Sports: The All-American Addiction

3. The All-American Addiction

THE ALL-AMERICAN ADDICTION I know the addiction well. I have spent countless hours at games, watching them on television, or reading about them in newspapers and magazines. I have to willfully resist snapping on the television to check out that night’s big game, or to catch a quick sports news update from ESPN. I am drawn to it like a moth to flame. Sport’s lure is powerful; often irresistible. On far too many occasions, I have found myself sitting on the sofa, beer in hand, wasting away the afternoon or evening mindlessly flipping from one sporting event to another. I awake from my sports-induced coma, awash in feelings of guilt that I was not doing something more productive. Periodically, I muster the nerve to fight back. I vow to turn off the television set . . . at the next timeout. Often, when the moment of truth arrives, I cannot raise my arm to do so. Taking comfort in the fact that the game will be decided by the next timeout, I settle in for more. But rarely is the contest decided by the next commercial break. So, I would continue to sit, sometimes all day. – 21 – When we talk about whether something is true, we mean that what appears accords with the way a thing really exists. And whatever the level of discussion, whatever the issue, when there is a discrepancy between appearance and reality, we regard it as untrue. —The Dali Lama I am not alone. There are lots of us out there. Millions. Perhaps you have been there, too. We have become addicted to sport; it is our society’s opiate. We plan our days, weekends, and even vacations around it. If it is on the television anywhere near us, at home, the local bar, or a restaurant, we invariably turn to watch. We can’t even get away from it in the car as we tune to the incessant wail of sports talk radio. And we’ll do whatever we need to do to get it; twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, from Key West to Seattle, Maine to New Mexico. While a little escapism is not harmful, addiction is. Although not as destructive as an addiction to drugs, educationally, intellectually, and personally, a sports addiction can be very harmful as it lures us into physical inactivity and a mindless stupor. Like a drug addiction, being a sports fan offers little of long-term substance or meaning. It allows us to escape our problems and ignore the issues we face, and it undermines our attempts to solve them. We invest our effort and emotion in sports stars and teams rather than improving our own lives by reading, writing, learning a new skill or how to play a musical instrument, or simply engaging in some meaningful conversation with a friend or family member. It is not enough to watch one game. We must watch the next and the next. Like a drug addiction, we need to repeat the act again and again and again just to feel normal. And, as with drugs, addiction to sports adversely affects those around us: friends, spouses, and children . “The love of sports can become so consuming that it corrodes all but the strongest unions between husband and wife. When a fan pours all of his emotion into baseball, basketball, or football, there is very little left for his wife, children, career, and community. That is a recipe for marital disaster” (Putnam 1999, 169). For example, how many thousands of times does conversation come to a standstill the moment a game is turned on? Rather than interacting with a friend or family member, our eyes and attention turn instead to the tube, where we slowly slip into a collective ESPN22 The All-American Addiction induced stupor. Rather than getting involved, sport makes it easy for us to choose to sit idly and watch, television remote in hand. Sport is what we talk about when we want to avoid thinking or talking about anything meaningful or important. Like crack addicts sitting around their pipe in a dream state waiting for their next “hit,” we sit in front of our televisions, unresponsive to the world around us, eyes glazed over and minds numbed, totally absorbed in a sports fantasy “trip,” waiting for the next big play. Yet, we don’t mind our addiction. In fact, we embrace it...