The Essence of Sport

I watch ecstatically as Roy Williams strides triumphantly into the North endzone of Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium, calmly and proudly hoisting a single hand to the raucous crowd in the “Hook ‘Em” manner. My next memory is far less pleasant, as I see an accursed yellow flag instantly mar the grassy, green field. Yes, he was penalized for taunting of the opposition—for holding his hand up in his team’s motto like hundreds have done numerous times before him. I was left utterly flabbergasted and downright enraged. True, the flag did not affect the outcome of the game, but even for an official to consider such an action seemed absolutely ludicrous and taboo to me. The fundamental security blanket of being able to bask in the sheer, unadulterated, primal swagger that is sport has been incrementally torn to shreds over the past few years. Sports are about allowing people to escape from their taxing, monotonous, and mundane lives into a completely different world—a world not governed by the same constricting rules that are always trying to refine and control us, to make us “politically correct.” This so-called “free world” is now being enchained like the everyday one, and because of this, the pure essence of sport is being degraded and ground into an immured shell of its former liberated self.

The “wussification” of professional sports has been prominently chronicled in the recent years, connivingly contrived behind the façade of “attempting to clean up the image of the sport.” The two most visible sports industries, the NFL and the NBA, have accepted the brunt of the cleaning implements’ abrasive scrubbings. A few years back, the NBA instituted a policy requiring all NBA players to wear suits or similarly refined attire to and from all 82 games—the penalty is a fine in the tens of thousands of dollars. If a basketball player wants to wear a shirt that displays his favorite rapper or the rough city that he’s from, then that is who he is, and that is what sport has become—what it embodies, if you will. When did America become a nation intent upon stripping the individualism and cultural upbringings from a citizen—who are we to usurp the core beliefs of only a certain sect of people? Wasn’t this country founded to uphold those very same sacred beliefs? They make the sport, yet we are taking away who they are and what they’ve done for the atmosphere and enthusiasm of it. Football players such as Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens give their hearts to the game and to the fans, so if they commemorate an amazing catch by using “an extraneous object to celebrate,” is that really enough to mark them as bad role models? That’s another fine in the tens of thousands of dollars. Gone are the days when a player could further entertain the fans with a wild act of jubilee after a big play—now he must be restrained by his teammates or risk a fine in the thousands of dollars and a possible suspension. I guess having fun is just setting too much of a bad example for the youth of the nation.

Sports are one of the final outlets to the tedium and uniformity of our lives nowadays—one of the very last places we can escape to, just for a while, to break our chains and bathe in the chilly spasm of undefiled euphoria that resonates throughout our blood vessels like an electrical spark, causing goose bumps to pop up across our arms and legs when a player like Roy Williams strides leisurely into the North end zone of DKR showing his love for the university by holding up his horns in respect for the essence of sport. Let’s not seal that delicate portal to the other world by enchaining it too.