Big Game, Big Column

Big Game, Big Column
November 13, 2001
By Peter Stair

I wrote about sports last week. I’m going to write about sports again this week. If you think I’m repeating topics, you are correct. This is because sports, like the Civil War, is a subject which remains perpetually worthy of additional study, despite the intellectual energies of thousands — nay, millions — of scholars.

Sports are a way of upholding traditions and ways of life, bringing people together, and teaching us valuable lessons. This is exactly why I’m so concerned that Stanford students don’t take their rivalry with Cal very seriously.

Why, just this last week I heard fellow Stanford students utter comments like, “oh boy, we’re playing Cal [whom everyone knows is 0-9 so far] this week;” “Why are we made to feel like party poopers if we don’t want to pay $50 to watch a bunch of guys bump into each other for three hours?” and even, “I don’t care who wins. I’m not going.”

Do these students not understand that the Stanford-Cal rivalry has lasted for over 104 years?

I mean, Big Game is a Big Deal. Going is a critical part of the Stanford Experience. (It is our right and privilege: a privilege of the people who are right for Stanford, and a right for the privileged who go here.) Think of all the alumni who tirelessly attended football games in order to preserve our right to pay a fee to attend Big Game.

Even if the game itself is unexciting, we can take pleasure in the long tradition of sports that we are participating in. We can chuckle fondly as we remember the first hunting games of our ancestors, and we can smile distantly as we contemplate the great Olympic Games of the Greeks.

Modern sports as we know them probably began during the Roman Empire, where the Emperor would graciously sponsor exotic and elaborate games, called “Bread and Circus,” to appease the discontent masses. Distracted from their oppressed lives, the masses returned adoration to their Emperor. To do otherwise would be rude.

Today, we honor this tradition by attending Big Game. When we don’t attend, however, we are rude. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spit in the face of the Emperor of America!

More than a tradition or gift, though, sports are about the American Way of Life. Just list our virtues, and the connection will be obvious. We are violent; sports are violent. We are loud; sports are loud. We are sedentary; so are spectators at sports games. We like to eat; there is food at sports games. We are fanatics; sports “fan” is short for sports fanatic. We like colorful things; sports uniforms are colorful. We like variety; there are now almost 1,000 sports leagues in America.

Sports are what Americans think about. Some days, I don’t even read the “Business,” “International” and “Local” sections of the newspaper. I go directly to “Sports!” As the Sports section gets thicker and thicker, my work is getting harder, but I always know what the chattering classes are saying about Stanford.

Sports are what Americans talk about. They are the common ground we share. We cannot talk with Europeans about them (they have their own kinds of sports). And we cannot talk about third-rail issues like politics and religion.

Finally, sports are what bring us together. Can you think of any other cause that brings together 100,000 people in one place? Can you think of any other cause that does so on a more-than-weekly basis? No, not the orphaned kids, or the starving foreigners, not even cancer or love. No, like it or not, sports are the only cause that brings us together. And, of all our sports, football brings us together the most.

More than just numbers of people, think of all the resources that a football game brings together. If there are 100,000 people, and each person spends, say, $50 on a ticket, $2 on transportation and $2 on food, that’s $5,400,000 that could have gone somewhere else.

Think of it from another perspective, if we pooled the time and mental energy of the millions of people who either attend or watch a single football game on TV, we have the equivalent manpower of several medium-sized corporations for a year. What but football could focus so many valuable resources on one thing?

The only comparable concentration of people and resources that I can think of is a huge army, and I think that is an apt comparison. Armies fight to protect a people’s way of life. Sports crowds gather to honor the American way of life.

Moreover sports, like wars, are a manifestation of what Freud called thanatos, the drive to destroy. We like to break stuff (remember that game with the pencils, where you and your opponent took turns snapping your pencils against each other until one of them broke?). We like to watch other people break stuff (like sports records and bones).

We come together to break stuff, and we come together to watch other people break stuff.

It’s not only part of what makes us American; it’s part of what makes us human.

We must preserve our humanity. We must preserve our way of life. And the price of these things, so goes the saying, is eternal vigilance. Just as an army must not have deserters, sports crowds must not diminish.

Stanford students have a duty not to be apathetic during Big Game week.

Peter Stair is a junior studying human ecology. He thinks sports can be educational and that athletes can teach us things. This is why he wears only Nike apparel. When he’s serious, he says that coaches should be tenured faculty and that, if athletes have scholarships, every other department should offer scholarships too. He wants more people to e-mail him at pstair@stanford.edu. Remember the salty fields of Carthage.