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.
