College Basketball: How We Got to Playing the Carrier Classic

You may have heard by now, but several big name college basketball programs tip off their 2011-2012 season this Friday. Among them are Michigan State and North Carolina, who will do so on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson—the same carrier that gave Osama Bin Laden his funeral.

Pretty cool, right? President Obama will attend the Veteran's Day game and we should expect all the pageantry and patriotism that we see in games such as college football's Army vs. Navy.

But this game is much more than a single patriotic salute to those who have served for us. In reality, this game is emblematic of a shift in American and Global culture.

When we look back at pieces of art, music, films, books, etc., we understand more about the culture that produced them. Italian films in the late 1940s (a wave known as Neo-Realism) shot their films in actual locations around the country, while the narratives usually featured an impoverished protagonist trying to get a job to support his family. When looked at through this lens, we get a better understanding of what life was like in post-World War II Italy.

Realize that we can study sports the same way we study art, film, and literature. Just like those items, sports offers up an reflective look at a culture during a given time span. With this, let's look how sports have evolved in American Culture.

Baseball is known as America's pastime because it is just that, a pastime. It is also indicative of American culture in the late 19th century, early 20th century.

How does one play baseball? You need several players, multiple pieces of equipment (bats, gloves, helmets), and plenty of space. This is exactly how people farmed or otherwise made a living during this time period. They needed a group of people to help farm, lots of farming space, and all the necessary equipment (shovels, hoes, rakes, etc).

Fast forward to the mid-20th century. At this point, football is taking over as the most popular sport in America and its qualities and characteristics once again reflect those of American society. Football is machine-like. It is naturally separated into a series of plays. Discipline is at a premium in a sport like football. A group of players come out, run a play, stop, go back, and do it all over again. This is comparable to a way a factory or mass production works, which was prevalent in the mid-20th century. Make one thing. Stop. Do it again. Do it over and over, the same way. Machine-like.

Now think of the style of basketball. Compared to football and baseball, it is much more free-flowing. It allows players to be innovative. It allows for longer periods of play without stoppage. Additionally, if one desires, he/she can play it alone, with one or two friends, and in a smaller space than is necessary for football or baseball.

This is clearly emblematic of our post-industrialist society. No more are we confined to offices or factories, and we don't rely on thousands of workers and machines to produce a product. Today we are free-flowing. We are innovative. We are seamless. We can do business anywhere thanks to iPhones, blackberries and iPads, and we can have a major impact with nothing more than a laptop and a power cord. Just like basketball, we can play/work by ourselves, anywhere.

It has become clear at this point that President Obama is an avid basketball fan. From having his annual Barack-e-tology to shooting hoops with Clark Kellogg, Obama has never shied away from expressing his affinity for the game.

Why is this important? For one, it would be remiss of me to ignore the discussion of race. Basketball has come to be typify the "American Dream" for many young African-Americans. Additionally, as Dr. Todd Boyd points out in his book Young, Black, Rich and Famous: "[basketball] is connected to other forms of cultural expression that work to define and represent Black people as their contemporary selves." So by identifying as a basketball fan, Obama could be perceived as re-affirming his identity as an African-American.

More importantly though, he is the first president to identify himself as a basketball fan. Admittedly, basketball has been around the shortest of the three major American sports, but past presidents have associated themselves with football, baseball, or other leisure activities such as golfing or sailing.

George H.W. Bush played baseball at Yale, while his son served as the G.M. for the Texas Rangers. Ronald Reagan rode the illusion that he was the real-life George Gipp to two presidential terms, while back in reality, Gerald Ford excelled as an All-American on the gridiron. Richard Nixon called failed plays for Washington Redskins coach George Allen, while JFK was able to charm the nation with his sailing and used his golf game as a cover for his extra-marital affairs.

Obama being a sports fan isn't new for a president, but being a basketball fan is. By being a basketball fan, he is bringing as much popularity to the sport as Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson did in the 1980s and 90s (people for some reason love to compare their March Madness entries to the presidents').

Moreover, by Obama identifying himself as a basketball fan, he is bringing a sense of patriotism to the game. This is something that has never existed with basketball. Football is notorious for fly-overs, the stretching of a 100-yard long American Flag across the field for national anthems, and for acting as a cathartic-remembrance-of-sort for major national historical events such as September 11th. Baseball has the same patriotic fervor attached to it.

But when was the last time you remember basketball being associated with such patriotism? Save for perhaps the Dream Teams winning the gold medal, when have you ever felt proud to be an American when watching a basketball game? When has a basketball telecast ever conjured up patriotic feelings inside? There isn't anything inherently different about basketball that makes it more or less of a patriotic sport than baseball or football. It just hasn't been presented to us in the same way.

I mentioned the Army-Navy game at the beginning of the article. We can all agree that Army-Navy is more than a football game. It is a patriotic event that happens to be played out on the football field (the Super Bowl is this as well). This Friday, we will have the same patriotic event, but for the first time, it will happen to be played out through a basketball game.

I would bet that Friday is the first time many of us feel patriotic emotions while watching a basketball game, and I don't expect it to be the last. With our post-industrialist society representing the qualities of the game, and with Obama representing the game the way he does, basketball and patriotism will become more and more linked in the near future.

After this, and the way things are headed, it won't be long until basketball is the national sport.

Then all we need to do is update this to "basketball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet."