Life and Sport
Just a Friendly Discussion
Author: Bryan Davies
Friendly discussions do exist, I suppose. Perhaps in Quaker meeting halls or at yoga classes you might find a discussion where the words are measured, polite and neat. When a conversation is truly amiable, the emotion of the moment never extends past the issue at hand to the persons who are exchanging the words. In these kinds of dialogues, winning the point is unimportant. If you accept the premise that we humans are hard wired to compete in every environment we find ourselves, even everyday discussions will let slip the dogs of war.
Debates of any kind are a wonderful calisthenic stretch for the brain and its great reserves of energy and supple power. Like the muscles and the intricate systems it commands, the brain craves intense and regular stimulation. Verbal battles make a dormant brain responsive and alive. A good argument is a beautiful synchronicity of intelligence, determination, and tactics.
Good arguments keep us sharp.
Sports arguments are the best example of mock cranial combat. These contests have all of the features of a video game, and more – a totally portable, no cost entertainment package that can be started, paused, replayed and deleted whenever the participants choose.
No one has ever truly lost a sports argument, because any position can be taken, defended or abandoned for something more attractive. Testosterone powered winds can buffet and rip and tear at an opponent, but the roaring, bellowing gales of "Are you kidding?", "Are you nuts?", or "Do you ever really watch basketball?" are zephyrs that pass with no real damage ever done. The earthier locker room banter attracts its own kind in reply that is carried on a rip tide of communal laughter. There is usually good spirit behind the profane bluster of a sports argument.
In fact, sports arguments tend to end well because there is rarely a conclusion. The spirit of these debates is egalitarian. In these microcosms everyone gets a chance to play and everyone in the fray may claim victory in the end. The discussions are a three dimensional chessboard, where the arguments are as factual, or as factual as memory will permit. The talk will then take on the emotion that is so much a part of sports; there is a sense of complete engagement in the topic that feeds the passion each speaker feels. Passion is the great engine of all human success.
Percolating through the mix of factoids and feeling is the overarching sense of fraternity. Common interests, even where the sparks fly within its framework, are like quick drying cement – sports arguments create bonds. The hard words that ricochet across a tavern table disguise what is friendly fire. Hard words rarely solidify into hard feelings here.
I have taken a great pleasure in instigating many such tempests in athletic teapots. My sporting tastes run from the North American mainstream stalwarts of ice hockey and football, to worldwide pursuits such as athletics and soccer, with the mix leavened by the esoterica of lacrosse and small college basketball.
Sports Arguments
Like the shipwrecked Irishman who washed up upon a foreign shore and declared himself opposed to whatever government might exist in that place, I can start a sports argument in a Tibetan monastery, or among the models strutting on the runway of a Dior show in Paris.
I have used masculine pronouns and modifiers throughout this piece. For reasons that are the ample fodder for at least two later columns and a full scale psychology study, women are horrible sports argument protagonists. My wife Marianne has quietly observed 25 years of my advancement of causes ranging from the brilliance of the 1985 Villanova Wildcats basketball team to the merits of the original Nike waffle soled trainers. She proffers a simple explanation – women are generally too intelligent to fill their heads with the otherwise useless minutiae of sports trivia that fuels so much male debate. Female intellectual superiority has a certain definitive heft as an explanation and Marianne may be right; women are highly skilled practitioners in most other forms of verbal warfare. One day I shall ask her to explain as cleverly the largely female demographic that supports the television ratings for 'Desperate Housewives', 'American Idol', and other similar Mensa Society programming.
Sport Is Life
Sport is not a grand metaphor for life, nor is it a training ground or character building mechanism for the real world. Sport is not our reflection; it is life, pure and unvarnished. Sports arguments are equally inextricable from our essential selves. Whether in the form of an orderly debate or a shout fest that suggests the coming apocalypse, the sport argument participants run to several distinct types.
The first species is the Stats Man. He sees himself as the cool and cerebral last word in any sports argument. The Stats Man often never played the game in question, but he has studied the numbers and he has the definitive mathematical proof to be presented on any issue. It is not uncommon for a talented Stats Man to know the birth weight and the eye colour of every player in a given sport – he will tell you without prompting. A Stats Man will often play in several fantasy sports leagues at one time; his home, office, and mobile computer systems are each equipped with a multitude of automatic sports update services to keep the Stats Man current. Any reference to lies, damn lies, and statistics is sacrilege to the Stats Man. For him, the numbers will always tell the tale.
The Homer is the antithesis to the Stats Man. As a sports argument swirls around a table, the Homer is all loud and pulsating passion for his team, his players, and his league. The Homer plays with his heart, and he is frequently the loudest and the most persistent of the combatants. The Homer is impossible to outflank or to outgun – his guys, after all, are his guys. An attack on one of the Homer's favourites is an affront to the Homer himself.
The Media Man gets his sports knowledge from the front page of the daily newspaper sports section or from a quick pass over the scoreboard posted on the sports websites. The Media Man loves sports, but he lacks the time and the desire to properly arm himself for a protracted sports debating war. The Media Man rarely carries an argument to an opponent, content to fire the occasional salvo charged with the ammunition he may have gathered from yesterday's news.
The ex-Jock is the most intractable of the sports argument campaigners. The ex-Jock renders his opinions from the foundation of 'been there, done that' – he has the unique and unsurpassed ability to equate the dynamics and the fervor of the deciding game of an NBA Final to a YMCA league playoff in which he shone 15 years before. The ex-Jock speaks with the authority and the confidence that his own exploits transcend any statistic, media account, or personal preferences. Experience, the ex-Jock says, is the greatest and best of teachers. The ex-Jock feels compelled to educate his fellow debaters about what really goes on in an athletic competition, as only an athlete can really understand.
Sports arguments are a diversion from the stresses of the world. I suspect that most people know these archetypes from their sales meetings or board room presentations. They are heard in union halls and at corporate retreats.
Sport is life.
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Published: August 02, 2006
