On ESPN’s Grantland website, Chris Jones recently wrote about the fallacy of saying “We” in the context of sports. He makes a good argument, but ultimately all of those who care enough to make the designation miss the point. They’re all buzz kills.
Sports are supposed to be a place of escape and bringing those who aren’t of the same class, gender or race together for a common cause. It is entertainment, but the other forms can be just as divisive as they are communal. You’ll never see an Adam Sandler fan rent Remains of the Day, nor will you see an art house film buff at the premier of Sandler’s upcoming atrocity Jack and Jill. Metal fans are an island on to themselves, neither letting one on the island or off. You may like Fox News or MSNBC, but you won’t like both. Sport transcends all that.
Why care? Why go to someone else’s birthday party and blow out their candles? Is it that important to you to prick their balloon and make them cry? What do you get out of it? It is important to have standards, but why go to all of that trouble just to put people in their place.
The first rule of saying we is that fans DO matter. Can the Florida Marlins exist without them? They’ve given it the good old-fashioned try in the last decade, but the reason why the “evil, small-footed” owners can’t spend any money is because they haven’t put butts in seats. It’s funny how that works. Revenue equals spending, and you can only exist on a marginal scale without fans. Fans matter enough to the Marlins that they built a stadium to see if they draw more of them with the promise of air-conditioning (they won’t). St. Louis is the very definition of a mid-market team. The city is roughly the size of Seattle or Denver, yet the Cardinals are competitive year in and year out. Why? Because the fans go to every game and support the team, so the Cardinals get the extra income to invest back in the team. Without fan support, sports would be empty arena matches with no emotion and no reason to play the game.
Jones’ examples of teams moving (Montreal Expos, Vancouver Grizzlies, Hartford Whalers and the original Cleveland Browns) actually undermine his cause. Only one move happened despite fan support (Art Modell’s craven and cowardly act of ripping the heart out of Cleveland) and the others happened because of the LACK of fan support. They didn’t put enough butts in seats. There was apathy and no sense of communal pride at that time (not to mention that Vancouver just wasn’t ready for the Grizzlies).
It’s not even the definition of the thing, it’s the absolute joy when the buzz kills point out that “you’re” not part of the team. They must tell random children that there is no Santa Claus. It’s interesting to note that those who complain about “we” are usually grammar police in their spare time. Hey, if you’re going to suck the joy out of life, might as well be good at it.
No comments:
Post a Comment