The NFL and NBA lockouts could have had a huge impact on the male psyche. Maybe they still will.
The NFL and its players have supposedly patched up their differences, so it seems, which means there will be some semblance of sports normalcy this fall. But just for a second, imagine what we might have been looking at with two lockouts battling it out for the most demoralizing Deadspin.com headlines. No NFL, no NBA, and these uncertainties casting a shadow over the college ranks—where, let’s face it, at some point the question of what’s next for the stars can elbow its way into the media scrum with alarming regularity. It certainly weighs on the fans.
More importantly, though, what about we the fans. I’m not talking about the die-hards with season tickets—I am sure they will get their money back, and their hearts will go on—but the generalists, the dudes posted up in our living rooms for hours on end each weekend, or weeknight, thinking, “This is who I am. This is what it means to be a man. This is it.”
Is that an oversimplification of the way we consume sports, or of the male psyche? Am I getting cause and effect mixed up here? Possibly. However, there’s no way around this truism: For many men, sports are our primary form of television consumption, or at least the mode in which we invest the most energy and emotion. Rooting for teams may fill a certain void in our lives, but not every single second of game-watching is devoted to intense scrutiny and heightened, life-or-death feelings. That ritualistic drink isn’t always to catch a buzz, or ride the moment. These activities define us, and in an odd way are our 21st-century, tech-saturated versions of contemplation—a necessary, rejuvenating part of our routine.
What happens, then, if we’re suddenly robbed of those quiet-loud (as opposed to loud-quiet, which is oppressively perfect hiking) passages in our days? That’s why the effect of the pro leagues on college is hardly negligible. Anything that disrupts the normal cycle of the season, the familiar rhythms that aren’t just called “seasons” because they occupy blocks on our calendars, is key to maintaining that sense of normalcy. It’s hard to imagine underclassmen leaving for a league that doesn’t exist.
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This is the great, elaborate con of sports: we don’t usually care all that much, and when do, it’s in large part out of nurturing, tradition-bound habit. The same thing goes for the most visible media figures, whether on television or in print. They have nothing on the eggheads patrolling the cyber-ways, and by now, they know it. What they give us, though, is a cast of characters that is either established, likeable, or annoying the way that many relatives are. Bill Walton always was the crazy uncle you never had. Without him, basketball season just isn’t the same. Without basketball season, 2011-12 could feel just as empty, and not because I have some gigantic database that yearns to be filled.
So, then, what are sports really? That’s a tricky question, in part because it really does seek to reduce fandom and broadcast to fetishized, familiar noise. There’s a basic tension between the ups and downs, the lurches and pits of disgust, that characterize sports-watching and our need for routine, time to recharge, whatever you want to call it. Similarly, we really can’t mistake those OH MY GOD THIS TEAM MUST WIN OR I WILL DIE afternoons for a game between two teams we could care less about, sometimes even in a sport that only moderately interests us. But this entire sub-field of experience has more in common than any of its elements do with a lifeless blow-out, or the absence of any sport whatsoever. It’s enough to drive a man crazy.
Herein lies the really goofy part: the violence, literal or figurative, of sports is what normalizes us. It provides emotional catharsis, maybe even holds back our road rage (drunken ballpark brawls and living room rampages are the shameful exceptions). This is what we have, in a world where we get so few chances to exorcise, work through, or sublimate the chaos and terror all around us. Do sports make things worse, or reflect the world at large? Neither of these is the right question. They’re a crucial mechanism, mediating between the two, and without them, identity goes into free-fall.
If you think that’s a stretch, have a talk with any sports fan who isn’t a dyed-in-the-wool baseball snob during August. He will be agitated, uneasy, and looking forward to any glimmer of the fall deluge. He may cope by finding stability elsewhere in his life. Or, he wastes away until sports return in earnest. Were the NFL and NBA to both hold out on us, we might face a full-blown crisis in American masculinity. Thank god for soccer, I guess.
—Photo DrabikPany/Flickr
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