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CHAPTER 1
WHY SPORT SPECTATORSHIP MATTERS
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest.
âErnie Harwell1
Sports are a part of the everyday lives of many Americans, but often thought of as a realm apart from more serious endeavors, such as politics. And yet, we often see sport and politics mingling. One such example came in the wake of 9/11 when, after a pause, baseball resumed and became a stage for a political spectacle. George W. Bush took the mound on October 30 for game three of the World Series in New York City to throw out the first pitch. In the face of terrorist attacks, the president used the game to show that the American way of life was still alive by using the sport as a rhetorical appeal to American leisure and resilience.2 Similarly, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the ballpark again became a political stage, this time with the baseball players proclaiming the strength and value of their community in the face of terrorism.3
Beyond using sport for political messaging in extreme moments, sport also reflects everyday political issues. Recent incidents of domestic abuse in the National Football League have prompted mass discussion of domestic abuse and political life, spreading the discussion across newspapers, blogs, and televisions everywhere. Racial politics and sport have been connected as well from the groundbreaking integration of Major League Baseball (MLB) in 1947, to Willie Horton standing on top of a car in his Tigers uniform amidst the Detroit race riots, and to more recent protests and even strikes by NBA players in the wake of George Floydâs murder.4 Further, research has shown that sports can highlight prevailing norms and views on gender, reflect social change and revolution, and serve a role in education.5 These are but a few examples of how everyday politics emerge in sport.
In other words, sport can be political in extreme moments, manipulated by politicians, but it also shapes politics in the small moments, in the everyday unfolding of the sport. Sport does not become political when politicians notice; the latent political potential always resides in sport.
Despite the evidence that sport and politics are related, political science generally and political theory specifically have largely ignored this sphere of political life.6 Analysis of sport has mainly been relegated to English, history, and sociology departments as political scientists ignore a field that is expanding in scope over the last century. Indeed, sports are a more popular phenomenon than ever, turning into an enormous business and entertainment industry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Often, more Americans watch the Superbowl than vote.7 One need not run through the statistics on massive attendance figures and revenue generated by different sports to grasp that in America sport occupies a massive part of our cultural, social, and political lives. On any given night, thousands of citizens gather together in public and private spaces to watch an athletic contest. Americans invest money, time, and emotional attachments in their teams, and in sports generally. And yet, we lack a coherent, contemporary political theory to understand this phenomenon.
SPORT AND POLITICAL THEORY
The suggestion that athletics and politics are entwined may elude modern theorists, but it is an ancient insight. In the Greek cradle of Western thought, politics were inextricable from sport. The Greek world centered on agonism and competition aimed at achieving distinction and excellence.8 This agonistic urge pervaded their culture, and it is unsurprising that sport and athletics were praised and tied to Greek political life. Indeed, athletic and physical prowess was tied to virtue, education, religion, and politics.
Athletes certainly held a prominent position in the ancient world. Pindarâs many odes sing athletesâ praises for a variety of reasons. Athletic success indicated among other things that the athlete had toiled striving toward noble action, enjoyed the godsâ favor, and possessed virtue.9 Athletes were examples of what it meant to be a good Greek, something seen in the model of the swift-running Achilles. Even Platoâs Socrates, a critic of the Greek tendency to overvalue athletics, admits that athletics and physical fitness are important toward achieving the good. Plato also portrays Socrates as strong, capable of handling much physical duress. In Platoâs Symposium, Socratesâs physical (and mental) strength is on full display when Alcibiades claims that Socrates took the hardships of warâincluding cold, hunger, and the chaos of battleââmuch better, in fact, than anyone in the whole army.â10
Part of the value that Plato and others see in athletics and physical arĂȘte (a term translated as excellence or virtue) is its role in education. The Republic features an extensive dialogue on education and the importance of balancing gymnastic education with music to create well-ordered souls in the guardians. Socrates states, âgoodness of the soul develops excellence in the bodyâs capabilities,â and argues that the guardians, âour athletes,â should be able to compete in the âtoughest contests.â11 In The Laws, Platoâs Athenian says that the rulers âshould always be devising noble games to accompany the sacrificesâ and that âprizes should be distributed for victory or prowess, and they should compose for one another poems of praise and blame that reflect what sort of person each is becoming both in the contests and in life as a whole.â12 Later on in The Laws, it is clear that games not only educate citizens, but also reveal character in a unique way. The Athenian claims that by playing games that have an element of danger, âit will in a certain way make apparent who has a stout soul and who does notââpreparing the âwhole city to be serviceable in the true contest it must wage throughout life.â13 Even the rational Aristotle similarly linked gymnastic education with courage, and though he chastised Spartan practices in gymnastic education, athletics remain an important component of education.14
Aside from any educative functions, athletics also served a vital role in the religious life of the Greeks. The noted and oft-cited example of Patroclusâs funeral games illustrates this point well. Athletic contests commemorated and consecrated the sacred funeral rite. The contests themselves are a communion with the gods, and the gods influence the contests.15 The Greeks knew of no higher way to honor a fellow citizen and grieve than through holding the type of contest that gave their lives meaning. We see this phenomenon in American life as well, with local stadiums often dedicated to deceased, influential members of the community. For example, in my hometown of Alma, Michigan, the football field is called the Don Miller field, named after a former teacher, coach, and principal.
Because sport was such an important source of meaning, it is unsurprising that athletics themselves had a distinctly religious character. Wrestlers anointed themselves in oil, akin to a traditional religious rite and indicative of the sanctity of athletics.16 Sandsone argues that athletics in the Greek worldâand in many respects, todayârepresent a ritual sacrifice of energy.17 Athletics united Greeks from different city-states through the cultic and widely popular nature of athletics, most notably at Olympia.18 Though often at war with one another, the Greek city-states could set aside their political quarrels to share their common enjoyment of athletics and contests.
It is no surprise that since sport was so important to the Greeks, athletic prowess and political merit were also linked. For example, Alcibiades famously claims that his feats at horse racing demonstrate his fitness to lead the Athenians into war.19 The attack on his merit did not come from a âpoliticalâ angle, either. Instead, to undermine Alcibiadesâs reputation, there was a Spartan smear campaign on his athletic achievement. Xenophon claims that Agesilaus, âpersuaded his sister Cynisca to breed chariot horses, and showed by her victory that such a stud marks the owner as a person of wealth, but not necessarily of merit.â20 By showing that the chariot race was indicative of wealth rather than arĂȘte, the Spartans hoped to attack Alcibiadesâs merits at their root. Other examples of political merit linked to athletics include the practice of giving free meals to Olympic victors, the portrayal of Homeric heroes as athletes, and the fact that to compete in athletics at all, one had to be of a higher, more noble sort than commoners or slaves who could not afford to participate in these often exclusive events that demanded extreme training.21
Later in Greece, sport was exploited politically as a manipulative tool with which to control the masses. Kyle notes that Philip and Alexander both âappreciated the political value of both winning and fostering games, and of using athletic festivals and sites as political forums.â22 Games were used for diplomatic purposes, as celebrations of victory, and to prevent political unrest. Although Alexander himself did not particularly enjoy the gamesâpreferring drinking contests and dogfightsâhe recognized their cultural and political currency.
Writers often condemn Rome for its brutal sporting spectacles, including fights with wild animals and gladiatorial combats. They also held tamer events such as chariot racing, and in the Roman republic these events were used by politicians desirous of votes.23 Despite modern reconstructions of Roman sport and spectacles, their brutality was not extremely different from that of the Greeks.24 Roman games were also entwined within the Roman social fabric and were massively popular, well-attended social and political events.
However one looks at these sporting events of the ancient world, it is clear that they had deep social, religious, cultural, and political ties. The games were not simple diversions keeping citizens or competitors from more important, pressing matters. While sport and games generally are leisurely and fun, it is imperative not to assume that makes them unimportant. The importance of such activities is hard to overstate. For example, Johan Huizinga makes a compelling argument that the play instinct can be found in many areas of society and that play is itself a civilizing force.25 For Huizinga, society and civilization is created only through play. Sport is a realm in which this play instinct is more overt, but it is present everywhere in society.
Further, this type of public event remains necessary (and certainly prevalent) in modern regimes based on self-government. Part of the reason athletics mesh with the democratic world is that they too require freedom. Athletic events in particular are a fitting means of spending oneâs leisure time if leisure is understood as a celebration and a festivalâa break from the toil and work necessary for democratic life.26 Athletics and sport stand out from work in that although they require much physical strain, they are pleasurable and voluntary.27 Sport represents a different way for citizens to be together than offered by work or lesser forms of entertainment that reduce boredom but fail to fulfill spectators in a meaningful manner.
Rousseau, for example, highlights the importance of a similar kind of physical entertainment to republican life:
What! Ought there to be no entertainments in a republic? On the contrary, there ought to be many. It is in republics that they were born, it is in their bosom that they are seen to flourish with a truly festive air. To what people is it more fitting to assemble often and form among themselves sweet bonds of pleasure and joy than to those who have so many reasons to like one another and remain forever united? We already have many of these public festivals; let us have more; I will be only the more charmed for it. But let us not adopt these exclusive entertainments which close up a small number of people in a melancholy fashion in a gloomy cavern, which keep them fearful and immobile in silence and inaction, which give them only prisons, lances, soldiers, and afflicting images of servitude and inequality to see. No, happy peoples, these are not your festivals. It is in the open air, under the sky, that you ought to gather and give yourselves to the sweet sentiment of your happiness.28
Rousseauâs proper form of entertainment is not isolating; it brings people together in a festive celebration under the open sky.29 This type of leisure is appropriate for a system of self-governance because it fulfills the vital function of uniting citizens. The corporeal celebration and face-to-face interaction among citizens is vital, and athletic games and events are the locus of this interaction.
A key point to recognize is that athletic events both past and present are not solely, or even primarily, about the competitors. Sport requires not only athletic participants to have meaning, but spectators. What made the ancient Olympics linger in the modern memory was not that athletes competed in a serene and barren grove to prove who was faster, but that their feats were seen by thousands of spectators cheering on the athletes. Similarly, our athletic spectacles and events today derive their meaning not from the mere act of being played, but from the spectators wh...
