Posted on 08/27/2020 9:31:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
Humanity is entertained by competition of all kinds. The pandemic has shown sports fans will find a new way to cheer and chant and boo.
It is sometimes underappreciated how new professional sports is as a dominant cultural phenomenon. For the vast majority of human history, sports has been overwhelmingly played by amateurs. And even in America, it is only in the past fifty years that this professionalized version of sport became a route to wealth. Baseball, which has the longest professional sports history in the United States, illustrates this: the average MLB salary is up an inflation-adjusted 3,000 percent since the late 1960s. Professional sports only became big money in the era of television, as a form of mass entertainment that did not require you to even go to the games to have a rooting interest, and for the multinational corporations to sell you beer and trucks and sugary gas-infused water.
This is not to denigrate professional sports or to suggest that the Olympics are more entertaining than the NFL. Pro athletes who play the games do incredible things. Pro sports is profoundly enjoyable as entertainment, and as human drama there are few things that can match it. But on a certain level, this Seinfeld comment may be his most true observation: you’re rooting for laundry. The same player you loved in one uniform, whose strengths you valued and whose failures you dismissed as quirks of the trade, becomes nothing but a hated rival, a traitor, who took the money instead of playing for less while garbed in the proper colors.
But one thing we need to acknowledge is this: professional sports is not an essential good. It is a luxury good. Americans were satisfied for most of our history by sports that have little to no cultural impact now. And what this pandemic has taught us is that in a world of vast amounts of entertainment, if the entertainment isn’t there, humanity will go elsewhere. The explosion of esports during the lockdown is just one example of that – Twitch viewership has exploded, as the virtual arena never closed. Humanity is entertained by competition of all kinds, and professional physical competition is just one variety of that. If it diminishes in quality – if the show sucks – they will switch to another and find a new way to cheer and chant and boo. When the Super Bowl is over, you turn on Netflix.
One thing you can’t turn to is the NBA. If you go to the NBA’s website today, the top story there reads: “NBA playoff games scheduled for Wednesday have been postponed, with players around the league choosing not to play in their strongest statement yet against racial injustice. Latest updates: Players demand change.” If you follow the link to “Players demand change”, no changes are listed, nor are any in the offing. Yesterday, Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC tweeted “Well – there may not be have been games, but game plans are coming”. I look forward to hearing her solutions.
This is a performative act on the part of NBA players, designed to gain praise from media quarters while denying their fans the respite they deserve. Sportswriters drive a misperception of athletes in part because, in jaded fashion, they devalue winning. The outcomes of games are not as important to them as to fans. They value drama and performance and good quotes – the matter of who wins and who loses is subsidiary.
Fans generally like players because they’re athletes. Writers like them when they become more than athletes, when they make for better subject matter. Surrounded by cooing media members who incentivize political statements, some athletes can be gaslit into thinking the world is different than it is. And then you get the James Harden vs. Lebron James problem.
Of course, it was James’ silence that became so symbolic last year as an indication of his lack of bravery on political issues that underlies all of this braggadocio now. The Athletic’s Ethan Strauss has been up front with his criticism of this, much to the frustration of other sportswriters, like this Slate writer who recently interviewed him.
I think it’s completely obvious to people who aren’t in the bubble. You have your most precipitous drop this last year after [the NBA’s response to Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s comments about] China. I mean an absolute free fall, where you’re losing double digits on the national ratings, double digits on the local ratings.
And yeah, maybe you’re never going to be able to prove it to a T that it had something to with China, but that is when the NBA is hitting the news for people who are not necessarily completely engaged. And I think that when you talk to a lot of people who aren’t within media, people maybe where their politics don’t line up 100 percent with what’s being evinced, yeah, a lot of people are turned off by it.
I think that it doesn’t take a lot of imagination, really. I feel like I’m being put in the position in a way of just explaining the obvious, that gravity exists. And I guess I would say to you, why wouldn’t it have an impact?
Expect this NBA strike, and it essentially is a strike that could suspend permanently what has been a terrible season ratings-wise, to become an issue where woke sportswriters attempt to use it to create drama in other leagues. ESPN’s hockey writer was already expressing her disappointment last night that the NHL would continue to play, as they are paid to do. It will be interesting to see if they try to badger the NFL into such denial of their fans. ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman are already calling the NFL to boycott. To what end? Well, the political preferences of the writers, obviously. Little else is of importance.
Media is already comparing Lebron to Muhammad Ali. Ali, you recall, was facing jail time for his act of protest. Lebron faces no negative consequences whatsoever. This matters. People turn on athletes when they refuse to play – sometimes vociferously, but more often by just turning to other things. And then the corporate sponsors and the people with television contracts to honor start to get antsy.
But it’s the fans who miss it the most. Yesterday, right after the Milwaukee Bucks announcement that they would not play their playoff game, an older man named Larry called into DC sports radio’s The Fan. “I thought I could get away from politics by listening to sports … but now … it’s no escaping politics. I’m a Democrat but they’re gonna make me become a Republican if they keep doing this stuff.”
"I feel like I can get away from politics by listening to sports, but now, there's no escaping politics."
We hear you, Larry.
"I feel like I can get away from politics by listening to sports, but now, there's no escaping politics."
We hear you, Larry.
I hear you Larry. The times of great strife in American history when professional sports brought us together more than it tore us apart were good. But for now, at least, those times are just a memory. We’ll see if they come back.
I cancelled NFL Sunday Ticket already.
It is beginning to look like that just might happen. Maybe not intended; but, brought on by the vain stupidity of these "atheletes".
They have already walked away... Now maybe sprinting.
It’s simple: if you live in a glass house that was built and paid for by fans, don’t throw rocks at the fans.
People don’t like in-your-face lecturing on topics having nothing to do with the entertainment being paid for. Sports, Hollywood, media, and academia need to realize that, in the end, they are much less important to most people than the police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers, utility workers, farmers, grocers, and garbage collectors. And, if we are smart, we’ll add nonproductive politicians to the list of marginal performers.
i’ve already walked away ... been a die-hard Broncos fan for forty years, but no more ... used to watch some of the stupid sports shows, kept up and watched other teams they were going to play, the whole mcgillicuddy ... but no more ... i have no idea what’s going on with them for any other part of the NFL and could care less now ...
sports fandom is an obsessive emotional addition, but it’s the easiest of all the addictions to cure, namely abstain for a few weeks while finding other activities and soon you could care less ...
do i still miss it? a little, but it helped alot that the Broncs had turned into losers and that the games themselves had turned into an excruciatingly boring “entertainment” with the sole strategy of simply hanging on during the 15 minutes of actual play during the 3.5 hour telecast hoping the other team makes more mistakes than yourself...
It is so much easier to walk away because our lives have done without sports for some time now!! I have had enough of these RICH, ELITE, spoiled brat THUG sports players!! This country has given them opportunity they could get NO WHERE else on the planet UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS!! WE the fans put them there and WE the fans can take their success away!!
Truly the greatest bigot of all, her hubris to accuse the USA OF GENOCIDE is disgusting. Osaka is HAITIAN/Japanese and the only thing making her a “BLACK WOMAN” is her HAITIAN father. She claims Japan as her country and she lives in the USA as one of the highest paid athletes in the world. She states the GENOCIDE by police is making her sick to her stomach. Riddle this.......does she have any idea of the TRUE GENOCIDE that happens in Haiti every day of their lives and has this BLACK HAITIAN WOMAN ever returned to Haiti to see the everyday GENOCIDE these people face. Why doesn’t she make HAITI her cause?
This is Osaka’s statement and think of the bigotry from this illiterate twit.
“Before I am an athlete, I am a black woman,” she wrote in a post Wednesday night. “And as a black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis. I don’t expect anything drastic to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction.””Watching the continued genocide of Black people at the hand of the police is honestly making me sick to my stomach,” Osaka wrote in her post. “I’m exhausted of having a new hashtag pop up every few days and I’m extremely tired of having this same conversation over and over again. When will it ever be enough?”
I bet tennis at plus 1.5 sets in my parlays with other things. They dont have this match up yet so dont know who the favorite is...but I cant bring myself to do it with her if she is the favorite.
Hope she loses.
Wait for it.
When people stop showing up for games and buying overpriced merchandise, that will be deemed racist.
I haven’t watched an NBA game for 30 years but have always been a baseball fan, played Div 1 myself, and have 4 extended family members who played in the majors. One is the current GM of an MLB team. Last night in the 6th inning of a tie game, I had to listen to the announcer expound on their solidarity with the NBA players who decided not to play. I turned it off and went to bed, and I’m still mad enough I don’t know if I’ll ever watch another game. Hopefully the NFL doesn’t follow along with this idiocy.
I have the feeling that they are going to have a hell of a time filling half the stands when (or if) the country ever gets back to normal after the first political pandemic in history.
Deemed racist by whom? Intolerance of our county by skilled athletes is a turnoff. As for expensive merchandise most of it is imported from China and made by slave labor. Do you think most people desire to support the Chine Communist Party who gifted the world with the covid virus?
I hear you. Back when it was the only sport playing on the planet I was enjoying KBO baseball from Korea but had to quit watching because I just could not stomach the woke commentary of the ESPN announcing crew. They’re determined to rub our noses in it wherever we go.
My friend has a nephew who is a bench utility player in majors. Sort of a 4-A guy who is up and down a lot. I know he cherishes every day he gets to be in The Show. For sure he’ll never be voting for a protest shutdown.
I have an extended family member who plays in the NFL (actually he may be retiring due to injuries). I know he doesn’t buy into this nonsense either.
Will future riots feature unemployed former sports players crying about something they caused?
Where are their agents? Their paychecks will be gone too.
Their agents may be crooked, greedy etc. but they aren’t stupid.
This is exactly what is going on. These people are paid to play a game for the entertainment of the fans. The fans have their own ideas on politics. The more these clowns antaganize the fans, the more the fans will become disinterested. Have they not learned from the Colin Kaepernick thing?
I gave up on the NBA probably in the 1980s.
Back in the VCR era... I set it to record a movie on TBS.
Watching the tape the next night, it goes to split-screen - half-movie, half NBA game, with the caption, “You can watch this game on TNT”.
Don’t remember how long split screen lasted, maybe a minute?
TBS might have done it a couple of times during the movie.
Guess the ads/audience revenue must have been higher enough for them to try to annoy and perhaps lose audience on TBS in the attempt to poach from themselves.
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