As I watched the kickoff to another college football season, and the ESPN special commemorating 150 years of college football, it occurred to me just how unique and special sports is to our culture and to people in general. While I admit I am diehard football fan who will start my Saturdays at 8 am (CT) with College GameDay and conclude it with the ‘Pac 12 After Dark’ game that ends around 1 am, my experience is not unique in communities and states where college football is king. In places like Alabama and Arkansas, college football is king. For places like New York, St Louis, Chicago, and states in the Northeast, that would be baseball. Regardless of what sports is king in your community, that sport possesses a power that nothing else (or no else) will ever have: the power to transcend and unite their community of fans.
In an era of extreme polarization, never-ending political boycotts, and practices of cultural & demographic contempt, it is exceeding rare to find instances where two people from opposite sides of every hot-button issue dividing their community and the country. Movies, TV sitcoms, political talk shows, and music have become increasingly tangled with tribalistic practices of the day. As media producers and content creators focus their marketing efforts on segments of the population or niche audiences and not the general population, the chance of a pop culture phenomenon that people from different warring tribes will agree to a rhetorical cease-fire has become non-existent. The one remaining opportunity that remains is something that has been part of the cultural antidote to our social ills for over a century: sports.
During the Great Depression, a baseball player sold to the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth, became a household name and inspiration to millions of people in desperate economic and emotional situations. His ballgames served as a momentary distraction for his fans in a way that nothing else was able to. Fast forward 70 years and you will hear two people: Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann, who loathe each other and aggressively disagree on every issue of the day, tell the same story during the last World Series the Yankees were in, giving each other giant bearhugs in celebration after their Yankees won the World Series. Two men who despise each other and would be glad to use every profanity under the sun had a moment where none of those differences mattered.
There are moments in sports that its significance exceeds the normal relevancy of the event. Whether it’s Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947, to Texas Western University winning the NCAA basketball championship in 1966 against in all-white Kentucky team, to Tiger Woods winning the 1997 Masters. These events had a foundational impact on Civil Rights and race relations in general, and they all occurred through the prism of sports. Everyone who was alive when one of these moments occurred knows where they were, and what they were doing when it took place.
These moments go to something much deeper. Sports has the unique ability to speak our community’s soul in a way that transcends our differences. When your team kicks the game-winning field goal, makes the game-winning three, or hit the game-winning home run with you sitting in the stands, do you care what color, gender, sexual orientation, or partisan affiliation of the fan behind you? You’re high-fiving everyone around you while experiencing a level of bonding euphoria that you will remember for the rest of your life.
Sports can serve as inspiration during times of local or national hardship or tragedy. Whether it’s 2001 World Series weeks after 9/11, the resurgence of the Saints post-Hurricane Katrina, or the US Olympic hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics. These memories touched their fan’s souls at a time they need it. For me, that moment was at the A&M-Texas football game in 1999. Known as ‘the Bonfire Game’ for the 12 A&M students who died during the collapse of the bonfire stack during construction, it devastated the university. In a game where that structure was supposed to be set ablaze as a symbol of the burning desire to beat Texas, The Longhorn band played Amazing Grace as a tribute to the fallen students. For eighty-six thousand people in attendance, there was not a single dry eye in the stadium. For that day, and the remainder of the season, a team I had loathed and despised my whole life was no longer my mortal enemy, but my grieving brother. Speeches are nice, fundraisers can help meet the immediate needs of the people in need, but those transcending moments happen in ballgames.
As we look forward to another football season and the pennant races in baseball, we should remember and cherish the opportunities in front of us. At a time when it seems everything is viewed through the prism of being supportive or hostile to President Trump and/or his supporters/critics, we need to embrace the moments where our differences do not matter. These moments, no matter how fleeting, are where bridges can be built, and conversations can begin. I am not saying that it will solve the issues confronting us, but you can’t have a dialogue with anyone if you don’t have a line of communication, and there is no line of communication with better signal than sports.
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