Sportsmanship

Okay, one last thing about the volleyball game.

This is going to be a bit lighter, because I know I got a little angry and scolding last week. 

Shortly after the BYU-Duke volleyball game, there was an Oregon-BYU football game. This time BYU was on the receiving end of intimidating behavior, with Oregon fans chanting "F*ck the Mormons" and apparently being rather aggressive about it, in terms of violating personal space.

My first thought on this was that if we don't want things like that to happen, we need to quit being f*ckers.

(I debated the use of asterisks, but if their inclusion makes reading this a better experience for someone, it's worth it.)

That obviously does not make the Oregon behavior correct, but there is a context to this. 

I believe it happened because of what happened it Provo. The self-declared exoneration at a school that (while belonging to a church that officially decries racism) still sees a lot of racism in its student body does not help.

Although it seems like religious persecution, which would have similar protections to racial persecution, we all know that Mormons are pretty safe. We are mostly white, have not been driven from our homes for well over a century, and the evangelicals are not going to unleash their hatred for us until we stop being useful. Otherwise, when you see actual religious persecution these days, it is almost always against people of color, with the possible exception being anti-Semitism.

There is not the same power imbalance, and we need to be honest about that. It is the imbalances in the power structure, and the desire to maintain that structure, that causes a lot of the evil in the world. Then a lot of that evil just seems like standing up for good values, because we do not honestly interrogate it.

Sports plays into this.

I managed sports teams in high school. Even though I would always tell myself that God does not care who wins a game, and would not take sides so it would make no sense to pray about it, whenever we were down points I would find myself praying. Logical? No, including the use of "we", but that is how the feelings go.

Articles about the BYU-Duke game mention BYU fans shouting right behind the Duke bench as they were serving.  I doubt Oregon was much worse.

I say that because I also remember the crowd chanting "Air ball" when someone on the opposing team was attempting a free throw, and other chants like "over-rated", or singing the chorus of "Kiss Him Goodbye"... that was all pretty normal. It is not specifically racist, but when the use of native mascots increases acts of prejudices against native students, maybe we should consider the connections.

I am not saying that we shouldn't play sports. They do seem capable of bringing out the worst in us, even though you can find lots of inspiring stories about better qualities surfacing. Certainly if schools are going to have athletic programs, they should look at what their goals are, and if those goals are being met.

(And if the honest answer is that the goal is profit, then to ask if that goal is appropriate.)

Maybe it is hard for competition to stay friendly. If so, then it is probably harder in time periods when those who have historically had more power are feeling it slipping and trying desperately to cling to it.

That's where we are now. There are people deliberately working very hard to enforce white supremacy and misogyny and every other form of unrighteous dominion. 

Let us not forget that even the term "sportsmanship" is gendered language, outdated but still imposing a belief that sports played by women can never be as important or valuable.

We are not going to solve that by accident, so we need to be conscious about our choices.

In that interim, we may be called "fuckers", but let's try not to deserve it.