Interestingly, it shows itself most often in connection with college basketball. I still consider myself a baseball fan first and foremost, and baseball can leave me heartbroken and frustrated and even angry sometimes, but not really dark in the way of which I speak.
I've become more of a soccer fan of late, and flopping drives me nuts. Fan behavior can get me angry (no, Portland Timbers fans, it is not acceptable to cheer for Sporting KC's goalie to be concussed and to interfere with the trainer trying to examine him by thowing stuff on the field -- I was watching, I saw), and I can be heartbroken over a bad result (the shot hit both posts, really?), but again, not quite the dark side.
But college basketball? Serious dark side.
It showed up last night. The Kansas Jayhawks (KU was my last teaching stop) found themselves in a heated and extended battle with their conference rivals, the Oklahoma Sooners. First Kansas built a big lead; then Oklahoma came back and built up their own big lead. Regulation time ended in a tie. So did the first overtime. So did the second overtime. Finally, in the third overtime, Kansas outlasted Oklahoma 109-106, a score more suggestive of the NBA than the NCAA.
So, plenty of opportunity for frustration, particularly with one Buddy Hield.
Hield is the Sooners' best player. And he's really good. This isn't new, but the performance he turned in last night was next-level stuff. Hield dropped 46 points on the Jayhawks, and did so with some ridiculous shots. And at least after some of those shots I caught myself wondering why one of the Jayhawks didn't body-check Hield into the upper seats of Allen Fieldhouse. Dark side. Not really an acceptable way to think, particularly for a pastor. At least I wasn't with anybody at the time.
This opens up a question about how we relate to sports as "participants" (fans, consumers, whatever you choose to call it) and how that participation affects us. There are many who can watch a game and be largely unaffected by it aside from a basic happiness if their team wins or unhappiness if they lose. I kinda envy them sometimes. But then sometimes I don't. There is really very little like the sheer sense of exhausted exhilaration that comes after a game like last night's contest.
But not all reactions are so joyous. There are those whose dark side goes much further than thinking about hard fouls. Bryan Stow could tell you about that if he were physically able, after being beaten within an inch of his life by two Los Angeles Dodgers fans, apparently for the "crime" of being a San Francisco Giants fan. That represents an extreme that, thankfully, is rarely enacted. Riots at matches or games would fall into the same category, thankfully. (Outright hooliganism, on the other hand, seems more of a case of violence using sports as an excuse, but that is a thought that would take much longer to unpack, on a subject that seems to be much less frequently enacted than in the past.)
There is, as has been alluded to in this blog in the past, nowadays the question of how much responsibility fans of football bear for the ongoing prevalence of traumatic brain injury and CTE in the game. Fans, after all, spend the money that is the lifeblood of the football empire. If the money dries up, there's a real good chance the game dries up. This is a real and challenging question.
But there's another question, related but different, that also has to be faced:
Are we harmed by watching?
Do we get numbed by seeing so many hits, so many concussions, so many subconcussve hits, so many injuries?
Do we damage ourselves by seeking out rationalizations or reasons to absolve ourselves when we watch? "I don't watch for the violence, I watch for the beauty ... " "It's their responsibility if they choose to play, not mine ... " "It doesn't make any difference if I don't watch, I'm just one person ... " "Watching my alma mater is different than watching the NFL ... " "People get hurt playing other sports, are we going to ban them too? ... " "Football is too important a part of our culture, it can't be changed ... " "A lot of players don't end up with this damage so it must be o.k. ..." "Technology will fix everything, they'll come up with the perfect helmet soon ... " and you can probably supply others.
How much do we damage our own ethical framework, our own moral centers, with such rationalizations in the face of undeniable damage to the bodies and brains of more than enough players to fill a team?
Does it do harm to us? Do we at least have the basic fortitude to pursue the question without hesitation?
(to be continued)
In this case, not the specific "brain trauma" I'm worried about...
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