In Praise of Professional Sports
One of the most important aspects of professional sport, aside from its entertainment and distraction value, is its symbolic relevance to the affairs of everyday life on both the social and political planes. The lessons of sport, were they only attended to, would illuminate much about the obscurities, contradictions, clichés, and unreflectiveness of our staple practices and convictions.
Take, for example, the political bromide of affirmative action. The argument that presumably validates this egalitarian and expiatory project is that members of groups that have suffered from past exclusionary policies must be recompensed, regardless of individual merit. They are thus promoted to positions for which they might not be most competent or are accorded favorable treatment at the expense of those who may be more qualified in the field in question. We have remarked how hiring quotas in the business world or university scholarship programs and tenure-track posts are skewed in such a way that the more proficient are often displaced by the less capable. Academia has a nice way of legitimizing culpable appointments: it’s called an “equity policy,” though a better term might be a “lobotomy ticket.” The Humanities and Social Sciences in particular have reinterpreted their mandate. Their mission is no longer pedagogical but salvific. They are no longer charged to teach the time-honored curriculum, the great books, or the elements of their subjects but to redeem society from itself, in so doing turning a cadre of scholars into a staff of politically motivated social workers.
But the malaise is ubiquitous. The theory is that correcting a past injustice, even when it no longer exists, trumps impartial judgment, and that making amends or “changing the social landscape” is more urgent than ensuring talent, skill, and personal endowment. Objective factors no longer count when racial diversity, proportional representation, and remedial compensations take precedence over personal responsibility and individual worth. The result, of course, is varying levels of social dysfunction as the therapeutic mindset that pervades contemporary society engineers the gradual and inexorable erosion of cultural integrity, professional ability, and intellectual distinction. Greater promise and stellar achievement are inadmissible criteria.
Except in sport. After all, affirmative action applied to a competitive NBA team would see seven-foot African-Americans deprivileged in favor of short white men who couldn’t swish the basket if their lives depended on it. Football clubs would draft ninety-nine pound weaklings to play on the offensive line since the sallow and scrawny are entitled to preferential treatment in areas where they have been cruelly prevented from exercising their lack of suitability. Baseball would feature limp-armed pitchers, riddled fielders, and whiffable batters who would otherwise have experienced the indignity of prejudicial exclusion and the inequitable rigors of excellentism. Hockey would open its bench to wretched skaters with no stickhandling expertise and to goaltenders terrified of flying pucks through no fault of their own. Sport remains the one sphere in which “elitism” is not a dirty word. (However, the anti-elitism movement may be coming to a stadium near you soon; we have begun to see the advent of children’s matches where the better team is chastised for running up the score when playing against an obviously inferior opponent, or where the score is not kept at all so that no one is humiliated.)
Clearly, we suffer as a society from the debilitating infirmity of cognitive dissonance. We are immune to what Leon Festinger in a classic analysis of the subject, When Prophecy Fails, calls “disconfirmation,” which would introduce a “painful dissonance” into our belief systems. Thus we serenely accept in one domain what we would adamantly reject in another. We want our sports to be cutting-edge and the teams we cheer for to excel on the playing surface. We want to win. But in business, science, academia, the military, the trades, and professions, we are willing to lose.
In the province of sport, we are, it seems, churlishly reluctant to root for the opponent. When it comes to the composition of the home team, we want the “brain trust” to sign the best players at every position, regardless of race, creed, or political affiliation. Should management falter in its duty to draft well and hire intelligently, performance is demonstrably weakened, gate receipts tend in many cases to fall off, and ridicule and dissatisfaction are the rewards of evident unfitness. But in the social and cultural realms, a very different attitude prevails. We are content to tolerate mediocrity and inefficiency so long as our cherished and often flawed assumptions regarding the origin and nature of social disparities are kept intact — even if, in the sequel, social functioning is impaired and everybody suffers the consequences.
The plain fact is that what we thoughtlessly conceive as “social justice” leads inevitably to communal decay and a species of undeniable injustice. The social desideratum with respect to the political, economic, and professional sectors should be, not to stack the deck or lavish handicap adjustments on the disadvantaged, but to provide a level playing field for all contenders, applicants, and potential candidates in any designated vocation. Justice for the aggregate must begin with justice for the individual, whether considered as a member of the group or as a citizen of the larger community. There is no other way to secure justice for the collective. You don’t want a host of banausics who enter the work force and professional classes owing not to natal aptitudes and felicitous work habits but to the patronage of misguided idealists. On the contrary, you want people who can do the job and actually live up to their credentials.
Professional sport is a working model for a successful society. It is a rule-dominated affair enacted in a stipulated area with visible boundaries that cannot be transgressed. Society, too, properly understood, is rule-oriented, its transactions governed by laws, statutes, codes of behavior, and a clearly marked legal space in which the “game” can unfold without descending into anarchy. And, no less crucially, as in professional sport, society requires the appropriate personnel at all the sensitive nodes, people who know what they are doing and are able to do it well, ultimately for the benefit of others.
To privilege those who may be inadequate to the task at hand or to the demands of a given discipline, office, or occupation is to guarantee failure for all. The cost may sometimes be high but refusing to accept it is frankly unaffordable. You play to win and you pay to win.
In the real world, Democrats would judge racism on the part of a first place team by simple virtue of the fact there is a last place team. Ipso facto.
Black folks don’t do well on IQ tests: IQ tests racist.
Black folks don’t do well at anything: racist society.
Black folks dominate the NBA: entirely different set of standards applied which are best ignored and not talked about by the Left.
Result should be to bus suburban white kids to inner city playgrounds so the NBA can end up 70% white like it SHOULD be.
Here is cognitive dissonance: Article at conservative magazine in 2008: “White Professionals: We’ve Got McCain’s Back.” McCain goes on to get 96% of the white vote.
That article and massive racial vote never happened. Here is the actual article still available from The Root’s home page:
“Black Professionals: We’ve Got Obama’s Back.” Blacks voted 96% for Obama.
Conclusion week after week at The Root: blacks live in a white racist country. To say these people are morons is an understatement.
Golf, as a sport (not as a substitute for actually DOING the job of the Presidency), is a great teacher as well, David.
In professional golf in America, there is no “egalitarian pay structure”, that “evens out” the “haves” from the inferior performance of the “have nots”.
That is, a hitter who bats under .200 and strikes out 176 times in a year, gets his full salary, a wide receiver who drops passes and runs poor routes gets his full salary, a defenseman who is a -58 while he is on the ice gets his full salary…if you miss the cut in professional golf, you don’t get paid.
And…the pay ascends based purely upon performance that week. Next week, you start over. You tee off where everyone else tees off, the flagstick is placed in the same place for everyone, the hazards are not moved to assist the have nots.
Yesterday’s tournament at Torey Pines is a prime example. A young golfer who has never won, was leading by a large margin all day. He came to the last hole leading by three strokes. In professional golf, on a relatively simple par 5, he could make double bogey and still get his first win. Making a “snowman” (an 8, for obvious reasons), is nearly unheard of for professionals on easy par 5′s. Except under the pressure to perform, when you haven’t won before.
Kyle Stanley did not win his first tournament. It was sad, difficult to watch for anyone with compassion. But that fact does not change the nature of the contest, nor the rules of the game.
In golf, one is expected to call a penalty on oneself. Umpires, referees, panels of judges…are not needed, nor requested for the routine business of each shot. And, if a player does not adhere to the tenets of honor, integrity and self-reporting, then the rest of the players are mandated to “protect the field” by calling attention to the infraction.
Young Mr. Stanley has talent. Rooting for him not to collapse under pressure is natural. But rooting to change the game so that he would not suffer defeat, would not teach him how to handle the pressure to excel at the highest levels of his gifted talent.
Some folks learn to excel under pressure, some wilt. The nature of pure competition, in any field of endeavor, is to try, fall, try again, and those who refuse to quit, who dig deeper into the reservoir of the human spirit…achieve greatness.
Kyle Stanley did not win yesterday. But, he may win next week. Or the week after. Or some fine day in the future. We don’t know for sure, but we do know that he will have the exact same chance as everyone else who qualified to get into each tournament, based solely on skill, talent, desire and drive.
The suppression of pure competition, is the soul of Marxism. Unions, tenure, and “fairness taxation” are all systems in post-modern America that drain greatness out of everything they touch.
Our education system is drained of greatness because it intentionally does not allow conservatives to “tee it up” on the same course as leftists, nor does it reward them by scoring equally, it moves the “flagsticks” depending upon your ability to indoctrinate students in leftism. It’s a game rigged, with rules that are “fluid” and the hazards are pulled out of the way for leftists.
Obama has had a lifetime of hazards pulled out of his way. In fact, every step of the way in his adult life, he has played on a course that has murdered pure competition. He did not have the grades or test scores to matriculate into Columbia…or Harvard.
He did not earn Law Review status by scholarly authorship…or any authorship at all.
He did not have a social security card issued in any state he has ever lived.
His “church” was chosen not based upon its devotion to healing, but for its political stance on hatred, division and manufactured grievance.
His “professorship” was not granted on any evidenced erudition on the subject matter, it was rigged as resume’ filler.
His state political campaigns were manufactured wins by getting competitors removed.
He cheated pure competition in higher education, he cheated God, he cheated the job market, he cheated his students, he cheated his country. He ran based upon a false premise and faked his way through every step.
A snowman is a rarity on the professional golf tour. Not so, in small c communist politics. Our snowman has pulled the snow job of the century.
And has nearly pulled the entire country out of bounds left…a spot from which there may be no recovery.
Very soon, it will be incumbent upon the voters of this land of ours to “protect the field” from rampant, runaway leftism. From the tyranny of cheating the Constitution, checks and balances and rules and regulations placed their to ensure the integrity of our political process.
And, to teach Obama once and for all…to keep a more honest score.
Nicely played from a tough lie, sir.
Wow. Great job.
Golf is a good metaphor at two different levels. On the one hand, you’re right that pressure and so forth can cause players to break under pressure. On the other hand, golf and bowling, at the amateur level, are the only sports that have “handicaps” so that better and worse players can compete on a “level” playing field. And bowling’s slowly going the way of the dodo, leaving us with golf.
In real life, there are no “handicaps” like this, except of course when Affirmative Action rears its ugly head. And even then, typically, it only works for hiring practices. If a company hires a member of some minority group to oversee their production line, their customers aren’t given an incentive to hire that company particularly, because the rest of the production lines are run by white guys. As a result, the “handicap” only benefits the minority person briefly: afterwards he must produce, just like everyone else. Imagine some sort of “handicap” like this in the NBA: they’d have to make one of the current centers play on his knees, so shorter people from other groups could compete. Talk about silly.
Golf is “A good walk spoiled” in mine and Mark Twain’s eyes.
I would like to point out that NFL contracts are not guaranteed. Teams regularly tear up contracts for players under performing or even simply getting injured. It is common practice for teams to even force players to restructure their contracts for any reason. The only money that NFL players can count on receiving is their sign on bonus, which with the exception of the top performers, does not exist. Contracts will sometimes include bonuses for on field performance, but those usually require less up front money. Simply put, if an NFL player does not perform, he will get cut from the league VERY quickly.
Most NFL players have a career shorter than 3 years and at the league minimum. That’s around $375,000-$600,000 a year. Now to the average American, that seems like a lot. But the toll taken on the body last a life time and that is basically their life time income for a profession that they have trained for most of their life up to that point.
Its their choice. If my kid every showed interest in playing football, I would do everything possible to discourage it. My experience from my military time dealing with the long term affects of concussions pretty much prevents me from advocating anyone I care about playing that sport.
Great summary of obama’s life. Minorities do have a handicap in the sports sense of the word. Affirmative action has given them freebies and a leg up in many ways. Most have never experienced slavery or Africa but they capitalize of the hard times they have suffered.
One of the other edifying aspects of professional sports is that the rules don’t change rapidly. There are Rules Committees in the major sports that do initiate changes now and then, but by and large they’re cautious, slow to act, and respectful of their games’ traditions.
Contrast that with the blinding speed with which laws are passed, both at the federal and state levels, by legislators who often have no idea what’s in them.
I think one can argue that the university/college based system of affirmative action policies have a major impact on professional sports since both the NFL and the NBA draft the vast majority of their players from college/university ranks. Thus, the player pool available for the draft is very dependent on affirmative action policies in higher “education.” It is well understood, by players, fans, and university/college administrators and professors, that those players recruited from high school to play on university teams frequently do not face the same educational standards imposed on most students. Yes, one can “walk on” to a tryout camp for both the NFL and the NBA, but the success rate is poor.
The majority of players in Major League Baseball are recruited from high school and most spend a few years in the minor leagues learning how to play at the major league level. Affirmative action, per se, does not play a role in that process. Additionally, MLB recruits players from the Caribbean, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. About 25% of new players in the MLB are drafted from colleges and universities.
The National Hockey League has a unique recruiting system that has a world-wide net. U.S. players are recruited/drafted from both the university level and from those who got into minor league hockey from high school. Ditto those drafted from Canada and from European hockey leagues. It is difficult to see where affirmative action plays a role in the NHL.
And, sports similes to the side, 0 received a full “pass” at every state of his live and career.
OK, but let’s be clear that the kind of affirmative action you are defining here is done completely for the benefit of the university, who wants the best players for its teams which will generate money for the university. All athletes get preferential admissions status, which means that a star athlete with a 500 (or less) SAT avg. and shaky academic transcript will often be accepted when a student with a 600 SAT person with a solid academic record will not get into that college.
Granted that the 600 who does not get in, will not be in one of the Affirmative Action groups, but then if he/she is the descendant of a wealth alumni…bingo!
Nice try Dwight but wrong. Everybody knows colleges and universities ONLY look at black students regardless of whether there is a white player who is equally qualified to play the same position. Colleges could care less about the background of the black player or whether he will graduate, they ONLY care about adhering to and advancing affirmative action.
I’ve seen white kids not play because they know the system is rigged against them going further. Some end up playing Div. IAA, II, III or NAIA and thankfully those divisions have not been ruined by the thugs in Div. I. But these kids will most likely never go pro.
“The most compelling reason to tolerate some affirmative action is that in many walks of life, from Little League on, nepotism and friend-of-a-friend cronyism control the borderline.”
That gem is one of the most inane rationalizations I have read in justifying what amounts to de facto racism in the form of affirmative action. You are justifying one wrong by using another. Wow, I am so glad the left has you on their side.
Put another way, if AA is so correct in its mission how come the MSM is NOT hiring more blacks and hispanics to fill upper level editorial positions or WH reporters; how come colleges/universities’ staffs and professorshps are not MORE black/hispanic; how come even the lefty-progressive 527s are dominated by whites; and finally how come even the most ardent supporter of AA by progressive Demonrats still have staffs dominated by whites???
“Nice try Dwight but wrong. Everybody knows colleges and universities ONLY look at black students regardless of whether there is a white player who is equally qualified to play the same position. ”
No, everyone does NOT know that. We thought that there actually were some white athletes on Div 1 teams. Who knew that there were ONLY black ones. You could have yourself a scoop here.
The most compelling reason to tolerate some affirmative action is that in many walks of life, from Little League on, nepotism and friend-of-a-friend cronyism control the borderline. One could argue that new kids should be able to get a piece of that action and they have.
Sports (at the professional level) is one place where, given the scrutiny, it is almost a pure meritocracy. At lower levels, cronyism is alive and well. In normal life, even in business, judging by pure merit is only sporadically followed, more because of humans being human than overt malice.
As for professional sports and their players’ unions…well, we live in an imperfect world, eh?
The thing about athletics and organized sport is that the people doing it are people who can actually do somthing. There may be no intrinsic value to what they can do, but they can do something. And the something they do is a something that lots and lots of young people have tried to do, and not done as well as those that get paid to do it.
There is nowhere else in the society where being the best at doing whatever that something is is the only thing that matters.
Yes sir David, It’s as though our society has lost it’s collective mind. Anything less than merit based will eventually fail. Think old Soviet Union and The Doctors, but you don’t have to think that extreme to know.
Watching the evolution of sports is a fascinating study in itself, not to mention the comparison to the rest of our working society. I like to say that “I didn’t leave sports , It left me.” as they say.
Golf is, as mentioned here earlier, as pure as it comes to nature and has evolved 180 degrees from other sports.
Unlike football or basketball which (by different means) now discourage public criticism (1st Amendment), of the referees and umpires (distributors of fairness), and or the law makers of sports (fill in your own)…
I miss Billy Martin…
Unlike golf, however, the best quarterback and the best lineman do not play exactly the same game.
I know what you mean, but at the same time it could be said, that no one in golf has the same game either…and—like the quarterback and lineman they share the same goal…
Separate multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts?
Modern day sports lend themselves very conveniently to this essay.
The history of “Sport”, or “games” does not yield to this model as well.
In early “sport” history, the EEO or “special needs” sportsman would be the first snack for the lions. Today, they are accommodated and encouraged to involve themselves in any game they desire.
A ‘good sport” may yield to an opponent out of capitulation, deference, or as a mentor.
Which is more motivating; The threat of being mauled and eaten alive or gaining status and riches?
Sports are becoming more “civilized” through legislation, like our daily lives.
This essay asserts that our moralities are being administered. But, is that creating better individuals, or just a more homogeneous tribe?
The bottom line is, that it is easier for certain legislatively designated classes of people to excel at certain specified sports.
Of course- that’s because modern sports were built on a Christian worldview. In ancient Rome, Christians were repulsed by the sporting events because of their callous disregard for human life. The difference between NASCAR and a chariot race is that NASCAR actually includes safety measures to protect the drivers, whereas it was a regular event for charioteers to die in the arena. Chariots were, after all, weapons of war, not vehicles.
Meritocracy based upon physical prowess is acceptable in sports, just as meritocracy based upon physical beauty is acceptable for Victoria’s Secret catalogue models, and actresses.
Meritocracy based upon intellectual capability is verbotten, however, at the lower levels of academic life, as far as the (white) left is concerned.
They like this, I suspect, because being white, they are free of the suspicions that they themselves have benefited from affirmative action, and this allows them to take a patronizing or condescending attitude towards blacks and Hispanics (but not other non-white minorities) who come to people their academic worlds.
Not only does it play to their own sense of superiority, but also somehow explains why they feel entitled to go apeshit when blacks and Hispanics in public life ‘go off the reservation’, and show themselves to be conservative.
The subtext is ‘after all we’ve done for you . . .how dare you . . .don’t you know your rightful place – as our props?’
Wow, for awhile I thought I’d hit the wrong link and was at The Onion. Mr. Solway needs to wake up to reality, especially regarding football. And there’s no better reality check than this site. For years they’ve meticulously documented the systematic exclusion of whites at all but a few positions in the NFL, to the point where black players openly call those slots “theirs.” And thanks to the back-and-forth movement of coaches, the cancer has spread into college football as well. Superior (both athletically and academically) white high-school halfbacks, receivers, cornerbacks, etc. are routinely either (a) forced to bulk up and convert to offensive linemen, or (b) not recruited at all and relegated to Division II or III, where their chances of making the NFL draft are virtually zero.
And please don’t overlook the “Rooney Rule,” an overt affirmative-action program for black NFL coaches.
As for fans being “churlishly reluctant to root for the opponent,” millions of Americans did just that in the 2004 Olympic men’s basketball tournament, expressing their disdain for the arrogant all-black US “Bling Team,” which was lucky to leave Athens with the bronze medal.
Nor is “win at all costs” a universal attitude. The top-flight Russian soccer team Zenit St. Petersburg has never signed a black player, because the massive fan base would revolt if management did something so foolish. Has the policy hurt the product? NO! Zenit is routinely at or near the top of the Premier League, has qualified for the UEFA Champions League two of the last four years, and the 2008 squad won both the UEFA Cup and Super Cup (defeating Manchester United for the latter).
What about entertainment?
Are entertainers selected on merit alone?
It may not be as obvious as in sports, but they probably are for the most part selected on merit.