[ARETE] Sport and Society -Random Thoughts to End the Year

[NEIL ISAACS]

P.S. I would have added notice of the brilliant arrival of our Floridian teenagers on professional tennis courts. NDI

> On December 27, 2019 at 8:12 PM richard crepeau via Sport_literature_association <sport_literature_association at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> 
>      
>      
>     SPORT AND SOCIETY FOR ARETE
>     DECEMBER 28, 2019
>      
>     This past year was like most years in sport. There were surprises, inevitabilities, milestones, the strange, the weird, great achievements, and moments of joy and agony. Some of these moments and events will seem to be of monumental significance, some will simply be passing blips in the night. These are some random thoughts from the past year in sport.
>     Odd questions pop into my head as sports news goes in one ear and out the other. For example, if Gerrit Cole had told the Yankees he would not sign with them unless they dumped their no facial hair rule, how would the Yankees have responded? Would they have passed on the “must have” pitcher and moved on? Or would they have suddenly discovered the silliness of their facial hair rule?
>     Could the Houston Astros have lost the World Series without cheating?
>     Does Bill Belichick own a video camera? Does he maintain a video library of his neighbors? Or better yet, of Robert Kraft.
>     How severe a punishment did Roger Goodell hand out to Robert Kraft under the League Conduct Policy? Did I miss something?
>     If you haven’t noticed, this is the 100th season for the National Football League, and next year will be the 100th Anniversary Season of the National Football League. Those marketing guys at NFL headquarters never miss a trick. For the season after next I suggest, “Over a hundred seasons played!”
>     This could be the last season, after several consecutive seasons, in which Colin Kaepernick is no longer a story. Roger Goodell said the other day that it is time to move on. Jay Z said nearly the same thing a few weeks ago. The only thing that could prevent such an eventuality is League owners, or Goodell himself, making another misstep, or President Trump offering another inflammatory tweet.
>     Will Dorian Gray still be quarterbacking the New England Patriots next season? The following season? The season after that? At the end of the Roaring Twenties?
>      
>     There were so many great moments this past year. Pat and I happened to be in France at the time of the World Cup. While watching the game at their home we had the extra pleasure of seeing the U.S. Women defeat the French team. Needless to say we were the only U.S. fans in the room.
>     Winning the World Cup under great pressure was a major achievement for the U.S. team. The downside is that the U.S. women have not yet been given equality within the U.S. Soccer Federation and it is not because the men have achieved more in the international arena.
>     Another remarkable development in sports world was the resurrection of Tiger Woods. After all those comebacks and all those setbacks and surgeries, Tiger Woods won the Masters in the spring. Then a few weeks ago as captain of the U.S. team in the President’s Cup in Australia he played excellent golf winning all three of the matches in which he was involved, while leading the U.S. comeback victory on the final day of play. Between these two achievements he tied Sam Snead’s record with his 82nd PGA tour win. It should be said that Tiger Woods in one year older than Tom Brady, and his body may be fifty years older than Brady’s.
>     Overshadowing Tiger, and everyone else, was Simone Biles who redefined her sport turning the World Championship of Gymnastics into her personal showcase. A few months earlier she did the same at the U.S. Gymnastics Championship. She has amassed 25 World Championship medals with 18 of those being gold. With her Olympic medals, four gold and a bronze, her total medal count is 30. There is no doubt that she is the greatest American gymnast ever and perhaps the greatest gymnast, ever.
>     It has been nearly a century since a baseball team from Washington D.C. won the World Series. That was in 1924. It hadn’t been since 1933 that a Washington team appeared in the World Series. Subsequently, the Washington Senators moved on to Minnesota, then an expansion version of the Washington Senators moved off to Texas, and then in 2005 the Montreal Expos in one of Bud Selig’s shady deals, moved into Washington as the Nationals.
>     Things got so bad for the first rendition of the Washington Senators that in 1904 Charles Dryden wrote of Washington: “First in War, First in Peace, and last in the American League.” It was a phrase that echoed across the decades and now may have finally been laid to rest.   
>     The 2019 World Series was a strange one as road teams won every game. Apparently this has never happened in any major professional sports championship that has a four of seven format. It was a fascinating series with a lot of drama and a lot of great pitching and defense not to mention big hits at just the right moment.
>     In professional basketball there was more than a little drama as the Golden State Warriors suffered multiple devastating injuries thus opening the door for the Toronto Raptors. The Canadian team was led by Kawhi Leonard in a performance worthy of a champion. It also set off a wave of support across Canada for their NBA team. Night after night the crowds gathering in public places in major and not so major cities across Canada grew in size and decibel level drowning out the more familiar cries of “He shoots, he scores.”
>     We are now in the middle 40 plus bowl games in college football, the equivalent of the participation trophy in kid’s sports. Many star players choose not to play in these games because they do not want to risk injury and their professional futures in some meaningless bowl game. A local sports talk host asked, if these are meaningless games, why are they played at all?
>     Then we have the NCAA President Mark Emmert descending on Washington to wine and dine Congress with money put in his budget by athletes playing games endlessly on your television screen at all hours of the day and night. The purpose of this latest lobbying effort is to guarantee the NCAA will not lose control of the dynamic pairing of money and power. This is stunning behavior even by the standards of the NCAA.
>     Finally I want to note a few Christmas gifts for the needy that I heard of the other day. Mike Lupica suggests for Jerry Jones, a herd of cattle, because as they say in Texas: He is all hat and no cattle. Second, the author and sportswriter Mitch Albom suggests the perfect gift for Roger Goodell: A single crisis in which he comes out looking like a leader. And finally, I suggest for Nick Saban something I thought he would never need: Two tickets for the College Football National Championship Game.
>     And for you, a very Happy New Year.
>     On Sport and Society this is Dick Crepeau reminding you that you don’t have to be a good sport to be a bad loser.
>      
>     Copyright 2019 by Richard C. Crepeau    
>      
>       
> 
>     _______________________________________________
>     Sport_literature_association mailing list
>     Sport_literature_association at lists.ku.edu
>     https://lists.ku.edu/listinfo/sport_literature_association
> 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/sport_literature_association/attachments/20191230/b3468e34/attachment.html>