Sports

Vancouver hockey fans rioting.

Is there social value to an activity that encourages public drunkenness and violence? I do not think so. There certainly is commercial value. As I walked through North Station in Boston last evening at 8 PM, I noticed the unusual number of security guards and policemen, all looking nervous. When I exited the station on my way to the subway entrance nearby, I observed several clusters of drunk men and women in gold-black Bruins outfits. This was puzzling, since the game they were here to celebrate was already on TV in numerous nearby bars. Maybe they had already consumed all their drunk money.

This morning I listen without surprise to reports that discouraged fans in Vancouver, B.C., had burned and overturned cars. I am treated to repetitious slurred comments of interviewed drunk fans. This, mind you, is on National Public Radio. The auditory nods and giggles of the radio interviewers astound me.

I can understand the exultation of the fat cats who own arenas, bars and the teams themselves. They have managed to pull in millions of dollars overnight from many people who could barely afford it in a depressed economy. They have sold their fan jerseys. They have sold the ad time on the television broadcast. The bookies have made their bet money. A producer of Bruins shirts was interviewed in a hung-over state with great enthusiasm by a local broadcaster for a supposedly non-profit station, which perpetually seeks contributions from "listeners like (me)". Is there any reason why he would not be celebrating, no matter who won the Stanley Cup? It's not religion for him, it's a business.

Hockey is a particularly violent sport. Perhaps, as a team sport, it closest resembles the Roman Coliseum's delights of an ancient time. Modern gladiators, paid to beat each other up to delight the repressed, angry fans. Like many before them, these angry and desperate fans all don matching jerseys and waddle into crowded venues, where they are allowed, for a price, to demand blood tribute. That blow to the jaw for the boss who laid them off. That jab for the wife whom they would like to hit. That stick to the groin for the family which brought them into a miserable life.

I have been bored silly for years by commentators who drone on about the tremendous value of competitive sports. I look around me at a society where competitive sports are big business. I am not impressed. And what is the alternative experience to which to compare the value of these sports? Hard to find. Violent sports have grown out of murderous combat, a mainstay of human civilization for as long as there has been such a thing. It is probably difficult for a brain, conditioned to generating endorphins at the sight of one man smashing another with a stick, to comprehend my point without defensiveness.

I see violent sports as atavistic mass-controlling devices, like religions. They yield great profits for the powerful, who minister to the violent impulses of the masses. They give the populace an outlet for their justifiable rage. They even provide sublimation of natural homosexual impulses for men who would otherwise be even more twisted about their sexuality in a society that demeans psychotherapy.

I doubt this essay will be buzz kill for any sports enthusiast. I can easily be consigned to the "them" of pacifists, sissies and snobs. So be it. I prefer that company. However, as a humanist, dedicated to promoting personal peace and joy, I think the energy, time and money spent on competitive sports could be better spent on education, political activism and human service to those less fortunate.