Last week I was one of the 500 million viewers who watched a global megaevent. I do not know how many of those viewers were in a bar, but that is where I found myself, among a pack of well-mannered sports fans enthusiastically enjoying the competition between Real Madrid and Barcelona, two European soccer – that is to say – football powerhouses whose clash goes by the name of el clásico. Half a billion viewers would make anything a classic. The Super Bowl draws about a quarter of that size of an audience if it is lucky. Of course, the Olympics and the World Cup eclipse everything else.
But this post is not about the relative irrelevancy of American football, which I also follow religiously, on a global stage. That is a tedious subject. Rather it is about sport itself and its new relevancy.
No sport – even American football – is a game only. The stereotypical image of dim-witted athletes who can barely speak is unfair. Indeed, the brains of almost all athletes have to be firing at all times to produce the physical feats that most of them achieve. If I were up the creek without a paddle, I would rather take my chances on the smarts of an average football player than I would most local television reporters.
Most critics of sports do not understand that in a world that long ago lost its integrity, sports offer rules and laws and regulations that have to be followed precisely, fairly and in a timely manner. If athletes do not follow the rules on the field, penalties instantly abound. The public can expect more fairness in the games of the National Football League than in the games played by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This might explain why the thirst for sport – including individual sports – has exploded. Perhaps in a world with fewer relevant standards and just results, sports offer at least a framework for how people are expected to behave, with instant measurement is given. Do some sports attract louts and thugs? Yes, but so does Congress, except that in sports the louts and thugs are exposed more quickly.
Aside from providing some sort of confines for behavior, sports also offer demonstrations of extraordinary physical skill and a place for individuals prone to violence and war to sublimate their passions. More so now than before, though, sports also offer a window into the changing demographics of our world. In the bar last week, the number of cultures, languages spoken and colors of skin were multiple. The composition of most American sports today is a prime example, what with linebackers from Tonga and Nigeria in the NFL and HispanicLatino pitchers and catchers in Major League Baseball from the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
Sports also provide insights to new social mores and styles but they remain testament to the power of sport to influence society. They highlight the magic of sharing with half a billion people a global moment with modern-age communications technology.
Most of all, sports today display the utter interconnectivity of the world, as important as the financial and other economic realities that conjoin whole groups of people. But sports connect people on yet another emotional and passionate basis – a new reality in the world whose impact is not yet known.
Whatever that impact, it will not be on a small scale, and it will most likely be classic.
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