School Sports

I am not a sports guy. I played some playground league softball way back in the day, and that's about it for competitive team sports. I'm married to a former collegiate swimmer who used to do triathlons and marathons, and the board of directors really loves cross country. For years, one of my extra jobs at my school was announcing football games, and I was a big supporter of all our teams, especially those in which my own students were involved.

NW PA is sports territory. We start them early and take them seriously (and not always in a developmentally appropriate way). We've had arguably disproportionate success for a district our size-- state-level contending teams, players who went on to college and pro success. My school loved a good pep rally, and I nudged even my most non-sporty students toward approaching these gatherings with an open mind. I've always thought school spirit (which around here is mostly focused through sports) is a way to practice being part of something bigger than yourself.

These days, I have concerns.

High school sports have been transforming for the past couple of decades, driven by parents who see sports as a service provided for them to get their child a scholarship (and maybe fame and fortune). You can see the effects in the trouble getting officials to work events and in how few coaches are now from outside the teaching staff. There are certainly non-teacher coaches who do good work, but non-teacher coaches too often don't grasp that 1) they are teaching students and 2) that these students have lives outside of their sport. 

Some of this intensity seems to be trickling down from college and pro sports. My daughter graduated from Penn State, and I have other family that went to Pitt, so I'm familiar with what fairly... intense... fandom looks like. One of my nephews is a Penn State grad and sports writer who still covers his alma mater and posts like this one show he has kept his perspective. But goodness, do some fans take their college and pro teams very seriously.

And while I'm not sure the intensity has changed, I think how I feel about it in this moment has shifted.

Sports love is very much a tribal thing. Decades ago one of our football captains stood up in a pep rally and declared "I hate [rival's name] because... because... they're [rival's name]." He still gets grief about it, but it's actually nice shorthand, more honest that trying to pretend that [rival's name] has some sort of odious quality.

Which is the way it usually works. You pick out That Team You Hate and declare that they have That Detestable Trait that makes it okay to hate them. You love and support your team, sometimes to the point that you excuse terrible behavior by team members. You go way past loyalty and make the team a critical part of your identity to the point that any that attacks the team attacks you. 

Thing is, we are living through a demonstration of how tribalism can be bad for a nation. What is MAGA except a team in the game of socio-political sports with the most rabid fan base ever? We're not supposed to inject any nuanced reality into the discussion of their team's honored icons (Dear Leader, a certain version of US history) and we aren't supposed to acknowledge any nuanced positive aspects of the teams they hate (LGBTQ, immigrants). 

So I'm not really enjoying the tribalism of sports these days. It no longer seems like a harmless diversion over inconsequential contests. It seems too much like a mirror of the kind of toxic tribalism that is seeping into every aspect of US life, and I'd just rather not.

I was a band guy. Something I would tell band members or sports-involved students when they seemed a little into the Hate That Team groove was this-- Out there, when you're doing your thing at this event, those people on the other side are the only people in that place who really understand what you go through to do what you do. Not the fans, not the people screaming for you to "Kick those @!##%^'s asses." 

I'm not arguing excessive sports fanning is remotely a cause of the current tribalism cursing our nation. But I am suggesting that the worst kind of sports fandom echoes the worst kind of politics, and maybe we want to be a little more thoughtful about the kind of sportsthusiasm that we foster in young humans. If sports are supposed to build character-- well, as a nation we are suffering from a bit of character deficiency and maybe we should keep that in mind.