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As some TomDispatch readers undoubtedly remember, I was once a typical all-American sports fan. I began as a kid. My dad came from Brooklyn, so (of course!) I rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers and loved going out to Ebbets Field to see them in person? I think I can still remember, position by position, the team that won the 1955 World Series, the only one the Dodgers ever captured while in Brooklyn. I rooted as well for the football (but not baseball) New York Giants and, when I was older, added the basketball Knicks to my roster. And of course, after the Dodgers personally deserted me for Los Angeles, I became a New York Mets fan as soon as they arrived in town in 1962.
And my fandom remained intact and in place over the years until -- and I've never understood it -- Covid hit during Trump's first term and, though I found myself at home far more often, incomprehensibly enough, I stopped watching sports of any sort. You explain it (since I can't)! And then just the other day, I had dinner with friends and, when we were done, they flipped on the TV and there were the Knicks involved in a distinctly angry playoff match with the Detroit Pistons and suddenly I found myself once again caught up in a game. Will it last? I have no idea (though I now expect to at least watch more of the Knicks' playoff games). But I suspect it just might for a simple reason that former New York Times sports reporter, columnist, and TomDispatch regular Robert Lipsyte, author of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland, catches all too vividly in his latest piece. Yes, isn't it better to watch the Knicks, Mets, Giants, or for that matter the Des Moines Detectives (okay, I made that up!) than spend one more minute listening to Donald Trump and crew in this all too unsporting world of ours? Tom
Sports Can Distract Us (But Not Enough)
From Continuous Trump
If the overwhelming deluge from the Trumpian firehose of lies, threats, incompetency, illegal actions, and surreality is sweeping you off your feet, driving you to bedridden depression, leaving you passive and breathlessly unable to mount a response, much less resistance, please get into the huddle, take a time-out, and listen up to your Jock Culture coach. (That's me, of course!)
You need some distraction.
Have you noticed lately how few sports stories are making their way to the top of the news beams? That's because sports -- once upon a time our most reliable source of outrage, speculation, cultish behavior, and lessons in domination, smackdown intimidation, and faux masculinity -- has been replaced by a remarkable series of presidential half-time horror shows. It's now all Trumpiana all the time.
We need to get back to sports. So here are eight topics currently lost in the sauce to take our minds and emotions off the Trump-backed whale. Of course, since only he truly sells in this numbed media moment of ours, I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that we'll need sports stories with Trumpian subtexts.
Number One: How did some high school athletes suddenly get so rich? There are million-dollar quarterbacks lining up at the NIL pay window waiting to start their freshman year in college. In case you don't already know it, NIL stands for name, image, and likeness -- from which sports gear companies, universities, and the college sports ruling body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), have traditionally profited enormously, even though those athletes were prohibited from benefiting commercially. But in 2021, a series of state court judgements led to a unanimous Supreme Court decision that lifted the ban and it was suddenly pay-off time for "student-athletes."
It all seems fair enough, although the new system is evolving with shady deals in which colleges and their boosters help organize "collectives" to recruit teenage high school athletes with the promise of booty that ranges from extra shoes to millions of dollars.
The top 20 money-making college athletes are bona fide millionaires, while the average starting pay-off for the top 100 is $583,000. University of Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders, son of the former National Football League star Deion Sanders, leads the list with an estimated $4.7 million.
The Transfer Portal
Boosting the growing transactional nature of "amateur" sports is the newly installed "transfer portal," a computerized system that makes it easier for college athletes to switch schools without having to sit out a season. Money may well change hands there, too.
So far, the Trumpsters have seemed more than okay with all this, but there could be a future glitch. While the current major beneficiaries are the expectables -- football and basketball players -- let's welcome crowd-pleasing gymnast Sam Phillips, the first University of Nebraska athlete to come out as gay, now performing at the University of Illinois. Could this turn out to be a rainbow flag for the homophobic Trumpniks? Will they say nil to NIL (at least if it goes to the "wrong" people)? Stay tuned.
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