Playing Tough: The World of Sports and Politics

Conclusion

Enacted by Congress in 1972, Title IX offered girls and women the opportunity to develop leadership skills, learn teamwork, build self-confidence, and perfect self-discipline on the playing field. Politics brought about an explosion in women’s sports, which, in turn, invigorated an entire generation of woman leaders and legislators. Title IX ordained a revolution in American life that would forever alter the established order. AP Images Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business. —Winston Churchill One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. —Plato [Conclusion] The connection between sports and politics runs deep in human existence. From ancient days, humans developed their athletic attributes in order to prepare for the hunt and for the inevitable conflicts between clans and families . Those who led these human groups recognized the importance of physical fitness. They knew, as the Duke of Wellington would say millennia later, that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” Practicing sporting skills had definite political implications, and a physically unfit nation was doomed. We have come a long way from the cinder tracks of ancient Olympia in terms of biological, political, social, and technological developments. Humans have doubled their life expectancy. They have expanded their political communities to a continental scope and beyond. At times, they have demonstrated that they cannot only pledge allegiance to freedom and democracy but actually practice systems of politics that will preserve, protect, and defend those verities. Yet, they have also shown a willingness to use the innovations of civilization to oppress their fellow countrymen and impose their will on others. Sports themselves are not good or evil. They are just sports. Sports can be used by emerging democracies, like South Africa, to help unify a multiracial nation arising phoenix-like out of a brutal police state. Sports can be used by dictatorships to flaunt their power and intimidate their rivals. How could something so impressive as the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936 be followed in a few short years by a world war sacrificing more than sixty million people?In 2003, the Times of London described a parade honoring the World Cup champion English rugby team as “like a sweet-natured version of the Nuremburg rally.” However, while rugby is a collision sport, it has never produced death camps. Sports can tell us something about who we are, both good and bad. Mostly, 226 Playing Tough sports has been a tool, like a hammer, which in the hands of people of good will can result in building peace and even serenity, while, in the kit of miscreants, it can cause havoc. Nation-states have been the most prominent offenders, but tribes of soccer ultras, for example, can easily mutate into warriors. Sports can serve as a spark igniting a war between two small Central American countries or a trans-Balkan conflagration fought in part between paramilitaries of former soccer hooligans. Sports cannot reform politics, although those who run an athletic enterprise can stand at the public trough and feed. The incessant demand for public subsidies by private sports franchise owners is organized extortion. Can we select as our political leaders persons who will resist this shakedown? Can we, the people, resist the compulsion to make rich people richer? For better or worse, we deserve those who govern us. We vote for them in democracies. We abide them in those nations where rule is imposed by force. Caught in the web of a dictatorship, we can resist, if we have sufficient courage, or we can accept our fate. When discretion mandates caution, sports may offer us the safety of a diversion. Every so often, out of the tangle of our sporting culture, a figure arises who can jump the gap to political leadership. Simply because a person first comes to our attention through sports excellence does not mean the athlete would serve us equally well off the “playing fields of Eton.” Yet Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali became important symbols for an oppressed minority, providing hope along with a full measure of pride and self-esteem. We benefit from those who can demonstrate leadership, character, and competitiveness, developed in sports or elsewhere, because our clan’s survival depends on the fitness of our leaders. Sports and politics intertwine in modern civilization. Both are essential. Like water and fresh air...