When the unranked Louisiana-Monroe football team beat Alabama, team members and fans weren’t the only ones in disbelief. ‘Bama coach Nick Saban was shocked too. At a Monday press conference Saban compared losing to ULM to other horrific catastrophes in American history, including the bombing of Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
“Changes in history usually occur after catastrophic events,” Saban said. “It may be 9-11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, or whatever, and that was a catastrophic event.”
Saban said just like America rebounded from these events, the Alabama football team will rebound and grow from their 21-14 loss to ULM.
According to ESPN.com, Alabama football spokesperson Jeff Purinton said in a press statement Monday after Saban’s press conference that Saban was not correlating losing a football game with these tragic events.
“[Saban] was not equating losing football games to those catastrophic events.” Purinton said. “The message was that true spirit and unity become evident in the most difficult of times. Those were two tremendous examples that everyone can identify with.”
Whatever Saban meant by these comments, one thing is certain: Saban’s remarks divulge the fact that sports, especially football, is taken way too seriously these days.
My thrice-a-week lecture on empires got interesting this past Monday when my professor, Leonard Ray of the political science department, asserted that sports were first introduced to educational institutions to prevent men from becoming weak. Ray said as the world moved toward settling conflicts through diplomacy instead of war, some feared that countries would become weak because of no physical conflicts for men to endure. Thus, the formation of organized sports in schools occurred. He also said the Rhodes scholarship was initially awarded to individuals who proved themselves in athletics as well as scholastic though this practice has now been subverted.
Well, I must say those who introduced organized sports to schools may have got more than they bargained for. Yes, they accomplished their mission of keeping residents conditioned. But they also created this monster of athletic entertainment that I, for one, believe has gotten out of hand.
How can one man’s personal career choice affecting him on a mere personal level affront to so many people? For those of you wondering, I am referring to Saban’s move from LSU to the Miami Dolphins. Any one of us would have killed for the chance to coach a NFL team. So why does everyone hate Saban for taking an opportunity of a lifetime? The fact of the matter is: it should not matter. And let me add, LSU hasn’t done to shabby with Les Miles as coach.
Also, although Saban’s spokesperson assert that Saban was not comparing the tragic events of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor to losing a football match, this analogy should not have been made. I understand that Saban’s point was change always follows disasters, and these were two examples of disasters everyone could identify with. I still, however, contend that the loss of thousands should never constitute an analogy to a football team losing a match no matter how humiliating the defeat is. Thousands of lives were lost in those events, only pride was lost with the loss of the football game. Guess what Saban, it’s not that serious.
Guess what sports fans: it’s not that serious. Sports should not be this serious. Take into account yesterday’s loss to Arkansas, we survived. It’s sad yes. But we’ll live through it.
Every home game thousands of people converge on campus to cheer on the Tigers. While this is great, when supporters of the opponent team come to cheer their team on they are treated to jeers by LSU fans. Sometimes these opponents decide to strike back. I witnessed one episode at a friend’s tailgate when a guy who was “tiger baited” drove back around with his friends and began to yell insults to people at the tailgate I was attending. That’s ludicrous.
It was also ludicrous for star quarterback Tim Tebow to receive prank calls prior to playing LSU in Death Valley.
I wonder if any sanity will return to the madness that has overtaken organized sports. I watch people spend hundreds of dollars on tickets and sports paraphernalia. I watch friends camp out to wait for games. People arrive to Tiger Stadium hours before the game starts to get a good seat. And it seems the one true way to piss someone off is to insult their favorite sports team or even their band.
I have been in college for almost an entire semester. And although I admit I enjoy the festive air that games bring to campus, the seriousness of it all still mystifies me. I just don’t get it. There are way more important things to be fired up over. A year from now we will be electing the next president of the United States. We have a war to win in Iraq and people in this country still go without the necessities of life. It is these things that we should be fired up over. It is these things that should captivate our attention, not some group of guys tossing a ball and running in to each other.