sports

The world of sports is a vivid reflector of what is going on in the larger society. Some of the key issues in sports history that have also been integral in standard American culture are prioritization of political issues and money, the impact that sports have on the educational system, race and racism, gender and sexism, and homosexuality and the myth of gay athletes. As each of these issues are molded in the sports arena, they are also played out in American cities and towns.
It has long been taken for granted that sports players and teams deal with and generate large sums of money. This has caused some major issues with a lot of Americans. One main issue is player salaries. When sports first became popular, it was rare to find a player who earned more than twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year. In less than half a century, salaries increased so much that it was not uncommon to see basic players earning half a million dollars per year. Many people wondered how "a player who has barely graduated from high school [could] command a multi-million dollar contract when a dedicated...teacher or nurse seldom earns more than $30,000 (Davies, 147)?" "The top baseball players earned 50 times the average salary of ordinary Americans (Gooch, 75)." Why a city whose school system is crumbling can afford to make a ten million dollar bid for a sports franchise. This is just a taste of where American political and financial values and priorities lay. One wonders why crime is on the rise, why government has to "dumb-down" to average citizens. If teachers and school systems, the backbone of this country, were provided even a small percentage of what sports stars make, it would make a difference so visible one would think it unreal.

College athletics is another controversial branch of the sports system. There are a plethora of myths about college athletes. Included in these are "college athletes are first and foremost students; athletic competition provides an integral part of the education process...[and] athletic programs contribute greatly to academic fund raising endeavors (Davies, 195)." First, it is widely known that the biggest priority for many college athletes is not making the grade in history class but making the basket in the big game. It was only a few years ago that college athletes were required to earn certain grade point averages to continue in their sport. Secondly, the idea that athletic competition is integral to the education process is ludicrous. If anything, the only competition created for athletes is between academics and a work-out. Third, the only financial contributions athletic programs provide is to the teams, players, and coaches with leather couches, big screen televisions, expensive name brand shoes and other unneeded amenities. This is not to say that college athletics are wrong or a bad thing. The only argument is that athletes and coaches need to understand the importance of the education as well as the sport. Not everyone is going to be a Michael Jordan.

Interestingly enough, many athletes are African-American. Many of these black athletes receive scholarships based on their ability and these scholarships may be the only way they can attend a university but what education they sacrifice for this privilege. It is curious to take an alternate view at this situation. Knowing that not all players are going to go on to be stars and knowing that many athletes sacrifice education for sport, black athletes are put in the position of having a college degree but still not being able to gain substantial employment because of their academic record. This process has effectively made useless the four or five years they spent at college and they are thrown back into the pool of poorly educated, low income African-Americans. There is a type of hidden racism in effect on many college campuses. This system is not knew in sports or society. Luckily, today a great deal of professional athletes are African-American. Many of them star players and top earners. Interesting that the top 1% of earners that bigoted, right-wing politicians are fighting to protect from tax laws are African-American. They don't see this, though, because theirs is a White world where the only blacks they know are the ones working in their houses.
Another group of people who have had a tough time in the sports world are women. Their performance was always seen as secondary and less than that of men. Whereas AfroAmerican discrimination is more of a behind-closed-doors policy, discrimination of women is blatant and outright. For the same sports, women earn less and are covered by media less than men. Less than twenty years ago, a "majority of...colleges and universities offered no competitive athletic programs for female students (Davies, 167)." Through the work of powerful female athletes like Billie Jean King, women have been given more and more opportunities to show their effectiveness in sports. "For example, in 1988 Florence Griffith Joyner...was just .72 of a second slower than that of [the fastest male] (Davies, 180)," and "Nancy Liebermann of Old Dominion University...set a standard of performance and...abilities [for] women...on the basketball floor (Davies, 181)." There is no doubt now that if given the chance, women are just as good as, and many times better than, men in any sports field.

"The 11,000 competitors in 1994's Gay Games IV were a giant banner proclaiming that gay athlete is not an oxymoron (Gooch, 74)." Many Americans believe homosexuals and sports do not go together. This, along with other prejudices, has created a hostile and very discriminatory environment for homosexuals in sports. There is obviously no correlation with sexual orientation and sports performance. So why the hard feelings for gay folks in sports? It used to be that gay boys would choose not to participate in sports because of the fear of team-mates "finding out" about them. A locker room and shower is not necessarily an easy place for a young person to deal with his sexuality and many young hetero boys strike back with violence against those who are perceived as "faggots." For a while, the discrimination that one speaks of came internally. It wasn't until athletes started coming out that external discriminatory practices showed their ugly faces. It became o.k. to be gay and play sports but not to "act" gay and play sports. "[A]cting like a queen on the sports field isn't appropriate somehow (Gooch, 119)." Things are changing for homosexuals now. As more and more people in society in general come out, gay athletes can feel more comfortable being themselves on and off the playing field. The feeling of team and buddyhood that sports provide crosses sexual orientation lines. In essence, we are all men and women who enjoy the excitement of the game.
The sports scene is a micro-society, if you will. Everything that happens outside the arena gates eventually works it's way in. There are good points and bad points to sports. As America enters the twenty-first century, the sports setting will change as society changes. It takes shifting priorities from just making money to using that money to fund educational and social causes. There is plenty of it to go around. Give college athletes the chance to play the game and earn the grades so that if they don't become major stars, they can be successful in the job market. Allow women the opportunity to play every sport as they wish. Move away from the good ol' boys ideology and watch your favorite black-lesbian-football-team win on Super Bowl Sunday.

Sources used for this paper included: America's Obsession, Sports and Society Since 1945; Davies, Richard; Harcourt Brace College Publishers; 1994 and the article The Rules of the Game; Gooch, Brad; OUT Magazine July-August 1995.