Michael Moynihan: The sports fan and the honesty dilemma
Páirc Uí Chaoimh’s central government funding model, concussion in rugby, and the recent fall-out after Paddy Jackson was promoted within London Irish show this isn't just an American concern
I know that when I usually refer to a book it comes at the end of this column, as a recommendation to readers, but this Monday I felt I’d fly it from the mainmast (is that even a nautical term? Never mind).
That’s because Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan by Jessica Luther and Kavitha A Davidson is a terrific distillation of the unease that many sports fans, if they’re being honest, feel flickering around the fringes of their consciousness.
If they’re being honest, of course. Back to that in a second.
Luther and Davidson are American sportswriters who write for a variety of outlets across the Atlantic, so there’s an understandable focus on issues which are specifically American-based.
By that I mean challenges such as accommodating the fact that your local sports team gets local government funding for its stadium, for instance, or being aware of the potential damage concussion is doing to some of your sports heroes, or that feeling of conflict in a fan when his or her sports hero is accused of crime away from the field of play.
(Mind you, Páirc Uí Chaoimh’s central government funding model, the long-standing spectre of concussion in rugby, and the recent fall-out after Paddy Jackson was promoted within London Irish show that these aren’t all just American concerns.)
As we all know, the quality of debate about ethical and moral issues in sport is spotty at best. If you have a keen ear you’ll hear various working definitions of whataboutery aired any time you open a discussion about a sports-adjacent matter you find disquieting.
“You can’t criticise me because you’re (insert various reasons here)”, or “What about your own crowd doing (place sundry activities here)” are default options for the rattled defender of the status quo, the ad hominem response usually surfacing with impressive speed whenever someone airs a concern. Beats addressing the issue on its merits, obviously.
This is understandable insofar as people often revert to sport as a refuge from the front page, to use a newspaper metaphor.
God knows in the last 18 months we’ve had enough real-world concerns to make us yearn for the distraction of a lopsided scoreline or a managerial vacancy.
But you can’t keep the real world at bay forever. I see the ultimate avatar of the political-sporting figure — to be more precise, the unsettling political-sporting figure — is the subject of a new multi-part documentary series now airing.
Ken Burns is responsible for some of the greatest documentaries to be found anywhere — including the magisterial Baseball — and his series on Muhammad Ali comes to screens this month.
In his time Ali was the ultimate intersection of the political and the personal, something that’s forgotten, or perhaps never considered, by many who use his sayings as vaguely inspirational Twitter bios and Instagram mottos.
Now revered, the boxer occupied a different place in the culture 50-plus years ago, when your political leanings could be extrapolated by the very name you used for him: deploying Clay or Ali implied a host of accompanying beliefs and attitudes.
Which is where the honesty mentioned above comes back into play. As mentioned, you may say that daily life is so oppressive that sport is where you go for diversion rather than debate, but you can accommodate both. In fact, you need to.
One of the authors of the book, Kavitha Davidson, told Texas Monthly that “sitting with the discomfort of being a sports fan might be the book’s biggest takeaway.”
Jessica Luther, the other author, said in the same piece that: “... it’s also okay to decide that when something hurts you, you can give it up.”
Is that too much honesty for the sports fan?
The best of the best (of the best)
It’s club competition time in the GAA, or (one of) ‘the most wonderful time(s) of the year’, because it means no layers of officialdom to peel through before you speak to anyone.
No lengthy waiting outside locked dressing rooms, either. Only last weekend yours truly was on a club championship game in Cork and had to pick his way through players’ gearbags and piles of hurleys on the way to do post-match interviews.
Look, the packets of Jaffa Cakes were open and calling out in their little voices to me, and I’m only human. So if St Finbarr’s want to invoice me for three items missing from their inventory, feel free. You know where I am.
I mentioned this to someone over coffee this week and, as we moved swiftly past my biscuit choices to discuss the crop of underage talent coming through in the ’Barrs at present, he asked a relevant question.
What’s the underage team in your club that yielded more adult stars than any other?
We ended up going down a rabbit hole of deliberation, evaluating U16 teams powered by one prodigy versus all-conquering minor teams that produced three players who represented the county at senior level.
There’s a fine line that (just about) divides the blatant plea for readers to fill a column and the genuine question. For these purposes I’m inclining to the latter — if any reader has a nomination I’m all ears.
Ryder Cup’s continental drift
I know the Ryder Cup was on this past weekend. I’m not some kind of stylite, hidden away from the modern world.
If you enjoyed it, then good luck to you. I don’t judge.
Though I do wonder about the continental allegiances.
Shouldn’t this be broadened out to other vast landmasses, though? And I don’t mean Asia, either.
There could be an intercontinental golf tournament contested by Laurentia on one side and Avalonia on the other (the latter augmented by Baltica).
Of course, those particular continents wouldn’t even exist if it hadn’t been for the Hercynian orogeny, the famous geological event...
Apologies. Went off on a bit of a tangent there. If you’re not inclined to muse on geological deep-time shenanigans, though, I suggest you’re missing out.
Which is strange, because if you’re committed to watching golf then large, slow-moving bodies should be just your bag (alright, enough of the golf-shaming — ed).
The Mann of the hour (sorry)
Much obliged to the reader who got in touch during the week to convict me of reading snobbery — I didn’t get much of a trial — based on my anticipation of an enjoyable read with Colson Whitehead’s latest.
Well, if you want true pretentiousness, I wish to enter in evidence The Magician by Colm Tóibín, which is new to bookshops.
This is a fictionalised account of the life of the German writer Thomas Mann, author of Buddenbrooks, Death In Venice, The Magic Mountain and more ... what’s that? Too highbrow?
Well, don’t shoot the piano player (he’s only doing his best).
I am a Colm Tóibín fan since reading his Homage To Barcelona long ago, the best guide book/pocket history of a European city I’ve come across. You can pick that one up after you’ve done with The Master.
Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie
