Integrity and Community: The Importance of Sports' Roots in Modern Society

“Wow…I think all of us here feel like we are Virginia Tech today. But, wait, there’s a football game.” – Chris Fowler

The sea of maroon and orange undulated in rhythm to the sound of guitar, bass and drums emanating from the speakers. Exit light, enter night and then entered the Hokies. The camera panned over of the joyous crowd and told the story of Virginia Tech football.

In and of itself, this spectacular entrance into Lane Stadium is par for the course on a Saturday in Blacksburg, Va. But Sept. 1, 2007 was not an ordinary day for the school and its fans.

The cameras focused on the individual fans to tell the story of Virginia Tech.

Hands clasped tightly with neighboring fans. Tears tumbling down cheeks only to be thrown off as fans jumped in unison with 66,000 of their closest friends, many of whom they had never met, all screaming to drown out the incessant whispers of collective sorrow.

These people needed to move forward from a previously unimaginable tragedy that had occurred a short four and half months prior on April 16, 2007.

And as peculiar as it may appear to some people around the globe, as former Hokie quarterback Sean Glennon said, “there is not going to be anything better for the Blacksburg community than a Virginia Tech football game."

But Virginia Tech is not unique in its need for sports. Take New York following 9/11 or Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina.

The world stopped for a moment to watch President George Bush throw out the opening pitch in the 2001 World Series and smiled when “Who Dat Nation” rejoiced in the rebuilt streets of New Orleans following the Saints’ first Super Bowl win in 2009.

It is not just after tragedy that sports can unify a group of people, either. The city of Boston breathed a sigh of relief when the “Curse of the Bambino” was lifted in 2004, all of America rejoiced at the epic swimming relay in the 2008 Olympics led by Michael Phelps while countries like China and South Africa celebrated their progress as nations by hosting the Olympics and World Cup, respectively.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Cleveland as a whole wanted to punch out LeBron James after his very public departure from the city.

And the scale doesn’t have to be macro. A high school rallies around its basketball team for finally winning a game against the crosstown rival, a family pickup game of football on Thanksgiving or a bonding moment when a dad teaches his son how to throw a baseball.

Unfortunately, our current culture has switched the focus of sports from healthy competition to winning at all costs.

Steroids and other performance enhancing drugs have seemingly irreparably damaged the legacy of baseball as well as many other sports; the NFLPA and NFL are currently in a lockout over how to divvy up the league’s large revenues; the two teams playing for the BCS national championship are the focus of NCAA investigations; and the basketball national champion University of Connecticut Huskies’ coach Jim Calhoun will serve a suspension for recruiting violations next season; poor officiating frequently makes headlines over the performance of the athletes.

And the list doesn’t come close to ending there. The state of sports in society is at an arguably all-time low, yet with a tumultuous economy, hyper-partisanship in government and pressing times across the globe for our military, America is need of unification over a common goal. Sports provide that escape.

In the grand scheme of life and history, sports are insignificant: the world will continue to spin without the NFL for a year, despite popular opinion. But at its very essence, sports are a celebration of everything it means to be a human being, pure optimism.

Working tirelessly to better oneself to defeat an opponent in a fair fight is a universal goal and struggle. Modern sports, though, have taken it a step further in the development of fan bases and rivalries.

The basic need for camaraderie, to believe and be able to take pride an entity greater than one person and the ability to escape reality for a couple of hours and ride the roller coaster of emotion that is a sporting event with people also fully entrenched in the game...these are the things that all come with sports.

Rivalries provide a common enemy that pushes you to be better than you ever thought you could be. And you get to take out your frustrations on them and hold bragging rights until the teams’ next meeting.

When looked at in that light, it makes complete sense that sports have such an important role in today’s society, especially amongst males.

The increasing stigma against emotional expression in men has pushed even more emotion into physical form, i.e. sports, and has amplified sports’ importance as a bonding tool.

So what does that mean for sports when greats like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Lawrence Taylor and Michael Vick are found guilty of serious crimes?

What about the epic blowing out of proportion of rivalries and games as seen in little league baseball fights and the poisoning of Auburn’s Toomer’s Corner?

More importantly, what does that mean for society as a whole?

It slickens society’s road to cynicism. It taints an escape from the 24-media-machine of never-ending bad news. It dirties the innocence of competition and perpetuates the idea that if you don’t win, you’re nothing.

At the barest minimum, it will keep some people from going out to the ball game where a 9-year-old girl gets to have her moment in the spotlight when a foul ball comes her way.

Perhaps it is unfair for us to place athletes in such high regard, to rest the hopes of a people on the leg of kicker or the arm of a pitcher. But sports are here to stay, and their importance is unlikely to diminish in time.

What we need is to do is clean it up, eliminate the greed and narcissism in players, athletes, fans and officials so that the game get back to its roots: healthy competition between individuals or teams, each of whom bring the best they have to beat their opponent fairly, unify a people around a common goal and provide an escape from a world with more war than peace.

Whether it’s as simple as a youngster scoring a goal in a rec soccer league, as large as a city’s celebration over a championship or as important as a school’s need to move forward from tragedy, sports play a critical role in today’s society.

But with every tale of selfishness and poor decisions of athletes, coaches and officials, the innocence of it all slowly wilts away until there is nothing left to play for. May that day never come.

*REMEMBER 32*