Sports fans need a name change.
In late January, the National Basketball Association team in New Orleans announced a name change from Hornets to Pelicans.
I’m a fan of the change because Pelicans are scary birds.
Sports fans, though? We also need to change our collective name to a bird.
I’m thinking instead of fans, we can call ourselves ostriches after the notion of burying our heads in the sand.
In the first week of February, Europol announced it suspected nearly 700 soccer matches were possibly fixed in “recent years” to facilitate betting schemes.
I’ve seen but three pieces concerned over such a scandal: a New York Times story detailing the press release, a SportsCenter bit about the press release and a reaction piece by Brian Phillips on Grantland.com.
Maybe it’s just because this is America, the land of the free and the home of the soccer-is-for-prissy-boys-and-girls-who-can’t-handle-real-sports-like-football-baseball-basketball-and-hockey sentiment. I’d be inclined to agree with that, but there is a small problem with that line of thought. Major League Soccer just passed the NBA and National Hockey League for third place in attendance rankings, which shows Americans are caring much more about “The Beautiful Game.”
Thus, I am inclined to believe the reason there has not been much coverage for such an announcement, which went so far as to involve qualifying matches for the World Cup — the greatest and most popular sporting event — is because we don’t want to know.
This is a self-perpetuating cycle of circular reasoning.
If we don’t acknowledge there is a problem, then no action needs to be taken because there is no problem, which warrants no action to solve a non-existent problem ... see what I mean?
At the risk of mirroring the Grantland piece, the reason we don’t want to know a sports match is rigged is because sports serve as an idealistic escape from the world that beats us up and kicks us in the shins daily.
Within the confines of a single sports match, there’s no politicking and (most) rule-breaking is punished almost instantly.
It is a simple concept: Team A and its players want to beat Team B and its players and vice-versa. Firings and hirings happen between games. Fines and suspensions happen between games. External drama does not pervade the narrative of the game. All that matters is what the score is and how much time is left. Everything else gets sorted out afterward.
If a sport is corrupted and the external drama affects the product, it is no longer a part of sports; it instead becomes “sport,” a mere source of diversion “that takes us away from our daily routine and gives us pleasure,” as defined by renowned sports marketer Matthew Shank. This puts it on par with any other source of entertainment, notably professional wrestling in which the match results are booked to fuel a dramatic narrative instead of two opponents competing against one another.
Acting like there is no problem was part of why the economy collapsed.
If soccer is relegated to that same destiny, everyone, not just sports fans, will be worse off because of it.
Logan Ladnyk is a journalism junior at UF. His column runs on Fridays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
