IN OTHER SPORTS:
Track and field teams to bear torch down MIAA homestretch

Sports Shots

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From the Press Box
By Nathan Bierma

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“In the middle of the night,” the solemn narrator recited to the accompaniment of chanting monks, “We answer life’s deepest questions: Who am I? Is there a God?” And then: “Did the Yankees beat the Twins?”

It is indeed hard to talk this portentously about sports. After all, it is all just a game.

And yet while last week’s events in Colorado seemed to impeach the importance of sports altogether, simultaneously we saw just how crucial our expertise about the sports subculture can be – for Christians more than anyone else.

The reasons to ignore sports were there: As tragedy blind-sided Littleton, life-or-death appropriately took precedence over win-or-lose. The Nuggets and Rockies canceled their games for the week, while the Avalanche moved their Stanley Cup playoff series with the Sharks to San Jose.

This was a time for sports to step back. Even the announcement of John Elway’s retirement – which otherwise might have sent media and fans into a melodramatic frenzy about what a tragedy it was for Denver – was cast in an appropriate light.

But at the very moment fans found themselves switching from “SportsCenter” to CNN, none could completely step away from sports. Just when we wanted to ignore the sports world, it stared us in the face.

No attempts to justify or even fully explain what happened in Littleton are appropriate. But for all my rage at the bestial killers, don’t think I can’t summon some for the self-righteous jocks at Columbine high school who named the now infamous fringe group the “Trenchcoat Mafia,” called them “faggots,” and threw rocks at them from their cars on the way home from school.

Yes, boys will be boys, but is there no use in examining how much these condescending jocks fed off society’s glorification of sports and elevation of athletes to a semi-divine status? Is it not sobering to imagine how the killers observed Columbine High School celebrate this winter’s sports championships?

Again, there is no rationalizing their response. But to ignore the jock hierarchy of this school and thousands just like it, along with the sports-saturated atmosphere in which it thrived, is to leave our heads right where they were – stuck in the sand.

Examining sports is important because our culture has made it important – America has made sports far more than fun and games. The sports world provides myriad insightful and unique glimpses of Western culture. For example, it is the only umbrella I can think of that stretches over both the snooty country club pro and the dirt-poor kid in a Bulls jacket.

Sports gave America the first thing black and white people EVER did together when they cheered Jackie Robinson, and remains one of our most useful lessons in race. Sports is a mine canary when it comes to television and the Internet, pioneering the newest innovations (like the glowing puck and real-time online statistic trackers). Professional sports’ politics give us meaningful lessons in civics as taxpayers and mayors are held hostage by restless owners and stadium referenda. College sports ask us the state of academia as athletes play as minor-leaguers rather than students.

In the end, it is just a game. But for the players who play, the fans who watch, the suits who own, the announcers who broadcast, and for anyone who wants to try to make some sense of our turbulent, affluent society, you have to find out what’s important about sports.

So do Calvin students. If professing that this world belongs to God – every square inch – is more than just lip service for you, it guides you as you watch ESPN and the playoffs. Not even sports is free of God’s grasp.

And that tells us whom we really should glorify.