By Ronald N. Guy Jr.
My thoughts are scattered. I’m completely out of rhythm. The NFL isn’t gone completely, but it’s
napping. Months remain before the start
of the NBA and NHL playoffs. Baseball’s
spring training has yet to begin. The
madness that college basketball injects into March is a month away. The next tennis major is the French Open…in
May. Tiger Woods is playing again, but
he’s flirting with the cut line, not the leaderboard. That would be concerning if The Master’s,
like apparently everything else of consequence in sports, wasn’t weeks (at
least) into the future. I am, like most
sports fans, wandering and hopelessly lost in the mid-winter’s dark and
lifeless forest.
A
voice from the beyond: What about the Olympics?
Me:
“The
what? Oh yeah, riiiiight.”
That’s unfair sarcasm.
It’s just that, well, the Winter Games are, I think, a peculiar oddity for
most Americans. The Summer Olympics are
more relatable. Every high school has a track,
a volleyball court and a soccer team.
Backyards are routinely adorned with a basketball hoop. Neighborhoods have community centers with
tennis courts, swimming pools and golf courses.
Who has access to a ski jump, frozen halfpipe or a luge course? How many people own a curling stone? Raise your hand if you’ve landed a triple
axel. Nobody? Wait, there’s one hand up in the back. Filthy liar.
Nevertheless, the Olympics always matter – both for
national pride and, inevitably, political maneuvering. Baby boomers experienced Mexico City in 1968
and Montreal in 1976. As a member of
Generation-X, the first Olympics I remember, the 1980 Winter Games at Lake
Placid, New York, produced the greatest moment in American sports history – the
United States Hockey Team’s “Miracle on Ice.”
It mattered, and remains so significant, because a ragtag bunch of
American college kids beat the Soviet Union’s best. It was Rocky v. Drago or, more
consequentially, democracy v. communism on ice.
The sports-politics Olympic collision continued with
the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. The Soviets returned the favor by skipping
the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. The
Cold War was chilly indeed. And after a
brief thaw, it feels like the forecast for Russian-American relations may be
ominous again, or at least it should be, particularly by those who have sworn
to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Millennials were introduced to the undeniable connection
between the Olympics and politics this year when, during the Opening
Ceremonies, Vice President Mike Pence sat in protest and refused to acknowledge
the presence of North Korean leader Kim Jung Un’s sister, all while North and
South Korean athletes walked in unison.
At least Pence, the dedicated athletic antagonist that he is, stayed for
the Opening Ceremonies and didn’t walk out, as he did in protest of the anthem
protests before a Colts game last fall.
And hey, North Korea showed up for these South Korean hosted Olympics,
unlike the pass it took on the 1988 Seoul Summer Games. What amazing progress we are making!
Viva la humankind. Errr…
The point: politicians, of all persuasions and
ideologies, have consistently used the Olympics and, more broadly, sports, as a
platform to further a cause. Athletes
have a decorated record of returning the favor, particularly during times of
national and global unrest – which we are unquestionably experiencing today. But there is an emboldened minority displeased
with the latest, proud and passionate collection of athletes seeking political
change. Just stick to sports, the
say. In other words, be less trouble,
less human. Recently, Fox News anchor
Laura Ingraham served as an inflammatory mouthpiece for those put off by
politically responsible athletes when she commanded LeBron James to “shut up
and dribble.”
Ahhh yes…’tis the season for obnoxious demands instead
of meaningful conversations. Unfortunately
for Ingraham and her ilk, the fist shaking will not net the desired
effect. Nor should it. What this is, at its heart, is not an issue
with athletes flexing political muscles, but rather a dangerous intolerance of
diversity of thought. Dangerous because, when disagreements
no longer prompt curious, respectful dialogue, a little part of the great idea
that is America dies.
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