A Modest Proposal [Not] To Watch Sports

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

Author’s Note: An ongoing scandal involving the University of North Carolina football team prompts me to offer a slightly revised version of an essay published in Clemson World in 1982. Back then, Clemson’s failure to run a clean program set me thinking about how the coddled few reaped most of the advantages of athletic activities.

HILLSBOROUGH, NC—(Weekly Hubris)—9/27/10—When I watch a sporting event, I’m not always “with it” . . . and I don’t believe I’m alone.

Instead of peering intently as events on the field or court unfold, I think of games and players I’ve seen earlier: Lance Alworth catching a pass in the Cotton Bowl as the Razorbacks edge the Blue Devils; Billie Jean King humbling Bobby Riggs and all his bottles of vitamins; Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax dueling at the peak of their mound careers; Jack Nicklaus blasting out of a tough sand trap for a birdie and his fourth green jacket.

Neither can my mind focus on a game while plastic horns bellow like some lonesome cows, nor can it become undividedly involved when bands, cheerleaders, and circling aircraft tugging advertising banners compete for my attention.

Like my mind, my eyes occasionally have a hard time focusing on a game, especially football.

Caught up in a swirl of scenes around me, I glance at the fancy fur coat of a pretty lady three rows down, gaze at a pair of Calvin Klein jeans stretched tight on a co-ed, stare at a small screen of someone’s portable TV to see whether the Crimson Tide capsized the Fighting Irish.

I watch fans wave huge plastic hands with one finger extended, I peer around a fat woman with an equally bloated “do” to see what the cheerleaders are up to, and I seem to have the knack for catching someone sneaking a swig of whiskey.

But when I play a game myself my thoughts and eyes seldom wander. I’m watchful, attentive, focused. That total concentration a player must have is perhaps best shown on the basketball court when the guy at the free-throw line sinks shots despite arm-waving, shouts, and jeers. To play really well, athletes must gather no wool, must be alert to moves, counter-moves, accidental happenings, surprises.

This dictum has become firmly rooted in my mind because I continue to participate in sports—long after most people my age (50) have plopped down in overstuffed chairs to do battle with a six-pack. I still like to break a sweat, to hear the sounds of diamond, gridiron, or court, to feel the gloom of defeat and the jauntiness of victory.

I hope the lessons I’ve learned from more than four decades of playing sports as an amateur will add weight to the following modest proposal: Instead of fielding inter-collegiate teams, I propose establishing a rigorous and vigorous intramural program, one in which able-bodied students, teachers, and staff participate, even those with little or no athletic abilities.

The program I envision would entail a huge outlay of funds for facilities, but the fields of my dreams would lack automated scoreboards, cushiony boxes for fat cats, and ads by some sporting goods firm piling wealth upon wealth on coaches.

Instead, wealth would be spread, and to the benefit of everyone on the college campus.

Teams would be organized by students, professors, and staff. Schedules and play-offs would be arranged for each sport. The make-up of teams would be various, some male alone, some female, some mixed, some combining age and youth, some boasting of a mix of the able-bodied and the physically challenged. The simple but time-honored goal would be to achieve a healthy mind in a healthy body.

As credits towards their sheepskin, students could optionally claim one half an hour, up to three hours, for each sport they play. Grades would be simply Pass or Fail, the sole cause of an F being failure to show up for two scheduled games.

Referees would come from the ranks of players, those drawn from teams not scheduled to play on a particular day. Funding would come from two major sources: activity fees and contributions from fans truly committed to making sports a vital part of the university experience.

If this proposal were adopted, I think we’d create spectators fully prepared to watch sports.

Fans groomed by four or more years of intramural sports could fix a knowing eye on Doctor J as he soars aloft for a graceful dunk, on Bjorn Borg as he presses McEnroe into a mistake, on Reggie Jackson as he fights off pitch after pitch until he gets one he likes, on Nancy Lopez as she lines up a putt, on Earl Campbell as he slides along after his blockers, on Peggy Fleming as she glides cleanly out of a triple jump—and on all the contemporary heirs of these greats.

Having played in contest after contest against opponents gifted or challenged, fans could become aficionados so intent on the action before them that they could appreciate and applaud each move or countermove, each extra effort.

After such preparation, contests on the collegiate or professional level would so wholly engage minds and eyes of fans that intellectual and emotional benefits could be inestimable.

Fans taught through play would keenly appreciate the emotional and mental elements of games, and shame those who see sports as social and/or money-making events. They would become the force insisting on cleanly run programs, demanding that coaches’ salaries be in line with pay received by professors and administrators, and working effectively to block the take-over of college sports by sporting equipment companies and television.

Even from my ivy-covered tower, I envision acceptance of this modest proposal by corporations, the military, community-based sports centers, and programs for adolescents and senior citizens. My idealism dies hard.

(Has the passage of nearly three decades since the writing of this essay lessened the need for my modest proposal? I think not. Everywhere I look, I see a marked increase in our nation’s booming growth of couch-potatoes and partying tailgaters. . . .)