MLK Jr. Day (Post Mortem, Part 2)

(Continued from Post Mortem, Part 1)

Sports fans react to their teams' failures in ways that often disturb their loved ones and even passers-by. Excessive drinking. Despondency. Rending of garments. Or for followers of certain European football clubs, rioting in the streets. Extreme behavior aside, it doesn't take much imagination even for a non-fan to understand why following professional sports matters to so many of us. Like all forms of entertainment, it's a distraction from the everyday. It forms communities and gives a common cause to strangers. It brings together friends and mandates the drinking of beer. It can teach discipline and drive to the young, and gratify the competitive urges of recreational athletes and couch lovers alike. And so on.

But on a day when we commemorate one of the most important and inspirational figures in our nation's history, why should the outcome of a sporting event dominate our brainwaves and airwaves? Radio and television reporters rattled off the score of Sunday's games in practically the same breath as they announced details of ceremonies honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Local papers put the New York Giants' improbable victory on their front pages. And if statistics existed, it might be troubling to learn how many people used their day off from school and work to watch SportsCenter (and shop), and how many used it to honor, study or even just contemplate the legacy of Dr. King.

This discouraging balance of coverage, and a certain sense of shame for my own extreme reaction to last night's game on a day like today, made me think about wasted opportunities. Consider the relevance of the sports world at a moment when we're collectively reflecting on the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. The Portland Trailblazers did so on Monday, by visiting the YMCA in Atlanta where Dr. King used to play basketball (link to story below), but with minimal national attention. The NFL did so in 1990 by refusing to make Tempe the site of a Super Bowl until Arizona reinstated the observance of the King holiday, which had been overturned by Gov. Evan Mechan in 1987. Even Missouri middle schooler Brigette Wells did so, by mentioning Tiger Woods alongside Barack Obama in her essay that won the local MLK essay contest (link below). Yet this year, no professional athletic organization's acknowledgement of the holiday made major headlines.

The intersection of race and sports is undeniable, and of great value to a nation that continues to struggle with a history of segregation. Eight years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott and 17 years before the Civil Rights Act, Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers broke the color barrier in baseball with his 1947 debut in the all-white Major Leagues (and a simple gesture by Pee Wee Reese, draping his arm on Robinson's shoulder, soon became legend as well). Five decades later, the national debate over race in sports rages on. We've had scandals over an Imus comment, a lynching reference on the Golf Channel and a noose on the cover of a sports magazine (golf again) in the past year alone. We've got the National Football League, wherein 70% of players are African-American but there's only one black owner in 32 teams. Tiger is still the only golfer of African-American descent to win the Masters, and you can count on one hand the number of black tennis players who've won Grand Slams (surely it's not a coincidence that those are "rich" sports). And we haven't even gotten to the more nuanced issues of finances, the "role model" factor and media treatment of player behavior on and off the field.

It seems irresponsible, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day of all days, to ignore racial matters in a multi-billion-dollar industry that captures the attention of so many Americans. It seems unimaginative at best to see a white man from Mississippi embrace his black teammates on national television and not pause to reflect on how far we've come over the years. And it seems downright ignorant to watch, read about and obsess over sports without acknowledging how far we still have to go.


TRAILBLAZERS IN ATLANTA: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=adande_ja&page=Blazers-080121
MIDDLE SCHOOL ESSAY: http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080121/OPINIONS02/801210337/1091