It’s not a golden age for sports

We’re living in the golden age of “valuations” of things, and also, of people. For example, at the very time University of Texas defensive end Colin Simmons’s was displaying his five-sack performance against Tennessee, I learned that his Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) “valuation” sits around $2.5 million—which is more money than anyone in my family will ever see at one time. He has or has had endorsement deals with Nike, Ram Trucks, Beats by Dre, Sonic, and Amazon Alexa, among others.

He also performed a celebration on Sept. 26 that involved pretending to urinate on the field of play, near a player he’d just tackled. That was a move that will sadly but undoubtedly be emulated by kids on playgrounds all across this great land of ours. Simmons addressed the celebration in a postgame interview in which he stated, “I was just in that mode, feeling myself,” adding later, “charge it to the game.” Which is “athlete” for, “I’m not sorry at all for the incredibly tasteless and stupid thing I just did, even though I prefaced the above with, ‘I want to apologize for the celebration.’”

Apparently being “in that mode” or “feeling myself” covers a multitude of sins, including dehumanizing someone (the opponent) whose life is probably a lot more “like” yours than unlike yours, inasmuch as you’re both highly paid mercenary entertainers cosplaying as “student athletes” in programs that bought you for the highest price you could command in an open market.

This came earlier in the same day that USC linebacker Desman Stephens was seen laughing and celebrating after a dirty hit on Oregon quarterback Dante Moore that led to Moore being backboarded and driven off the field and eventually being hospitalized. All in all, it was a pretty gross day to be a sports fan—the kind of day that makes a person ask, “What’s the point of any of this?”

I don’t think we can even kid ourselves anymore that sports, especially at this level, “build character.” If this is character, nobody wants it. But here’s the bind: If the head coach takes a hard line and sits his player down for the rest of the game, then the player will be that much more compelled to sell his Relative Athletic Score (another form of valuation) to the highest bidder next season. Today’s Texas Longhorn is just tomorrow’s Ohio State Buckeye.

This is a good time to interject that I’m not a prude about this stuff and have done and said things on fields of play that I later had to repent of, and sometimes ask forgiveness for from another person. These are pride-swallowing moments that are ultimately only made good, and redemptive, because of the work of Jesus Christ.

We’re also in the golden age of metabolizing our sports content not only through the little pieces of glass that live in our pockets, but through the betting apps, fantasy platforms, and video shorts that said pieces of glass deliver, and which rob any moment of context and take lots of longer-form things like a game or a whole season and turn them into moments of “content.” Such that the player who is entertaining me as a part of a team is less a part of a team (or a school) and more the disembodied frustration that caused my fantasy team to lose or my nine-leg DraftKings parlay to not hit.

Regarding the “student” part of “student-athlete”: Many players at many high-profile programs never darken the proverbial door of an academic building on campus, taking all their courses online. It’s becoming increasingly clear that nobody in the home or the multimillion-dollar football facility is teaching anything close to “perspective.” So perhaps the classroom is our last shot at it.

In Cameron Crowe’s film Jerry Maguire, there’s a moment where Tom Cruise’s Jerry character—after just being fired by the soulless mega-agency that he “helped build”—explains that there’s “a thing called manners … a way of doing things.”

I fear we’re losing manners (and perspective) completely in our sports, and it’s up to us—adults—to teach it to the people we’re either parenting or discipling. Parents and coaches, teach your kids or your players to see the opponent as human. We need our opponents, because without them, we have no games, and without games we have a lot less fun.

I remember playing on the same team, in college, with a guy from a school I hated in high school. It took about half of a day for us to realize we had literally everything in common; we just had to step away from our high school jerseys to see it.

Coaches, be classy. Teach some manners and have consequences in the absence of them.

Parents, pass down the sports books that have been thoughtful/meaningful to you, and which tell a fully formed story of a life.

Players, repent when you do or say stupid things in the heat of competitive moments. Parents and coaches, model repentance for them.

Major colleges, consider being colleges again, to your athletes, and not just buying and selling them like stocks.

And Division 3 schools, please for the love of all that’s good, keep playing, because without you I’ll have nothing to watch on a Saturday afternoon.