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{the virtue of sport} jonathan bitz Sport exemplifies the virtues of everyday life. There are very few places in daily life where virtues are apparent, and made explicit. But the sporting arena offers us a magnifying glass, a place where our prized virtues are demonstrated. Praised. And even more than encouraged, it is these virtues which make the games themselves. Through sports and athletics, virtues are exemplified: Strength, courage, grace, beauty, persistence, endurance, cognitive and physical aptitude as well as power and altruism. Sport is intellectual. Some see athletics as superfluous nonsense. However, within athletics there is relevance and transference into daily life. One avenue of articulating that point is through a film company that is now synonymous with the sport that it covers: NFL Films. An independent company, NFL Films grew-up alongside professional football in the early sixties. In their pioneering work, they managed to cultivate a very idiosyncratic look, feel and sound to their films. In their archives are countless tales of teams, individuals, coaches, organizations and exposes on professional football itself. With their unique slow motion shots, close-ups and by employing microphones on the field and sidelines, NFL Films has succeeded in capturing humanity at its best. Tight on the spiral, NFL ilms has proved to be that kind of grand mechanism worthy of illustrating all of those virtues we have held sacred since antiquity. Of strength and endurance and grace and beauty - the virtues that aren't always apparent during a television broadcast - all the more reason why NFL Films is a unique and powerful vehicle. The work that NFL Films has produced is prolific in size and scope. At the very core of what they do is an element of overwhelming craftsmanship and alas, of art. In their formative years they were renowned for their poetic narratives, their unique and original symphonic scores - scores which have subsequently become anthems – not only for moments and teams and individuals who were the subject matter for these films and scores, but entire generations. And then there was John Facenda. The voice for almost all of their early productions, Facenda’s baritone narratives were poetic and biting, to which end it was once said that, “If God had a voice, it would be John Facenda’s”. Below is an example of one of Facenda’s more powerful and famous recitations, “The Autumn Wind”, is a football poem written by one of the founders of NFL Films, Steve Sabol: The Autumn wind is a pirate Blustering in from sea? With a rollicking song he sweeps along Swaggering boisterously. His face is weather-beaten? He wears a hooded sash? With a silver hat about his head? And a bristling black mustache He growls as he storms the country A villain big and bold And the trees all shake and quiver and quake As he robs them of their gold. The Autumn wind is a RAIDER? Pillaging just for fun He'll knock you 'round and upside down And laugh when he's conquered and won. The music that accompanies this piece of poetry is some of NFL Films’ finest. Taken separately as an original score, it is powerful. To this day it is known as the “Battle Hymn of the Oakland Raiders”. I come from an athletic background. During the course of my adult life I have found opposition in those that don’t understand the relevance and power in sport. Some scoff at athletics. Some like to mock the stereotypes. And while I have spent time explicating my argument - about the relevance and grand nature of sport - I also understand the pundits' point because, in part, sport is a sociological issue. From childhood-onward there are demarcations made: those that participate in sports and those that don’t. There are ideologies, inside and out, that become very socially-defining. In this I have always understand the apprehension in some people’s ability to take a liking to sports at all. Some see athletics as Plato did, as purely physical. However, and it should nearly go without saying at this point, that the bulk of athletics resides in the head. Athletics is intellectual. How many times have you heard that Karl Marx’s notion of communism “looks good on paper” but in practice, it doesn’t work? To this I say, bullshit. Karl Marx’s communism doesn’t even look good on paper because of one, apparently overlooked, element of the human condition: competition. Competition is what drives economic markets. It’s what creates, in part, great and new works of art in all mediums. Competition is inherently yoked, however implicit, with progress and with revolution. Eliminate competition and you are eliminating a fundamental component to human survival. Such a force this element is that it’s nearly impossible to suppress it. Sport is about competition. And what competition is about, is the individual. Athletics offers us, yet again, another mechanism to examine a relevant and far-reaching idea. With competition, you are either competing against another individual or against the confines of a particular game. Draw this analogy out further and the individual is either competing against another individual for a job, an idea, a market or anything else – and if that individual is not explicitly competing against another individual and s/he is competing against the rules of the game: the world. Society. Culture. The earth. The human body and its physical laws and complications. Just as music and art and literature express values of a culture or society - sport too is an expression of cultures, of societies. Baseball, for example, was born around the time of the industrial revolution and the creation of the 8-hour workday. This fulcrum point, of the birth of the 8-hour workday segmented our complete days into 3-parts. Implicitly baseball is a comment on this compartmentalization of the 24-hour day in that: Baseball has no time limit. Only its “innings” determine the possible length of the game. And if there is a tie at the end of the last slated inning, the ninth inning – the game will continue indefinitely until somebody scores more than their opponent. In this, baseball is a leisure sport. We say that we are going to the “park” to see a game. Sitting off the green fields, people keep score, eat hot dogs, fall in love with their heroes. Here baseball, like other sports in their appropriate arenas, offer us a place of leisure and imagination – where, for a period of time, reality does not burden us. And I will accede, those that the play the game don’t always get so metacognitive about the notion of sport. But I am certain that they feel these ideas. Afterall, they’re the ones sweating it out, grinding their bodies to extremes and living day-in and day-out with the pains and injuries of their chosen sport. Those that stand around the games and bark and bellow from the stands – I’m not so sure about they have analyzed their beloved sports with regard to the notion of virtue – so I’m not going to try and defend them. But next time you want to lash-out and make a hip, derogatory remark about these silly little games that grown men and women play to get paid exorbitant amounts of money (all what their markets can supply – which are not very unreasonable if you consider how much revenue these sports are generating) – think again. Since the dawn of time, all around the earth, in cultures like the Aztecs and the Mayans; in Africa and Egypt and Australia (cave art has confirmed) – sport held a social and cultural, even spiritual element. But, like all other facets of daily life – the articulation of these elements in our contemporary world has become watered-down. Overlooked. Next time the television is flickering and you are near, I encourage you: Take on the lenses of an anthropologist. A sociologist. Because if you do, you will be able to see that sport offers us not only a needed respite from time-to-time, but a mirror on who it is that we are; and who it is that we have become. |
