and some pretty low down people in order to make millions off the “boob” tube. If a picture is worth a thousand words I'm safe saying a principle is worth millions of which no one will read and comprehend.
I lost interest with organized TV sports with the WFL. I learned all I needed to about the content of the character of many in “sports”.