American sports contribute to cultural identity, daily life

Up for Debate

This fall marks an intense moment in sports. The World Series ended last week, professional, college and high school football seasons all are in full swing, professional hockey is in the middle of a lockout, and professional basketball is beginning the preseason. On top of this, last summer we watched the Olympics once again unite the world in common competition and, in light of this athletic time of year, senior Travis Jones, junior Nathan Chiantella and sophomore Alex Sirney were asked to give their views on the role of sports in American culture.

Nathan Chiantella, photo editor

Great athletic ability always has been highly regarded in American culture. Every citizen has heard tales of George Washington heroically hurling spare change across vast bodies of water or the heroic riders of the Pony Express. Even Abraham Lincoln’s clutch fadeaway jumper against the Harlem Globetrotters in 1834 doesn’t escape our attention.

The amazing thing about sports is the fact that they are able to combine so many American ideals into one activity. You can pursue fun, but also engage in the hardest of competition at the same time.

Organized sports also offer a way for anyone to pursue the American dream. From the inner city to rural plains, if you can throw a ball you can — theoretically — amass wealth beyond your dreams.
Possibly the most ideally American aspect of any sport is the way it brings people together for a common goal. It is not accident that the word "united" is part of the title of this great nation, and sports truly are able to unite us in a positive manner.

Even if you have never met people before, they are not strangers if they root for your team — but comrades. Even while playing sports, you can be on a team with men and women you do not know, but the common objective of winning will bind you all together and create an amalgamated crew.

For it is the sense of brotherhood upon which this great nation originally was founded. In a society where all are equal, all are brothers and to a certain degree sports are an embodiment of this aim.

Travis Jones, senior writer

Sports have become a very important part of American society. Sports get kids outside, away from video games. Sports create great competition for high school and college-age students. Sports are a wonderful source of entertainment for millions of fans across America. Sports are why my superstitious friend Joe ate Chinese food and wore the same unwashed clothes for the final eight Boston Redsox postseason games — all of which they won.

For many people, like crazy Joe, sports are an integral part of life. Whether playing a pickup game of basketball or watching the Super Bowl with friends, America would not be the same without sports. What would fall be without playoff baseball? Or New Years without college football bowl games? January without postseason football? March without the Madness? Or November without hockey? Oh yeah, America doesn’t care about hockey. Fact of the matter is that, for some, sports create a better sense of time of year than a monthly calendar.

Better than watching sports is actually playing sports. Playing on a team teaches a youngster important aspects of life such as character, competitiveness and camaraderie. Also, in the ever-growing obese McDonald’s society that we live in, sports get kids active and healthy. You don’t need to be a professionally skilled athlete to like sports; anyone can enjoy sports — even girls. So, whether watching an exciting WNBA game on television or playing whiffle ball in your backyard, remember that sports has and will continue to impact American society.

Alex Sirney, opinion editor

The worship of sports as veritable religious establishment in America makes it a powerful medium, one into which our society has focused a large portion of its entertainment resources. Sports form the ultimate escape — they allow the public to enjoy a spectacle of often violent competition and support a team without any repercussions. Sports form an outlet for an energy that has been pent-up ever since we realized that there are 300 million people in this country exactly like us. Sports allow us to find an identity in our support of a certain team.

The spectacle of sport does embody everything that America purports to value — individualism while functioning in a team setting, athletic prowess and physical fitness. It is no wonder that when we look for groups with which to identify. We pick those who embody these values and, when one team exhibits these qualities better than any other, what does it achieve? The greatest positive gain in every American’s life — victory.

American sports fulfills the desire within every person to achieve greatness. When we identify with a team, we weld our fate and fortune to theirs — at least on some psychological level. There are different degrees of this, but almost invariably in my experience, the pronoun "we" is used by fans of winning teams, but when the team starts to lose, the fans divorce themselves by substituting "they."

This just shows the deep hold that the desire to win has on Americans. Even when we are not associated with an organization, we still go to great pains to associate ourselves with their successes and abandon, even if only through minor word choice, our teams in their defeats.