Thursday, April 17, 2014

The Sports Stuff

       I'm not super interested in sports, nor have I ever been super interested in sports. Sure, I like to play soccer and wallyball with my friends but outside of my own playing, I couldn't care less about what's happening in the sports world. With that being said, I found the video we watched in class to be super intriguing. I never thought about the politics of sports before... mainly because I don't pay attention to it in general but also because it never occurred to me that there could be more to sports than the sport if that makes sense.
       I guess what I'm trying to say is that he was absolutely right when he stated it's political. I'm not saying I believe that everything about sports is political. I'm more so thinking about it as athletics being political and the athletes being the pawns. What I mean by this is if you look at the Pat Tillman thing, would the media have been so into hiding the truth if Pat had just been your average American soldier? I don't think so. I think it was a chance for the media to have a story for a longer period of time. Yeah, Pat had his own views on everything but it was only a huge deal because of the scandalous story. If they had straight up told the truth from the beginning, would it be such a big deal? I think the issue was football and the military and the positive connection they supposedly have with each other.
       If you look at the Michael Jordan thing and how he did certain things to uphold his sponsors desires and things like that... he did them to cover his own butt and keep his sponsors happy. I'm not saying it's right or anything but it is what it is. Nike sponsors him and therefore it reflect poorly on both of them for him to be wearing Reebok or anything else. This doesn't make what he did right but he did what he had to to please the people giving him money. I guess my main point would be that I think the politics of everything use the athletes to get what they want.
        If athletes were doing all of these things for free and didn't have reputations to uphold or sponsors to impress and such, then things would be completely different. It's a little crazy to think about what some people would do for money and glory but everyone has to admit that they have done or would do something for the glory or money. So, based off of the little bit of exposure to this type of thing I experienced today I would say sports are political to a point for sure but I'm not positive *how* political.

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