#notjustagame

           Nowadays, American sport is not a purely game that is a political debates and struggles. Not Just a Game opens with assertions by two very different athletes—Jesse Owens and Pete Sampras—that sports have nothing to do with politics. “And yet,” observes the tireless and most wonderful Dave Zirin, “Everywhere we look, there seems to be a strange contradiction of this No Politics rule, prominent in powerful displays of nationalism and patriotism and military might that seem nothing if not political.” Zirin first traces how American sports have glamorized militarism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, then excavates a largely forgotten history of rebel athletes who stood up to power and fought for social justice beyond the field of play. I argue that the result is as deeply moving as it is exhilarating: nothing less than an alternative history of political struggle in the United States as seen through the games its people have played.

           Zirin makes the point that despite claims to the contrary, sports and politics do mix. The film is didactic, explicitly considering “that murky place where sports and politics collide.” Here Zirin finds sports to be a means to shape worldviews so that they seem “natural.” Such cultural persuasion is easy to see in an overt “form of propaganda,” such as the 1991 basketball game that Zirin cites as his own intellectual turning point, when the Knicks mascot “started to beat up a guy who was wearing this Arab costume. And the Jumbotron was whipping the crowd into a frenzy getting everybody to chant, ‘USA, USA, USA, USA!’” Zirin recalls this scene as “sick,” an especially effective “political spectacle” that helped churn up patriotic feelings, encouraging basketball fans to support the first Gulf War.

           On one hand, that argument means to counter the “natural” appearance of sports today. On another hand, it seems obvious: the “sports-media complex” creates and promulgates cultural values, like, for instance, the ideal body is masculine and white and straight. Even when that notion is contradicted in some way—say, when Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in 1973 or when black athletes demonstrate phenomenal skills—the narrative adjusts to accommodate exceptional individuals and still, to maintain organizational conventions.

           Corporations like Nike and Gatorade are part of “sports-media complex” that makes millionaires of some and billionaires of fewer, and leaves fans to function as consumers only. In the U.S., the damage done to teams, sports, and to increasingly disenfranchised devotees extends beyond commercial products to professional sports ownership.

           In conclusion, American sports have glamorized militarism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, then excavates a largely forgotten history of rebel athletes. Against such a backdrop of banal and moneyed interests, Not Just a Game offers the inspiration of those athletes who have opted to resist orthodoxy, to support individual and community rights, to challenge rules that do damage. Like Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali, Martina Navratilova, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, John Amaechi, and Scott Fujita have made visible the collision of sports and politics.

https://zinnedproject.org/materials/not-just-a-game-power-politics-american-sports/

Not Just a Game was really informative and well put together. I’ve had previous sociology class and women’s studies where we went over about the homophobia and gender and racial inequalities in sports. But Not Just a Game brought the militarization of sports to my attention. I had just never noticed it before, probably because I do not watch sports that often. I argue that there is a gender inequality in sports. Often the rules are different for sports when being played by women, and some are even given a different name. An example would be baseball for men but softball for women, it’s essentially the same game just different variations for genders. In basketball the size of the ball is slightly smaller for women. Generally for football women are only able to play flag football. And for hockey the rules are different and harsher penalties are set when women get more violent but if you watch any hockey game with men fighting is often even encouraged. There’s also the issue of sports being separated by gender in the first place. Women’s sports do not get covered or advertised as much as men’s sports. I’m honestly not even aware if there are professional women’s teams for certain sports (hockey, or football).Women are more seen as cheerleaders dressed in small amounts of clothing during men’s sports than they are shown as athletes. Here’s an article that goes more into number detail about the differences in sports. Professional women athletes definitely do not receive equal pay. This is also based on  the less viewers, less people who attend their game, less sponsorships. But that’s not always the case, sometimes women’s soccer gains more revenue compared to men’s but they are stilled paid less. The exact numbers are in this article. Sports are an overly masculine area in which women are very often sexualized. We even have something like lingerie football which is televised, where the women are not paid and receive not medical coverage when we have no actual professional women’s football teams. Looking further into it I found this Ted Talks from Sarah Du about her experience with gender equality in sports, in China. So it’s not just a problem in America, gender inequality is an issue across countries and across sports.

It used to be fun. It used to be enjoyable. It used to be a way to escape from school work. If you are wondering what is “it” that I’m referring to; It is Sports. Kids would play outside and break all types of rules without being punished because it was all fun and games. Well, that is kid’s sports, what we are going to talk about is adult sports. An industry where politics, culture, and appearance play a role in determining who plays where and who gets what deals. There is a belief that sports and politics do not mix, I argue that professional sports revolve around not just politics, but also around culture and appearance.

Playing sports is not just all about achievements, athletic performance, and teamwork anymore. Culture plays a role in sports. For example, the misconception that we have about the physicality of basketball players. The players have to be tall, white or black. It got interesting when Jeremy Lin, an Asian-American player, stepped into the court to replace Carmelo Anthony due to his injuries; all eyes were on him. They were amazed at the “skills” that he possesses. What comes after? Racist remarks. 

NFL has a few standards for its players to follow, one of them is to never show weakness. This NFL culture has taught men to avoid showing any vulnerability. If you are a man with a sense of slight sensitivity, you do not belong in this male arena. What lesson will that teach our sons?

If sports don't mix with politics, then why is it a huge problem for Colin Kaepernick, a former San Francisco quarterback, to refuse standing up for the national anthem? If politics don’t mix with sports, he should be able to do whatever he wants as long as he plays the game well and be quiet, right? Let’s take a moment to acknowledge Pat Tillman who sacrificed his fame to serve our country. A man who would be ever so disappointed if he was still alive, knowing that the media has altered his death only to show how real men “supposed” to die in the war.

How do sports revolve around appearance? Well, if it weren’t for Kathy Switzer, Billie Jean King, and much more empowered women that stood up for Women’s Equality in sports, women would not be able to play major league sports. You see, sports is all about appearance. You have to be a man, tall, and strong to handle balls. Women are too fragile and not masculine enough, they should go back to the kitchen and fix sandwiches, or so they thought. Billie Jean King shut that up when she won against a male tennis competitor who swore Billie Jean didn’t have the slightest chance. 

“To change the world you have to win.” -Billie Jean King

and she did just that....

So many comparisons are made around Michael Jordan and Lebron James. Who’s better? None, both are the same. Same basketball players who only worry about their endorsement deals rather than standing up for what is right and important. Muhammad Ali threw all those away for solidarity among black people and peace. Smith and Carlos ruined their legacy by showing their stands. Tell me again sports and politics do not mix. Then, why were these men had to pay for standing up against the government? Standing up against popularity, now that’s a real courage.

 Please click the link down below for the article

http://www.espn.com/espnw/voices/article/18614895/if-thought-sports-were-ever-separate-politics-think-again

In the documentary “Not Just a Game”, the relationship between sports and politics is explored through building noticeable connections: athletes are to politicians as sports outings are to political agendas. The concept that sports are separate from politics is a concept that has been brought up time and time again. I argue that both organized sports and politics in American societies work in similar ways in order to push ideas onto viewers that establish a sadistic pleasure in violence, encourage biased rivalries, and inspire gender and race based assumptions, which as a result works to further split the American people. 

The most noticeable aspect to most contact sports is the violence. Violence in sports is a derivative of competition. Competition is healthy, and has been a driving force in every society since the beginning of mankind (think survival of the fittest), and competition in the sense of a team promotes team working and establishes a sense of unity with helps the team to win. This competitiveness can either be channeled in heathy ways, or unhealthy ways. In the documentary “Not Just a Game”, athletes refer to their sports (especially football), as a war. This kind of thinking is dangerous as it imposes the idea that the game is much more than a game. When athletes take the games too seriously, there may be an increase in fatalities. This can be directly related to the recent 2016 election of Donald Trump into the presidential office. This past election has inspired hate groups across America to grow and promote violence onto the opposing political side. The issue that has risen is that these hate groups are taking into the streets using violence as a form of nationalism. A recent example of this is the Charlottesville attacks (one and two). In this case, counter protestors used pepper spray and Nazi chants to invoke violence onto a peaceful democratic protest. This violence, while not directly related to sports, mimics the way that fans and athletes view opposing their team’s fans and their athletes. A close-to-home example of the same out of left field violence was in 1949 when Eagles fans pelted the field with glass bottles and hit an umpire in the mouth after a bad call was made. While these two examples are not comparable in severity, they both serve the same purpose of explaining pack mentality violence.

Along with the idea of a pack mentality, sports create a sense of belonging and acceptance by encouraging fans to have a favorite team. While this may seem harmless, the idea of picking sides is present in all politics. The rivalry between Republicans and Democrats has created many divides within our society and how we treat others with opposing viewpoints. An example of this is a study by political scientists Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University and Sean J. Westwood of Princeton University that “found that people are perfectly willing to openly decry, and actually discriminate against, those who identify with the party opposing their own” (Fear and Loathing Against Party Lines). To put this into perspective, people are taking sides and hating the other sides with little to no information on what the other side believes. Another close-to-home example of this is this article called “The Hate Rankings: NFL teams that Eagles fans dislike the most”. The summary of the article is that it is, in short, a loose ranking of 30 teams that Eagles fans apparently hate the most. There is no factual information anywhere within this article, and it is based solely on opinions and mutual hatred from Eagles fans (it is also comical to note that the Detroit Lions are number #29 on this list even though a Lion’s fan was beaten by an Eagles fan in 2013). The hatred of certain teams and fans in sports is related to the hatred between Republicans and Democrats in that it is never addressed by officials. This is a major problem because organizations are not fighting to end the hatred and rivalries, but instead, we have a president that believes in hatred and sports teams that do not care as long as there is no lawsuit involved.

The result of violence and promoting rivalries leaves the American people in a state of division that goes beyond the sport itself. In modern sports and politics today, minorities and women are still fighting for their rights to prove themselves. In sports both professional and pastime, women’s leagues are highly discriminated against, even by sports analysists. Women’s sports are not only deemed “not worth watching”, but are also over-sexualized to compensate the fact that men don’t like women’s sports unless they deem it ‘sexy’. In relation to government, it is worthy to note that “in 2017, 104 women hold seats in the United States Congress, comprising 19.6% of the 535 members; 21 women (21%) serve in the United States Senate, and 84 women (19.3%) serve in the United States House of Representatives” (CAWP Rutgers). It is also important to bring up that only 38 of the 104 women serving in Congress in 2017 are women of color. The fact that women are constantly discriminated against in politics and sports shows that the two are closer related than we think.

The similarities between politics and sports are so clear, that even ESPN does not deny that the two are related. This all stems from the systematic principals put into place (violence, rivalries, and discrimination) that are singlehandedly lurking behind every election and every game.