MIAMI — Sports used to be easy. Remember? It was where we escaped to get away from real life for a bit. Those of us who wrote about sports for a living used to be made fun by journalist colleagues who said (always with a smirk, but perhaps with envy) that we worked in the “toy department.”
But the playground got dirty. Complicated. Real life butted in, and being a fan will never be quite the same.
Oh, sports can still be simple enough, if you work at it. If you have blinders on to just the field. Then, it can still be about whether the Miami Heat really have a shot at Kevin Durant; if Tua Tagovailoa is ready to take the next big step (he’d better); or why the Marlins still aren’t spending enough on player payroll.
That’s the sporty stuff that would fill up the call-in lines back when sports-talk radio was big.
Now a degree in sociology or law or ethics would help navigate being a sports fan. It would certainly help those of us who tap a keyboard or lean into a mic to try to discern what used to be fun ‘n games but seem less and like fun. Or likely merely games.
Sports and real life have come to a forever intersection now and there is no turning back. Now, if I write about the complicated legacy or Colin Kaepernick or the power of WNBA players all wearing Brittney Griner jerseys during an all-star game, some emailers inevitably and reliably will chide that I should “Stick to sports!”
Well, guess what? I am.
We can’t seem to agree on anything in this country anymore, including what “sports” is.
Sports is NFL preseason training camps opening. But sports also is Deshaun Watson in a jail of his own making before he ever has a chance to (eventually) play quarterback for the Cleveland Browns.
Sports is college football season drawing near. But sports also the seismic redefining of it with conference realignment, transfer portals and NIL payouts while the once omnipotent NCAA plays a helpless bystander.
Sports is going on despite all of the turmoil in the world. But sports also is some athletes from Russia and Belarus including the No. 1-ranked man in tennis being banned from Wimbledon over the invasion of Ukraine.
Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t a new headline that is sports-ish, a challenge to how we even define these things now. There were three more this week worthy of reflection, involving tennis star Novak Djokovic, swimmer Lia Thomas and broadcaster Charles Barkley:
Star can make every shot, but won’t take one
The US Open tennis tournament starting next month will not allow Novak Djokovic to play because he is famously the dubious face of the steadfastly unvaccinated athlete. (Well, OK, sorry, Kyrie Irving. That might be you). The event is adhering to the U.S. policy barring persons not vaccinated against COVID from entering the country.
COVID continues to be a thing in sports, especially with the BA.5 variant causing a surge in cases and seeming to penetrate vaccines. Clearly, the pandemic and its effect on sports are not over. Recently 10 (!) unvaccinated Kansas City Royals could not accompany their team into Canada for games against the Blue Jays.
Just as Djokovic puts his Quixotic personal freedom of choice above all else — above his sport, his legacy and his fans — those selfish Royals also put their personal choice above all of those things, as well as above that most fundamental of sports notions: “team first.”
I get and support putting public health above all else when it comes to a pandemic that has now killed 6.5 million worldwide and just surpassed 1 million in the U.S.
In that spirit I also wonder why the US Open is banning Djokovic, yet allowing unvaccinated fans to attend. Hmm.
Swimmer after her true self, not just finish line
Imagine being Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who competed on the men’s team in 2017-20 and on the women’s team in 2021-22. She became the first transgender athlete in Division 1 history to be an NCAA champion and now is nominated for the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year award.
She is a hero for certain to many of the estimated 1.6 million persons in the U.S. who identify as transgender, many of whom endure the worst kind of prejudice and vitriol imaginable.
Such prejudice is fomented by the attitude reflected in this Washington Examiner headline: ‘Lia Thomas is not a woman and should not be honored as one.’ Swimming’s own governing body, FINA, recently voted to restrict participation of transgender athletes in elite women’s competitions.
Even Martina Navratilova, otherwise a champion of LGBTQ rights, has expressed reservations about transgender women athletes such as Thomas.
There can be reasonable discussion on this. But let’s hope the discussion can start from a fundamental, civil place of respect for those who feel they were born in the wrong body and are out to be their true selves in their one life.
The broadcaster and the ‘blood money’
Charles Barkley is the famed basketball player turned NBA analyst for TNT, also known, humorously, for his awful golf game featuring the tortured swing of a grave digger.
That’s enough for the breakaway LIV Golf tour, backed by Saudi Arabia government riches, to offer Barkley a TV role and to have Barkley strongly considering it. LIV Golf has lured many top golfers from a PGA Tour under siege as Saudi Arabia continues “sportswashing” its deserved reputation for rampant human rights abuses in addition to the murder (so says the CIA) of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Says Barkley: “They are making up words like blood money and sportswashing. We have all taken blood money, and we all have sportswashed something, so I don’t like those words.”
Sorry, Chuck, but you cannot have it both ways. You are free to take the Saudi-mega millions but must accept the cost. Leaving TNT. Losing sponsors. The massive hit to your good name. It is blood money. It is sportswashing. Take the money, or turn your back on it. You cannot do both.
The tone of this has seemed glum, right? Like a lament for the good ol’ days when sports were fun and games?
Let me correct that.
Sports is a mirror on us all like never before. Athletes are everyone we are.
The one-dimensional sports star as an automatic hero-on-a-pedestal has disappeared, replaced by a human being whose feats of greatness might sometimes be offset by a fallibility we can all understand.
Sports has never been more interesting because sports has never been more real.
