|
|
 |
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE | |
Ceremonial ending Time for sports to go back to being sports
Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours. Every day brings more ceremonies. Bagpipes wail Amazing Grace from Shea Stadium to PacBell Park. Tiny flags wave at Camden Yards and a huge one is unfurled at Soldier Field. JumboTrons show video montages that mourn those we've lost and pay tribute to the courageous souls who tried to save them. For the rest of the year every game in every stadium could begin with a remembrance of the horrible events of September 11 and it would never fail to bring tears to our eyes. Our sports venues are overflowing with beautiful displays of both deep sorrow and national pride, somehow haunting and uplifting at the same time. But now it is time for them to end. It is time for them to end because we have a way in America of turning everything into a performance, especially in sports. Basketball games have become laser shows -- bright, loud assaults on the senses. Third-string linebackers make routine tackles on a punt and feel compelled to show off their latest choreographed gyrations. Television networks take the Olympics, tape them, edit them and serve them up to us in prime time as if they were Friends reruns. We don't play games in this country so much as we put on shows. This cheapens our sports, which isn't the end of the world because, after all, they're only our sports. But when the same mentality begins to infect these public displays of grief and patriotism, we simply can't have it. They're too important. That's why the time for ceremonies is over. We have to stop them because we can't stop ourselves. The Mets had Diana Ross sing God Bless America at their first home game after the tragedy. And wasn't that the guy from Hootie and the Blowfish singing the very same song at the Broncos-Cardinals game? Which do you think causes more lumps in the throats of the fans, having the firefighters and police officers troop in through the center field fence or lining them up along the first and third base lines? We're packaging our emotions, or perhaps we're having them packaged for us. We can't help it, it's what we do. In some ways, it's understandable, because no team wants to look callous. No one wants to be the franchise that gets accused of not -- let's all say it together -- keeping sports in perspective. But in the end what we often get are presentations, mourning with production value. They may have been cathartic at first, but now they're beginning to seem almost obligatory, and it's easy to mistake the lack of spontaneity for a lack of sincerity. So spare us the podiums and the speeches and the tricked-up versions of the national anthem before our games. We don't need them anymore. Save the bagpipes for the memorial services and the funerals. At the games, give us instead an unadorned America the Beautiful, sung by anyone who feels it, famous or not. Let us have a simple moment of silence and feel how powerful that can be. The ceremonies have served their purpose, and it is now time for sports to go back to simply being sports. We can only grieve in public for so long before our natural tendency toward excess starts to kick in. We don't need to be with thousands of people to cry. If there's one thing we know by now, it's that each one of us can do that alone. Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
| |||||||||||||||||
