Year in Sports 2011: Concussions, Lockouts, Coverups and Scandals

So what did we learn in 2011?

Well, about sports, I mean.

Sure, I could talk at length about watching NBA juggernauts (the Lakers and the Heat) get crushed by REAL Mavericks. I could wax poetic about the bildungsroman of Aaron Rodgers leading the Green Bay Packers to the Super Bowl and leaving folks in Wisconsin to wonder, “Brett who?” I could delve into the improbability of UConn, the ninth-place team in the Big East, winning the NCAA tournament, or of the Tampa Bay Rays and the St. Louis Cardinals making the playoffs or of Albert Pujols ditching the Gateway City for Disneyland shortly thereafter. I could spend eons putting into words the dominance displayed by Novak Djokovic and Barcelona and the SEC.

But all of that would be missing the point. What really caught our attention this year had nothing to do with anything that went on during a game or a match of any sort.

What did we really learn about sports in 2011? How will this year in sports be remembered years from now?

We learned that there’s more than meets the eye in sports.

Much, much more.

No Pain, No Gain?

We learned that (shockingly enough) there is an actual reality behind what we see on TV and from the stands, that there are things going on out of view among those that we idolize and cast judgment upon, good or bad, that is far more consequential than anything we could simply cheer or boo.

In short, we learned that the realm of sports is not immune to the follies of man. If anything, sports may be even more subject to the whims of our lesser nature, perhaps because so much energy is devoted to keeping those aspects of humanity hidden from view.

We learned that injuries, especially those to the head, have consequences far beyond the domain of sport. Concussions came to the fore this year, with the NHL and the NFL in particular finally beginning to take action now that decades of research and observation, combined with shocking anecdotes, have made it clear that our heroes are not, in fact, invincible.

The deaths of Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak (not to mention that of Bob Probert in 2010), while distinct in their details, presented, in their totality, a picture of hockey’s culture of fighting as a detriment to the livelihoods of human beings who, while not the swiftest or most talented of skaters, have been trained to trade fists in a professional “deal with the devil”.

And it’s not just these largely anonymous hulks of the ice that have fallen victim to the effects of “upper-body injuries." Sidney Crosby, the most marketable puckster of all, spent most of the calendar year recovering from multiple concussions, only to fall victim to them again not long after his return to the ice for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The good: Major sports leagues have begun to take action to protect the well-being of their athletes in that regard, with the NFL and the NHL both instituting stricter guidelines for dealing with head injuries.

The bad: The powers-that-be dragged their feet for too long and haven’t gone far enough to protect the people on whose backs they’ve built fortunes.

Business For Pleasure

Which brings us to lesson No. 2—that sports make for big business and, as such, are subject to the same greed and exploitation that plagues any and every profitable industry. The dueling lockouts, between the NFL and the NBA, served as solemn reminders that, when push comes to shove, capital usually has its way against labor.

Perhaps neither side in a fight between billionaires and millionaires deserves the sympathy of the layman, though the strong-arming tactics used by owners against players are all too similar to the struggles faced by middle-class workers, union and otherwise, up against their employers, even if the number of zeros at stake differ wildly.

On the one hand were the NFL players, who sought protection, both financially and health-wise, for their veterans, among other things, while the business moguls and oil magnates who sign their checks wanted a bigger slice of an ever-growing revenue pie.

On the other hand were the NBA players, who wanted to protect their share and recoup some personal pride in dealing with David Stern and 29 angry men, most of whom thought it easier to pin their losses on their employees than on their own mismanagement. The NBA owners sought a system that would guarantee profit, poor decisions be damned, and got the players to pay for it, more or less.

Both disputes summarily sucked the joy out of following each league, at least for a time.

That is, until both turned the lights back on and unshackled the gates to their stadiums, to find millions of adoring fans waiting with great anticipation, hands in pockets, to see their teams back in action, all too ready to forgive and forget.

For Shame

Of course, the struggles of professional athletes pale in comparison to those still endured by their collegiate counterparts, whose forced amateurism leaves them helplessly beholden to the whims of their corporate masters.

Those same corporate masters that use the convenient proximity of sports and education to dodge the IRS, set up bowl games as charities and generally profit handsomely from the cheap labor of poorly-compensated youngsters and the hard-earned dollars begrudgingly surrendered by those of us who actually pay taxes.

In essence, we learned that maybe college sports shouldn’t exist anymore, as entertaining as they are and as often as they give rise to stories of hope and joy. Taylor Branch laid bare the despicable roots of this exploitation that we all celebrate so in his piece for The Atlantic, entitled “The Shame of College Sports.”

We should understand that, now that the NCAA itself has tacitly admitted that student-athletes should be paid, the whole system is bound to crumble, or needs to. Scandals involving impermissible benefits at Ohio State, Boise State and Miami shouldn’t draw outrage over student-athletes breaking arcane NCAA rules, but rather over the administrators who covered them up and the piecemeal regulations that are somehow supposed to hold some semblance of a system in place.

Maybe we shouldn’t use our universities as a collective farm system for professional athletic talent. Maybe we should do as they do in most parts of the world, where aspiring professionals are put into academies and club systems rather than paraded around as pseudo-students, whose class schedules and fields of study are predetermined to better fit their exhaustive training regimens.

At least among those with the talent and the acumen to play professionally.

Our nation’s institutes of higher learning shouldn’t be in the business of providing massive spectacles, especially if they themselves are not the ones that most stand to profit. University presidents are too often beholden to athletics when academics should be their top priority.

Innocence Lost

Most disturbingly of all, we learned that money is not the only thing for which the powerful in sports exploit the innocent. The Jerry Sandusky scandal that swept through Penn State and swept out Joe Paterno blew the doors wide open on a seedy epidemic of men abusing children and power while those around them did little to stop it.

From Bernie Fine at Syracuse to Bobby Dodd at the Amateur Athletic Union to Bill Conlin at The Philadelphia Inquirer and beyond, the monsters among us have been brought to the fore. Their deplorable behavior has forced us to look at ourselves and the ills around us as much as they have at their own vile behavior. The idol worship and the self-preservation-at-all-costs mentality that pervades our most venerable institutions was laid bare by men who themselves were idolized and who were able to manipulate others—children, friends, colleagues and, of course, their enablers—with a sickening sense of sway as a result.

The spectacle of sport grants those privileged enough to bask in its glow an intoxicating sense of power, invincibility and infallibility that we, as fans and observers of athletic entertainment, are too often all too happy to oblige.

We shouldn’t be yelling and screaming about athletes being overpaid and “student-athletes” being so privileged to have scholarships provided for their hard labor. We should be looking up, looking closely at those who sign the checks, those who not only are OK with the brutality before them that could and should be better managed, but who encourage it for their own benefit.

Hard Lessons

What we learned in 2011 is that the wide world of sports is as plagued with folly as any, and that those follies often work to the detriment of those of us who observe it with such glee, consequences be damned.

Because who cares if a guy or girl’s head gets messed up playing a professional sport? He or she’s privileged enough to play games for a handsome living, right? Forget that he or she’s a human being, perhaps with a family, perhaps with a real life beyond what you and I see through our limited lenses onto the world.

Because who cares if a kid’s not getting paid when he or she’s generating money for their school? They should be satisfied with what they’ve got, and forget about the once-over they’ve been given, right?

Because who cares about adults behaving badly? Their status, their roles in the communities and in the institutions are more important than any misanthropy in which they’re involved, right?

That’s not to say we should ignore sports entirely. Beyond the entertainment value, sports do communicate important values throughout society via symbol and metaphor—cooperation, hard work, maximizing your individual talent, how to handle failure and success alike.

Rather, it’s important that we temper our expectations, that we not expect famous athletes and celebrated personalities to be role models, but perhaps hope they are and not be completed set aghast when they aren’t.

Because (sorry to burst anyone’s bubble) they’re human after all. They’re people who are just as likely to make mistakes as you and I are, if not more so, thanks to the fame and fortune with which we so enthusiastically shower them.

Because those athletes and coaches and other prominent sports figures that we worship and despise from one minute to the next aren’t superheroes or dastardly villains.

No, they’re just people, with their own tangled webs and personal complexities and long-winded stories like the rest of us. That’s what 2011 taught us.

Hopefully, when the clock strikes midnight and the calendar flips to 2012, we’ll all resolve to put these lessons into action and the world of sports into proper perspective.      

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