PrintFebruary 5, 2010
Sports Heroes and Conservatism
Doug Flutie, one of the most inspirational players in college football history, and Curt Schilling, a great Red Sox pitcher who won a World Series for his team, both supported Scott Brown for the Senate. There is no reason to doubt that these popular, respected men helped bring attention and support to the Brown campaign.
Tim Tebow is appearing in an ad during the Super Bowl which has a profoundly life-affirming statement -- the sort of personal arguments against abortion which it is impossible to contradict. Other college football superstars have made the same sort of appeal. Colt McCoy and Sam Bradford, superstar quarterbacks during the week before the huge O.U.-Texas game, co-produced a video titled "I am second," which makes it clear to all their fans that God, and not sports, is the center of their lives. Kurt Warner, whose inspirational life as a pro quarterback is the stuff of legends, would give all his laurels without a second thought to the God who made his wonderful life possible.
Great black athletes, from the late Reggie White, the "Minister of Defense," to Lynn Swann, one of the greatest receivers in the history of the game, have shown how serious faith takes God-given talent and transforms that into God-inspired lives. J.C. Watts, a man of the cloth and football star, is one black man who has a plan for hope and change which really works, and without more government or huge federal expenditures: Change the man and open hearts and minds to the reality of the infinite love of a Blessed Creator, and so many once-overwhelming problems shrink to the size of an anthill. In this crucial area of conservatism -- deep faith in a loving and true God -- blacks are among the most conservative people in the world.
Why is there such a strong connection between sports' greatness and conservatism? There are no atheists in foxholes. Perhaps there are no atheists on the line of scrimmage either. Success in sports permits no shortcuts. Competition is very intense in professional sports; the difference between greatness and failure is nearly always work, practice, study, and team loyalty. The leftist notion that our success in life is the result of dumb luck would outrage those sports heroes who know personally just how many hours of sweat and how much hard study of game films were the difference between victory and defeat.
Sports are genuinely post-racial in a way that Obama's presidency is not. The best players play, whatever their race, and the mediocre players sit on the bench, whatever the color of their skin. Meritocracy used to be the guiding principle of nearly every aspect of American life. Today, sadly, meritocracy exists in only a handful of areas of our life -- sports, classical musical performances, chess matches, software development, and perhaps a few other areas.
Even science, with the abomination of man-made global warming, is pocked with referees on the take. Academic requirements for admission to colleges have been watered down to allow less qualified white, brown, and black students to step in front of more qualified yellow students. Sports, though, remains an oasis of unregulated results -- a world in which the social agenda is constructed long before the first action on the agenda has begun.
In all of television today -- which has entertainment programs with the villains and victims so clearly scripted based upon gender, race, faith, and other factors -- there are few surprises. In television news, the same tired, recycled propaganda is played over and over, and virtually nothing actually new or exciting ever reaches our ears. Schools teach the same boring mush of politically correct lies and rhetoric dressed up as knowledge. Everywhere one looks, dull sameness reigns unchallenged.
Everywhere, that same blandness rules -- except in sports. Excitement, change, and actual victories (and very real defeats) are allowed by the system of athletics to happen. Unlike other areas of our life, not everything in team sports is prearranged according to the needs of social balance, gender fairness, racial equivalence, and the like. Young men pray -- quite openly! -- to God and then throw all that they have into a fierce battle that leaves broken arms, sprained knees, concussions, and many other wounds of war.
Sports are the last part of our free-enterprise system that is not maligned as being run by plutocrats. Sports are the last part of our public rituals of popular events which are connected closely to the divine. Sports have produced true American heroes, like Pat Tillman, the Cardinals defense back who left his professional career and millions of dollars to serve, and sadly, to die, for his country. In a nation filled with shady business bosses cutting deals with pols behind closed doors, in a land in which academic freedom is stillborn in textbooks and curricula constructed to enslave minds, in an America which has surrendered its liberties so often, so quickly, and without any reflection, our values do survive, thrive, and provide champions -- like with Greek Olympic athletes, the serious but playful ritual of true competition replenishes us.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
