SPORTS: THE RELIGION OF

Serena Williams

If sports fans devoted as much critical thought to important issues as they do to sports We wouldn't be in Iraq, jobs wouldn't be outsourced at the alarming levels of today, unions wouldn't be on the verge of disappearing, Wall Mart wouldn't have a foot hold on small and mid-sized towns, and business, and large segments of society would not have voted against their best interests for so many decades. Religion is a defined, and powerful force in American society, and chief among religious devotion is sports. The games themselves are fun. The feats of notables like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters are testament to the power of the game, and the amount of money it engineers, and generates. 

I can't watch sports on television.  It is mind numbing, and I usually fall asleep because I am a participant in the game of living.  I love to play games.  I love running, moving my body, and challenging myself in the forest with life and death play tracking and stalking animals with the propensity to tear me to threads. But it is more than games on TV that has prompted me to write.  It is the business of sports that holds the true elements to the fixation of too many of the average American sports fans outside of the spectrum of true political power.

Allowing Black American athletes into the major leagues and breaking down the laws of racial injustice sent the owner's money making potential through the roof.  The lesbian athletes of the early 20th century were the consistent testament to the excellence of women athletics, and without them women's sports would not be in its prominent place in the 21st century.  The football fans for the Washington DC team are a force unto themselves, and their story is a story worth looking closely into.  No matter what kind of injustice the owners inflict upon the Black players of the Washington team the fans hold on to their team devotion.  No matter how many racial insults fly from the business side of the Washington team to their DC fan base they suck it up and continue to pay their money to the franchise, and show up at rally's, and games. 

The Washington football team was the last team to admit Negro players into their employee rooster, and year after year the owner/management paradigm around race has remained consistent knowing that Black fans are typical of Black Americans.  It does not matter what company in whatever industry openly discriminates, alienates, insults, or takes from Black Americans typically we will return to supporting them after we rant and rave, bitch 'n moan, call Al Sharpton, and make the 10 o'clock news.  It is a paradigm that enriches so many industries.  There is no need to enumerate the past incidents. Sports fans know all this, and Black Americans talk about it enough.  It is an open insult to the richness, and the contributions of the African in America to America.  But that doesn't play into the informed decisions made to support teams that don't respect the core values of a community like the Black American community, or the Native American nations. 

Something of the soul, of the higher intelligence of devotion is sacrificed at an altar atop TV's across the city as sports fans in DC take hit after hit and send their money to the DC franchise.  This is one paradigm that feeds the dysfunction within Washington DC's Black families, and our community. It lives and thrives like cockroaches within the cracks of walls, and ceilings, chews on light fixtures, and finds its way into the bread box and nests in wet spots behind the fridge, or in the bathroom upstairs. There is a logic to parenting.  If, for example, rape is an area of concern for our children do we, as parents, allow the images of violation to permeate the spirit of our home, our actions? 

Among DC football fans the answer is expressed in actions.  There is a danger in these words, and I run a personal risk speaking thus. I have come close to physical altercations raising these alarms.  Save for my physical presence it never happened but there is truth to the relationship between sports, family, social standards, abuse, and abandonment.  It just does not serve the business of sports entertainment to lend itself to the deep analysis of behavior, truth, sports, outcome, and value or the impact of unexamined devotion.  None of this became clear to me until the first time I toured with some black kids from DC to the football camp.  Darrell Green, a friend of both our learning center, and my sister-in-law Sherry who runs the center, gave our kids a personal touch.  Other stars came out, and one of the sales people leaned over and said, "You're not really into the game are you?" 

"No. I am not. I just love the kid's excitement."

"What are you interested in?" 

"The business.  How it works, and the cameras."

"I'll be right back."

He returned shortly and gave me a personal tour of the camp business man to business man.  I was in business sales at the time.  The things revealed were eye openers.  One of the things I noticed I questioned him on, and as an answer he said, "You're right my language does change when speaking with fans, and business people.  The players are product." 

If the players are product who are the fans?  - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of the Drum