Foul Play: What’s wrong with sport?
Joe Humphreys
This book might more aptly be titled "The Sport Delusion". In his fresh and challenging review of a world inordinately focused on the pursuit of competitive sport — in the media, business, education institutions, community life, ‘cultural’ activities, and everyday personal lives — Humphreys challenges the bona fides of competitive sport. While praising uncompetitive play, he argues that most ‘sport’ activities are exercises in exclusion, tied closely to identifying weakness among would-be participants. Competitive sport is seen as far from innocent fun, despite the repeated mantras that "sport is good for you" or "sport improves character", which can convince uncritical thinkers who easily overlook very many disreputable aspects of sport, which he sees as a "moral experiment that has gone badly wrong".
Humphreys argues that, to be immersed in the world of competitive sport, people must take seriously what is essentially a triviality, must debase and stupefy themselves, must engage in various convoluted rituals not unlike religion, and must believe the unbelievable while they embrace their ‘faith’. Furthermore, like religious fundamentalists, whose lifeblood is attacking people who don’t share their particular faith, sports fans tend to define themselves by their opposition to ‘the other’. They can often switch support to a particular team because they hate that team’s opponent.
The author points out that sport often provides one of the last refuges for forms of widespread intolerance — such as, racism, sexism, homophobia, animal cruelty, foul language, and divisions between race, gender, and class — that are otherwise removed from modern organized activities. Hatred in sport has claimed a few thousand victims through hooliganism and public fights, sometimes termed ‘a bit of fun’ by fans.
Humphreys contends that the real cost of sport is in our time lost in an escape from reality, an escape that can sap life and its very meaning. Noam Chomsky believes that sport has a retarding effect on society, "to take apart the system of illusions and deception which functions to prevent understanding of contemporary reality ... instead of questions that really matter for human life, their own included". Sport is a distraction that the world can ill-afford, e.g., many sports fans know the minutiae of sports statistics while having no clue of the 1998-2003 Congo war that left 4 million dead. Sport is the modern equivalent of Nero’s Roman fiddle (Chomsky): we play it while the world burns.
Another negative of competitive sport is that it can be seen to be anti-family, contrary to the promoted view that it brings families closer. The author sees fathers who wax lyrical about football yet are found wanting when more serious issues concerning their children could be discussed: the intensity of sport fanatics tends to increase in proportion to their neglect of family duties. ‘Collateral damage’ in family relationships can be manifested where children might know almost everything about their father’s favourite football team while knowing little about their father as a person. Athletes sacrifice quality of life; family; personal development, including education; weekends; kids’ birthdays, etc.
Humphreys cites research findings on the sociology of sport showing that sport legitimizes egocentrism, and — rather than developing virtues like fair play, social cohesion, respect for others — instead encourages even amateurs to cheat, to distort rules, and to show disrespect for fellow competitors, while followers tend to engage in boorishness. Sport competitions encourage athletes to commit what would normally be considered moral transgressions. In turn, sport organizations try to deflect attention from the bad qualities of sport towards the individuals who are seen to transgress.
The author challenges sports journalists, whose collective duty he sees as trying to intellectualize the unintelligent, embellishing straightforward statements about the shallow pursuit of kicking a ball around a field. While he is sceptical of professional commentators as they try to ‘brain up’ sport, he is more scathing of academics who lose themselves when stating the obvious within their own self-sustaining constructs, since any effort to intellectualize the ‘dumb’ pursuit of competitive sport is futile, adding that research on sport tends to be either humbug or banal.
If one were to classify sport with other organized activities, Humphreys believes sport might compare with MTV’s ‘Jackass’ pursuits rather than with refined pursuits such as literature or art. He contrasts the behaviour of match followers with those attending an art display, who are never heard shouting abuse at the art curator to "get another pair of f***ing glasses", or how you never see head-butting at book fairs. Instead, competitive sport permits or even encourages behaviour verging on the psychopathic.
Humphreys argues that fairness in sport competition is only an illusion and that cheating in competitive sport is de rigueur. Mean-spirited judgementalism is the stock response today to mistakes, and is a new type of puritanism which is getting worse. His arguments reflect Stephen Blair who suggested that, "The ‘high priests of Fleet Street thrive in this heightened world of judgementalism. In today’s world of tabloid-driven, manufactured outrage, celebrities and public figures are ‘fair game’ for abuse, fanned on by the pack mentality of sports enthusiasts". The hallmark of a fan is often someone who easily takes offence, since sport is associated with heightened judgementalism as well as being a theatre for exaggerated emotions. The stereotypical sports fan is not known for his sense of perspective, as he is compelled to eulogize rather than praise, to condemn rather than censure, and he is as eager to give offence as to take it. Sport fanatics also fail to see the bigger picture. Sports administrators can be very inconsistent: one time ignoring cheating while another time victimizing the perpetrator.
The author is also critical of politicians who spend vast sums of public money on competitive sports facilities, particularly contact sports, "detrimental to individuals’ moral character", adding that the pack mentality evident at competitions also dilutes players’ sense of personal moral responsibility. The book presents a variety of other critical comments concerning sport, e.g., that all sporting codes have elitism, arrogance, a sanctimonious air; that gambling is a sister pursuit of sport; that sports journalism often more closely resembles advertising than news; and that the hallmark of a closed society is an unhealthy obsession with sport. Humphreys also argues that competitive sport is often quite unhealthy for athletes, leading to steroid taking and long-term damage; starving or overeating for results; damaging joints; not to mention contact sport damage, such as spinal injuries and fatalities.
On the plus side, the author argues that the positive aspect of sport is sport that is performed for its own sake or for fun, i.e., without the goal of victory. The benefit of non-competitive sport roughly equates to the benefits of play: exercise, socializing, and even discipline, courage, and invention. He suggests that the Special Olympics, by not focusing primarily on competition, do advance personal development and self-esteem. As John Gray said, "The best fisherman is not the one who catches the most fish but the one who enjoys fishing the most".
Overall, the author sees competitive sport as ultimately a dangerous emotional crutch since teams lose most of the time. Reflecting Chomsky, Humphreys surmises that maybe sport is craved because it creates fleeting euphoria papering over the cracks of human despair, making everyman’s humdrum life bearable — and this obsession thrives in a world where those who do not share an interest in sport can be seen as partaking in one of the most subversive acts in society today. For sport agnostics and sport fans, Foul Play provides a well articulated challenge to the all-pervasive goliath of a world increasingly focused on the distraction of competitive sport.
John Mullins |
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