If you’ve been listening to political candidates, you probably think that America is fragmented by religion, gender, race and ethnicity, as well as wealth, class, age and manual dexterity ”” do you text-message or are you all thumbs?
No wonder sports can seem comforting. In what I call Jock Culture, there are only two kinds of Americans ”” winners and losers.
The political season will be over in a few months (with its winners and losers), but the sports seasons will roll on, one after another, often concurrently, and the messages will be drilled into our minds: First place is the only place. Win or die a little. Losers slink home.
In sports, the pressure of those messages to win has given us recruiting scandals, academic cheating, helmet-spearing, bean balls, steroids and industrial espionage ”” the New England Patriots used video cameras to gain an edge. In real life, those messages about winning have been performance-enhanced to bring us dishonesty in banking, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, energy and foreign policy.
There’s a connection between cutting corners to win a football game and to start a war. For many Americans, certainly for the majority American boys, the most vivid and lasting lessons are learned in the sports they play and watch. Jock Culture is the incubator of most definitions of manly success.