The recent devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina has, among many other more consequential things, raised significant questions about the role and importance of sports in our society. Are sporting events merely frivolous games, or do they serve a more significant function in our lives? And more specifically, should Louisiana teams such as the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, the NCAA’s Louisiana State University Tigers and the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets be playing when the lives of their state’s residents are in shambles?
The former question is one that I have pondered a great deal recently000. I consider myself to be a reasonably intellectual person and one concerned with serious issues. Yet, more often than not, the issues that concern me are more along the lines of which 19-year-old (two years younger than me!) the Raptors will be drafting, and far less often do i consider whether or not the United States will soon need to institute a draft.
I was finding it increasingly difficult lately to reconcile the gravity and complexity of my life as I aged and matured with the images of grown men prancing around in uniforms covered in tiger stripes (the Cincinnati Bengals) or as dinosaurs (Toronto’s own Raptors) that I was raptly spending so much time watching. Football players dancing in the endzone and pretending to moon the crowd; huddled basketball players rocking back-and-forth before a game; tennis players pumping their fists and screaming in ecstasy; hockey players pausing mid-game to bludgeon each other-it’s all very juvenile and silly, isn’t it?
Well, yes and no. The hyper-competitiveness, the spectacle and the unabashed euphoria of the sports world is certainly reminiscent of childhood. But perhaps this is exactly why sports aren’t silly at all; perhaps this is what makes them so seriously important to the lives of so many people.
Although adult life isn’t usually occupied by disasters such as hurricanes or planes crashing into buildings, it is comprised in large-part of microcosmic struggles and tragedies. Most children in North American society don’t have to worry about paying the bills or having their hearts broken; without these sources of stress they can jubilantly enjoy life.
For some reason, sports allow many adults to tap into this passion, usually reserved for childhood. They provide a much-needed break from the rigours of the everyday. They can even provide emotional stimulation that may currently be missing from a person’s life. One need only recall the euphoria in Boston after the World Series or the Greek fans who flooded the Danforth after the European Championships of soccer, to realize that sports can provide a burst of emotion comparable even to sex or falling in love.
In fact, famous authour [and huge Arsenal supporter] Nick Hornby did put the ecstasy of a sporting victory above sex in his autobiography, Fever Pitch: “Even though there is no question that sex is a nicer activity than watching football… in the normal run of things, the feelings it engenders are simply not as intense as those brought about by a once-in-a-lifetime last-minute Championship winner.”
In the face of macrocosmic tragedy, sports become more significant yet. After 9/11, New Yorkers cathartically rallied around the Yankees, as if the team’s success in its run to the World Series signified their own triumph over pain and grief.
Twelve years earlier, in 1989, Major League Baseball chose to go on with the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics ten days after the San Francisco area was rocked by an earthquake. In that case as well, sports helped to heal the devastated citizens of the Bay area.
Confronted with these precedents, as well as my own experiences of using sports to deal with loss, it seems to me that it is of the utmost importance that the Saints and the Tigers and the Hornets play their games. These games are intrinsically meaningless, particularly in the face of one of the worst tragedies that America has ever witnessed, but great meaning can be attached to them.
If these teams provide just three hours of respite for the displaced residents of Louisiana, then they have performed a great and entirely meaningful service. There’s nothing silly about that.
