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

Post Mortem, Part 1

So much for a bittersweet win/win situation. It turns out that having divided allegiances makes it pretty hard to enjoy a big game, especially when the team that's your favorite (by a hair) ends the season with a disappointing performance. As much as I was rooting for a Packer victory, I couldn't bring myself to cheer over dropped passes or careless penalties by the Giants, and I was too busy wincing at Green Bay's fourth quarter bungling to appreciate New York's resilience. As for The Interception in OT, and the 47-yard kick that was the stuff of legend (and yes, a record in Lambeau for a visiting team), I might have preferred getting a root canal, or even watching election coverage.
I thought I'd immediately get behind the Giants if they won. I was wrong. Instead, I did my fair share of moping and then some, all the while ignoring the part of me that insisted that on this of all days, there were more important matters to contemplate. I stroked my Packer helmet as if it needed consoling. I insisted the season was over for me and that the Super Bowl wouldn't be worth watching, then stormed off to bed (though not before scrawling "MLK" on the notebook by my computer). I ate two three-course meals within an hour of waking up this morning. I read and watched all the coverage I could get my eyes on, trying to spin an appealing narrative out of it. This loss just extends the legend of Favre, who will come back and go all the way next year. Or maybe he has no regrets; he's handed off the torch to Eli and the Giants will complete a storybook season by crushing Darth Vader & Co. in their quest for perfection. But no dice. The Packers were mediocre at best last night; there are no guarantees that they'll be good enough to get this far next year even if Favre does return; and I just won't believe the Giants can beat the Cheatriots until I see it.
So the pouting continued. But as I dug into my 10am serving of Belgian chocolate ice cream and caught sight of my notebook, I finally embraced the "better angels of [my] nature," and turned my attention to the voice that started nagging me last night: "How can you make such a big deal out of a game, and one that you didn't play in or even bet on, no less, particularly when it's about to be Martin Luther King Jr. Day?" Then I got an email from a friend (a Steelers fan) expressing the same sentiment, and I finally sat down to address the eternal question I've been meaning to write about for ages: Why do sports matter?