COLUMN: Sports Are a Microcosm Of Today’s Broken Society
A phrase is being passed around the last few days that presents a utopian theory on society and the flaws we have as human beings. And because it’s not being completely honest with reality, it angers me.
The phrase is: “If the world was more like sports, the world would be a better place”.
My good friend Joel Coleman, a new publisher who you should definitely please follow, wrote a column expressing this point. Coleman made several compelling arguments and passionately expressed his desire for leaders in our society to learn from lessons we all encounter in the world of sports. This idea that at its core sports is what can bring everybody together in a world that is more divisive, confusing and broken just isn’t true. Why? Because the world we currently live in does include sports (even if most of sports still aren’t playing live games) and sports is part of this world.
Now, I’d like to make a possible counter to this column, if you might allow: Sports are a microcosm of the broken society we live in.
It’s in the sporting world where African-Americans are disproportionately represented on coaching staff, executive positions and ownership despite being a major percentage of the talent workforce in practically every sports league.
Sports is what gives us the NFL (the nation's most popular sports league) and its new Rooney Rule where 32 owners of professional football teams, all of which are Caucasian males, are going to vote on a proposal that will incentivize franchises with extra draft picks for hiring African-American or minority coach or executive candidates. Why is this insulting incentive needed? Simple. The NFL’s current culture currently finds it acceptable to not hire people of color in high-ranking positions. Doesn’t this practice feel similar to board member positions on most Fortune 500 companies, positions on Wall Street, military promotions, a majority of the current cabinet positions of the President of the United States, business owners, governmental leadership positions? And the NFL's solution isn't change the culture. No, they want to give franchises bonuses for doing what society is already be telling is the right thing to do.
What exactly are people learning and seeing on a Sunday in the fall by seeing a majority of NFL games being played by African-Americans but then the sidelines or the owners boxes are almost filled with white people?
Sports is part of a society that saw Colin Kaepernick be followed by several other African-Americans in taking a knee during the national anthem before a football game. What was the response? Well, you know what happened to Kaepernick but also our current President of the United States be cheered at a rally speech when he said he wished NFL owners would tell those protesters "get that son of a bitch off the field right now”.
In college football, the feeder system for the professional game, a vast majority of the unpaid workforce is African-American but they more often than not get recruited and trained (sometimes in a bullying manner) by a middle-aged to elderly white man. Of the 60 Power 5 Conference programs in college football, 13 will be led by a head coach of an ethic background of color. Sports is part of a society that suggests statistically if a person of color is hired as a head coach at a Power 5 Conference program and he fails, he’s more unlikely to get a second chance to try again at another major program, like say, the current head coach who holds the CFP championship trophy. Maybe this disproportionate percentage is tied to the idea that the number of black athletic directors in the Power 5 conferences is 11, including nine men and two women.
Sports is part of a society that gives us the ridiculous idea of having to debate whether the members of the U.S. women’s soccer team should get equal pay as their male counterparts in the FIFA World Cup when they compete (or in the case of the U.S. team in last men’s event, don't qualify for).
Sports is part of a society that tries to present the idea of rushing back competition due to severe boredom and severe financial issues while ignoring the constant warning of some of the world’s best scientists that this could cause more harm than good to public health and safety.
Sports gave us temporary heroes like Lance Armstrong standing on a Tour de France podium and saying that we, the viewer, are cynical if we didn’t believe his comeback story was pure and good. It gave us Rafael Palmeiro passionately wagging his finger at a congressional hearing that he’d never taken performance-enhancing drugs when he knew that wasn’t true. More and more, when athletes are put on pedestals for being what ills society's wrongs, we're disappointed when they fall off due to not at all being the people we marketed them to be. Maybe, Charles Barkley was right all along by proclaiming he wasn't a role model simply because he dunked a basketball.
In my profession, sports is part of a society where media access is slowly taken away day by day and bit by bit causing a combative relationship between media members vs. athletes/coaches on several occasions. When this happens, the media is wrongfully seen as the opposition that must be defeated. In that same society, when a much more serious piece of news becomes the critical journalism, such as the protests outside several American cities over the past few days, it should come as no surprise when media members, who are just attempting to do their valuable jobs to the best of their ability, are arrested, physically assaulted or shot at either by police authority or the looters camouflaged among peaceful protestors.
Please believe me, these things are being mentioned to suggest my passion for sports and the pure art of competition isn’t strong. I thoroughly enjoy sports and will continue to do so. My problem with the statement of “if the world were more like sports, we’d all be in a better world” is that it ignores the fundamental truth that sports does exist in the society we’ve created for ourselves as human beings. So, we’ve got lots of problems in this society we’ve created and trust me when I say, if we don’t solve them quickly then all of us (no matter your gender, race, sexual orientation or financial status) are all in trouble of eventually living in our own version of hell. But just don’t look to the value of sports to solve them. Let us just begin to have the uncomfortable discussions (most of the time that leaders in sports don't want to have) and solve these issues by doing what you believe are the right, honest and productive things and not what will be an immediately financial benefit (something sports leaders for the most part don't do). If we do that in the things more important to a society than sports, what you'll see in sports will change for the better too as a result of us living in a better society. Let focus on society changes to better our world, whether you like sports or not, and I promise everything you do enjoy and makes other people happy will be even better. When society changes for the better, sports will be better too. But humans can't look at sports on how to change society because right now when you dig deeper into sports, you realize it's no different than anything else. It has the same social, political and economic problems as practically everything else.