The attention span of sports fans has dwindled over the years, resulting in professional leagues making alterations to their games to force action and keep viewers intrigued through a consistent pace of play.  For example, gridiron football added the play clock; basketball added the shot clock; and tennis added the serve clock.  Baseball made the most recent and most drastic changes, adding a pitch clock that forces both the offense and defense to be ready for play (whereas most other clocks put the onus only on the offense).
 
One sport that doesn’t always come up when discussing pace of play at the professional level is golf.  Sure, there are rules that govern pace of play, but the chances of coming up against one with risk of penalty are slim.  A news story may pop up from time to time about the pace of play during a major tournament, but most professionals are conditioned to work at a pace that never truly results in an issue regarding the pace of a round.
 
However, as golf is an accessible and recreational sport played by so many people of so many ages, the pace of play at the amateur level (such as at your local public course) becomes more of a social issue than one that might result in a stroke penalty.  The traffic jams that result in slow play do more to affect customer service and business than the actual competition within the sport.  The resulting stories of aggravation tend to revolve around the group ahead or behind that skirt etiquette, resulting in golfers feeling things like anxiety, frustration, and/or anger.
 
Some pace of play issues simply cannot be avoided at your local course.  If it’s a beautiful day when most people don’t have to work, the number of golfers who flock to the course can be quite high, resulting in a natural backup that happens like the ones during rush hour on major highways.  However, even when these issues arise, golfers can take precautions to ensure they’re part of the solution, not part of the problem.
 
Most golf courses try to govern the pace of play so that everyone’s game can be more enjoyable.  Groups of golfers are capped at four, and golf carts can be required in high volume situations.  Some courses book better golfers earlier in the day and not-so-good golfers later in the day so that handicaps are more uniform and dictate a more proper pace of play.  Different colored tees and their placement can change the difficulty of each hole, allowing a golfer with a higher handicap to start closer to the green than a more experienced golfer.  Perhaps most importantly, many golfers have adopted the policies of “ready golf,” meaning the etiquette of waiting for golfers who are farther from the hole to go first is waived in the name of speeding up the game; in other words, if you’re ready to go, just go!
 
And yet, some golfers are still oblivious to these guidelines and their slow pace.  Some players believe it is their right to take as much time as needed since they are paying customers, and if that means taking an eternity to line up a putt, then so be it.  Others believe that the golf course is the perfect social opportunity to consume alcohol or smoke marijuana, altering their behavior and state of consciousness while ignoring the consequences this might have on others around them.  This behavior can be reflective of the same obliviousness towards people elsewhere in life, demonstrating a lack of general courtesy for their fellow man.
 
Acting this way, though, isn’t just reserved for the golfers.  Many courses employ rangers whose responsibility is to drive around the course and ensure that golfers are adhering to the rules, especially regarding pace of play.  There are many rangers who do a great job, but there are also plenty of rangers who align more with the oblivious golfers, believing it is their job to treat the course like sacred ground and reprimand every person who so happens to commit even a minor infraction.  Ultimately, both golfers and course employees have the power to do the same thing:  create undue conflict for the public because of a lack of common sense and the inability to choose the proper words to communicate.
 
Regardless of our role on the course, the sportsmanship involved with our words and actions can significantly alter our experience and the experience of others.  Walking the fine line between taking our time and keeping a good pace can take practice, but a simple awareness for others around us might be the catalyst to finding that balance.  Course rangers might see a better pace when they ask for help from golfers to assist with their desire to improve the pace, rather than demanding change to adhere to the rules.
 
Public and amateur golf has the potential to become a powder keg of pretentiousness and arrogance that breeds contempt rather than enjoyment.  The game of golf is already difficult, and yet everyone involved with the game can make it harder than it needs to be due to poor sportsmanship, poor communication, and a lack of awareness for others.  Imagine how much more enjoyable a day on the course could be if everyone embraced the personal responsibility to be conscious and empathetic of the others present.

It is now widely accepted that sports, at least on the professional level (and collegiate level in the United States), is hyper-commercialized and considered to be big business.  Tune into any professional sporting event and you’ll get a glimpse of millionaire athletes who get their checks signed by billionaire owners.  You’ll also see advertisements galore, including the numerous television commercials, the large billboards around the stadiums, and, in some cases, advertisements on players’ uniforms.  As cynical as it might sound, the sports we love have turned into massive profit-making operations.
 
This monetization of sports on a massive level has opened the door for large sums of money to be poured into sportswashing, the term used to describe individuals, corporations, or governments using sports to rehabilitate their public image.  It is one of the most common forms of reputation laundering.  For example, the 1936 Olympic Games, held in Berlin, Germany, is considered an early example of sportswashing.  Among other reasons, the games were used to portray the image of Nazi Germany as a forward-thinking and orderly society.  Similarly, in the modern day, 2022 was branded “The Year of Sportswashing” after the Beijing Olympics, the emergence of the Saudi government-backed LIV Golf Tour, and the FIFA World Cup held in Qatar.
 
Ultimately, sportswashing is a gamble that claims one will overlook human rights abuses and conveniently forget about other larger issues in favor of the glory of sport.  Here’s the thing, though:  it works.
 
For example, soccer (or football, depending on where you live in the world) has become a juicy target for individuals and governments in need of a public relations campaign to clean up their image. The FIFA World Cup, soccer’s showcase event and the most watched sporting event in the world, has been hosted on numerous occasions by countries with repressive governments. These include the 1934 World Cup hosted by Mussolini’s Italy, the 1978 World Cup held in Argentina under a military dictatorship that was responsible for the disappearance of anywhere from 9,000 to 30,000 political opponents, and the 2022 World Cup held in Qatar, which was held in venues built by migrant workers forced to work in inhumane conditions, causing the deaths of an estimated 6,500 of said workers.  The intrinsic glory of a country’s athletic pursuit of excellence and the national pride associated with it can easily outweigh and overshadow other issues that might have more importance than entertainment.
 
State ownership of soccer teams is another sportswashing tool.  Once upon a time, Manchester City were a team that was average at best.  They were dwarfed in every conceivable way by their crosstown rival, Manchester United.  Since being taken over in 2008 by the royal family of the United Arab Emirates, an authoritarian theocracy which operates in a similar manner to Qatar, Man City have won six English Premier League titles and one European Champions’ League title.  The attention paid to what is happening on the pitch dwarfs the attention paid to what issues might be plaguing the people of the UAE.
 
The end goal of sportswashing is to get ordinary people to defend, excuse, or refuse to acknowledge the actions of individuals who crave nothing more than money and power, usually to the detriment of others.  (One might submit that it becomes a corollary of the “fanboy phenomenon” discussed previously in OSIP’s publications.)
           
What can one do to combat sportswashing?  Specific victories have come through the coordinated organization of larger groups of people.  Earlier this year, FIFA dropped Visit Saudi, the Saudi Arabian government’s official tourism board, as an official sponsor of the Women’s World Cup after an outcry from soccer players taking part in the tournament. 
 
However, such a victory may not give off the feeling that the fans have made a dent in this conflict.  The fact of the matter is that we must accept that sportswashing isn’t going away anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean that we need to boycott or refuse to watch our favorite sports.  Simply acknowledging that it exists can be the first step to a better understanding and consciousness as we lobby for a culture with better sportsmanship.  We can appreciate the glory of our favorite sports and root for our favorite teams while also acknowledging the shortcomings of those in power who cause this phenomenon to occur.
 
Further, we can use sporting events to shine a light on issues that some would like to be swept under the rug.  For example, in Germany, fans of the soccer club Bayern Munich have been particularly critical of their club’s relationship with Qatar due to the team’s annual midseason trips since 2011.  Because the fans spoke up, that relationship was not renewed earlier this year.
 
Although money and power will always talk, people can rise above it.  The intangibles of sports such as the pursuit of excellence and the association with winning do not have to direct the narrative away from facts; in fact, both can exist simultaneously.  The power to send a message exists even with the conscious awareness of the truth.

It was doubly late:  late on a Wednesday night in late August when I went to my favorite watering hole to relax before calling it a night.  The radio that was on throughout the restaurant caused the television sets above the liquor bottles to be muted, leaving me with only the away video feed (no audio) for the game between the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks and the host Los Angeles Dodgers.
 
Diamondbacks first baseman Christian Walker was at bat when home plate umpire Alex Tosi called a strike.  Using the inaccurate graphic box that simulates the strike zone for visual context, the pitch was outside; it was a two-seam fastball that purposefully started outside the zone and sunk back towards the plate, but it was probably two inches away from the outside corner as denoted by vertical line superimposed on the screen.  Tosi’s strike mechanic triggered displeasure from Walker.
 
Shortly thereafter, Walker grounded out.  When the camera panned back to Walker putting his batting helmet away in the dugout, he was still yelling at Tosi for that call.  Walker then slammed his batting gloves against the wall, shook his head again, and planted himself against the dugout railing overlooking the field.  His eyes were fixated solely on Tosi as anger and displeasure emanated from every orifice on his head.  The sweat that glistened on his bald white scalp wanted to turn into steam or smoke simply to escape the awkward tension, like a scared child that didn’t want to be around an inappropriately angry parent.
 
The camera would switch back to its normal angle in centerfield to televise each pitch, but the ten seconds of downtime in between each subsequent pitch would be filled with another shot of Walker.  Without hearing the audio, I began to wonder about the impetus that would require the camera to continue its intent focus on Walker following his routine groundout.  Was a director at the network controlling the broadcast and barking orders to keep focusing on Walker, encouraging the commentators to speak in favor of Walker and against Tosi?  Or were the Arizona broadcasters going on an anti-umpire tirade that led the director to simply follow their voices with the appropriate visual shots?  Regardless of whether control belonged to the director or the broadcasters, the schtick became saturated, causing me to silently beg the broadcast itself to focus on to the next batter and forget about Walker’s plate appearance.
 
The raging testosterone fueling Walker’s reaction became secondary to the fanning of the flames being done by the technicians controlling the video telecast.  Even without audio, I was being told by the moving pictures to focus on Walker’s frustration and empathize with him, which might then manifest into a detesting of Tosi and perhaps all umpires.  I wondered if there was a subconscious protocol being implemented by the director to truly influence the feelings and emotions of the viewers in a way that elevated one party on a pedestal and demoted another for the purpose of gaining ratings and revenue.
 
I considered myself lucky that I had the ability to abduct such information; the average viewer (especially with alcohol introduced into the equation) probably would never reach the same conclusion without being lectured.  But the entire ordeal points to the potential that the media wields to control the narrative of the public.  A simple repeated visual focus on an angry ballplayer yelling at an umpire, even without audio, can influence the way people feel, usually by invoking anger or a general uneasiness that points to conflict rather than resolution.
 
We may not be able to control what is put in front of us as we try to watch a game.  After all, the media truly can control the narrative, regardless of whether the context is sports, politics, business, or anything else.  But we do have the ability to consciously recognize these sleazy tactics.  Perhaps the path to peace requires the vulnerability needed to acknowledge this social engineering, relying instead on our freedom to formulate our own opinions without subscribing to a phony gospel.

Watch any Major League Baseball game on television and there’s a chance you will hear an announcer use a phrase that is equal parts passive-aggressive, patronizing, and poor sportsmanship.
 
“It didn’t have to be.”
 
The phrase usually refers to an opinion regarding an umpire’s strike zone.  Television graphics have advanced to the point where many broadcasts overlay an opaque box from the centerfield camera that attempts to represent the strike zone, and the broadcasters believe that the graphic is gospel when helping determine whether the calls made by the home plate umpire are correct.  If a pitch lands outside of the box, yet is called a strike by the umpire, broadcasters take the opportunity take a snipe at the umpire for, in their opinion, being incorrect.
 
“The 1-0 pitch is called a strike, but it didn’t have to be.”
 
The use of this phrase furthers the narrative that authority figures do not have to be respected.  It is a snide way to take a cheap shot without repercussions at someone who may not have the same opportunity to respond to the remark.  Broadcasters are placing guised opinions into the dissemination of information, very much like the biased news casts that come from both sides of the political spectrum, which subconsciously sink into the psyche of viewers and are imitated by the public.
 
However, rather than attempt to edify against the use of this phrase with opinions, a better method to explain why this phrase should not be used is to explain why the graphic on the screen used by broadcasters is faulty and should be discontinued.  If the box is removed from the broadcast, perhaps the opportunities to use the phrase will disappear.
 
Let’s begin with the height of the box, which does not change from batter to batter.  The strike zone for each hitter is defined in the rules as the midpoint between the shoulders and the waist down to the hollow of the knee (the adage being “from the letters to the knees”).  As ballplayers are not robots designed with the same specifications, every hitter will naturally have a different strike zone.  For example, the strike zone for Aaron Judge will be much larger than the strike zone for Jose Altuve.  Yet, the box on the screen has not once changed in height to adjust for these differences.
 
Second, the strike zone is meant to be three dimensional.  A pitch needs only to catch any part of this three-dimensional zone to be deemed a strike by the umpire.  The box on the screen is two-dimensional, more like a windowpane with no depth that needs to be touched by the pitch.  Further, much like the lack of adjustments made for height, the position of the box in relation to the depth of the plate is never fully clear.  Sure, we can be told the box is placed at the front of the plate (or at least in the correct spot), but such a representation cannot truly be trusted, similarly to how the height of the box cannot be trusted.
 
Third, the statistical analysis of how human umpires view pitches based on their setup and mechanics behind the catcher has shown an exceptional number of trends that have been accepted via convention due to their consistency.  That’s not to say that convention is a reason to blindly accept something; rather, this convention allows us to positively use analytics to help us better understand what is happening.  Umpires are taught to set up in “the slot,” defined as the space between the batter and the catcher.  Their eyes are then meant to split the inside corner, giving them an exceptional look at the inside pitch, but possibly sacrificing the best look at the outside pitch.  On average, even the most consistent umpires tend to have a 2-inch margin of error on the outside corner that is widely accepted by all personnel.  However, the box on the screen does not incorporate this.  (Interestingly enough, this trend is most common for umpires who are right-eye dominant when right-handed hitters are at bat.  When right-eye dominant umpires set up for a left-handed batter, a small margin of error develops on the inside corner as well!)
 
Fourth, based on the fraction of moments an umpire is given to determine whether a pitch is a ball or a strike, an increased value is placed on the reception of a pitch by the catcher (sometimes colloquially known as “framing”).  If a “borderline” pitch is received by a catcher with significant movement on the catcher’s mitt, a subconscious message is sent to the umpire that the pitch was not a strike and the catcher tried to move it back into the strike zone to make it appear to be one.  In turn, it’s not uncommon to suggest that professional umpires might etch a picture of the strike zone into their vision to combat this, which does not account for all the minor nuances such as the changing height of the batter.  Players like Aaron Judge have suffered because of this:  Judge has had the most strikes below the strike zone called on him due to his immense height and the need for an umpire to visualize the strike zone to combat improper pitch framing.
 
Finally, the system used by Major League Baseball to evaluate umpires on their plate scores is completely different than what is presented on television with these graphics.  MLB adjusts the strike zone from batter to batter in a “postgame processing” protocol, then applies a two-inch margin of error around the entire zone before determining how many of the pitches were called correctly by the home plate umpire.  The graphics used on television in real time take none of this into account, creating a public persona to hate umpires while cultivating a private system that lauds them and proves they are still more accurate than any computer calling balls and strikes.
 
Thus, it appears that broadcasters who claim pitches “didn’t have to be” strikes may react in the moment without the educational knowledge of how the process truly operates.  These broadcasters choose to be “malignant homers” to appeal to their fanbase instead of objectively remaining true to journalistic integrity.  Rather than seek the approval of viewers, perhaps a better strategy might be to emulate the legendary broadcasters whose words painted pictures and truly enhanced a broadcast through genuine excitement, comfort, and familiarity.

In August 2022 at Chase Field, the Arizona Diamondbacks hosted the St. Louis Cardinals.  The only thing hotter than the outside temperature were the tempers of Cardinals rookie manager Oliver Marmol and veteran home plate umpire C.B. Bucknor.
 
Marmol took exception to some of the calls made by Bucknor on balls and strikes, which led to Bucknor ejecting Marmol.  According to reports, the heated argument that resulted included Bucknor commenting on Marmol’s tenure in the league (Marmol being in his first year as a manager).  This led to Marmol’s reciprocal retort that demanded Bucknor finally retire from umpiring.
 
Fast forward to Spring Training 2023 on the east coast of Florida where Bucknor was stationed and assigned to be the home plate umpire for a game with the Cardinals.  According to reports, Bucknor refused to shake Marmol’s hand during the pregame plate meeting.  This led to postgame comments from Marmol that further questioned his ability to umpire in addition to his class as a man.
 
Major League Baseball investigated the incident and eventually came to believe everything was behind them, clearing the air and putting the entire soap opera to bed.  However, as media members and fans alike began to dissect the timeline of events, the same refrain of hating the umpire rang in the rafters.  The question these people asked was the same:  on behalf of his status representing the sport of baseball, why couldn’t Bucknor just be the “bigger man” and forget it?
 
Can you recall a time when you held a job in an industry such as retail, food service, or hospitality?  If so, can you think of an example during said tenure when a customer was nasty, either for no reason or provoked due to a minor mistake?  Was your window of tolerance ever so small or closed that it led to a confrontation with the customer that became more than it should have ever been?
 
That might be an accurate comparison of what occurred between Marmol and Bucknor that day.
 
Everyone who has or has held a job that involves customers, clients, or other people who are served or serviced by such work usually must encounter people who simply do not understand that the combination of unprovoked poor behavior, finger pointing, and catching people at the wrong time can lead to disastrous results.  Emotions and feelings begin to boil, calling upon defense mechanisms for support.  Words fly from mouths and through the air with the intent to attack, defend, and wage war without the use of rational thought.
 
For example, imagine a restaurant customer sitting at a table.  The customer is not thrilled with the service of the waitstaff and decides to complain in a belligerent and boisterous way to the manager, taking personal jabs at the waitress assigned to the table.  The manager explains to the customer that the restaurant is short staffed that day, as a few workers are sick, and the waitress in question came in on a day off to help.  Further, the waitress has been dealing with a terminally ill parent, causing her performance at work to suffer slightly.
 
The customer refuses to apologize and simply demands better service.
 
If that customer continued to come back to that restaurant while that waitress was working, what would be the probability that the waitress would refuse to serve this customer, let alone even acknowledge the customer, knowing that what was said prior was hurtful and inconsiderate of what was happening in her life at that time?
 
Oliver Marmol may have felt that his actions were justified that day for a myriad of reasons (like the “defense” of his players), but the fact of the matter is that his words clearly struck a chord that caused C.B. Bucknor to be quite offended.  Even if Marmol was provoked by Bucknor, there can be quite a difference in tenor between noting rookie status and the aging process.  Sure, that may not justify Bucknor’s comment, but there is a distinct difference between grotesque phrases that can boil down to not “earning one’s stripes yet” versus being put out to pasture, similar to the difference between verbal taunting and physically assaulting.  Further, being the “bigger man” doesn’t always mean to forget that someone treated you horribly; it can mean maturely standing up for one’s feelings.
 
Perhaps the real sin (or where the line was certainly crossed) was when Marmol decided to question the integrity of someone tasked with upholding the game of baseball.
 
Imagine a teacher disciplines a young student for bad behavior in school.  The student asks, “What did I do?  What could I have possibly done to deserve this?”
 
The teacher responds, “You’re ten years old in your first week of fifth grade and you’re talking back to me.  I’m not having that for this entire school year.”
 
The student responds, “Then you need to retire!  You’re terrible at your job and you’ve been doing it for too long!  If you won’t give me what I want or deserve, then I demand the school gives me a teacher who will!”
 
That is essentially what happened between Marmol and Bucknor.
 
Perhaps a better example would be to translate this to a situation where a police officer has pulled an adult over for a traffic stop.  The cop says to the driver, “I saw you driving dangerously, weaving in and out of traffic in a very unsafe way.”
 
The driver responds, “That’s preposterous.  There’s absolutely no way I could have done that.  You’re not seeing clearly and should have your eyes checked.”
 
Here’s an example of what the cop absolutely will not say:  “You know what?  You’re right.  I’m a terrible cop and need to get glasses.  Excuse me while I go home and rethink my life.”
 
Although positions of authority are held by fallible humans who are no better than any other human, the position of authority must be respected, especially if dealing with a comparatively inconsequential environment such as sports.  Teachers, police officers, and umpires demand respect when they are on duty or at work.  It’s certainly possible that the person holding that authority is not as honorable as we would like, but the uniform still requires the respect it deserves.
 
Therefore, can anyone blame Bucknor for feeling so insulted that he would refuse to shake Marmol’s hand the following year?  Such a personal attack really seemed to get under Bucknor’s skin.  We have no idea if Bucknor was experiencing something that day that might make him more sensitive, but that point is moot when we begin to consider that we should simply be treating others the way we would want to be treated, regardless of circumstances.

Time has passed since the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII in Arizona.  However, many keep focusing on one penalty flag that was thrown towards the end of the game.
 
With less than two minutes left in the game, Eagles defender James Bradberry was called for a holding penalty, giving the Chiefs an additional first down that increased their chances of taking the lead with little time for the Eagles to respond.  The penalty was criticized by many across the sports-talk universe and the blogosphere, but Bradberry admitted in a postgame press conference that he did commit the penalty and it was the correct call.
 
The excuses given by those who disagreed with the call included a lack of consistency from the officials, a lack of severity of the hold, and everything in between.  Claims were made by some fans that the game was fixed so that the Chiefs would win.  The streets of Philadelphia were filled with angry fans in protest of the game’s result.  Regardless of the arguments made, everyone making them ignored one fact:  it was the correct call, and the offender admitted it.
 
Unlike many other topics in the public arena where facts and opinions are commonly confused and cause constant conflict, sports align more with inconsequential “watercooler talk.”  They are a common topic of entertainment that break the ice between people who wish to socialize, and yet they are worshiped like gospel and must be protected from heretics.  This begs the question of why sports are so sacred to so many, leading to outcomes like the denial of a penalty to make sense of a situation.
 
The answer boils down to a study of projection.  Fandom develops through projection:  people like to be associated with winners or with other brands where a common bond exists (family, location, school, etc.), so they project themselves onto those entities (be it a person or a team).  This explains why many people across the globe become fans of teams such as the New York Yankees:  their brand is the winningest franchise in the history of team sports.  Similarly, people born and raised in the greater New England area (or with parents who were born and raised there) are usually rooting for the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics, and the Bruins, either due to the ties in proximity or loved ones.  Along the same lines, the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of any college or university (or even high school) will tend to support the athletics of said school out of a pride like the bonds caused by family or location.
 
As these cliques of fans develop and grow, any perceived slight against the team automatically becomes a slight against the fanbase as well.  A penalty flag thrown for a foul committed by a player on the Eagles might be viewed and interpreted as an attack against everyone who roots for them.  This causes defenses to go up immediately and can result in poor fan behavior.
 
When this phenomenon occurs, those feeling attacked immediately try to deflect the attack back onto the attacker.  In other words, the best defense is a good offense.  The fans who feel attacked when an official penalizes a player on their team will point the finger at the official instead of objectively considering the facts that show the player might have committed a foul.  Humans tend to lack the ability to look inwards at potential shortcomings and would prefer to point out the faults of others instead.
 
As if the simple examination of this experience with the fan base isn’t enough, the media has developed a reputation to make these situations worse.
 
Consider the number of analysts, talk-show hosts, and other media members who edified and opined about the call in question against Bradberry.  Many of these voices lack the experience of officiating and do not necessarily offer their take with the proper background to justify their claim as to why the call may have been incorrect, citing opinions, feelings, and other intangibles with the hope it holds up in the court of public opinion. As a result, the arguments made were tailored to conveniently forget the rule that defines a holding penalty:  they ignorantly ignore the fact that it was correctly enforced as well as Bradberry’s admission that it did, in fact, occur.  This amounts to a defense attorney trying to sway a jury with emotion when a smoking gun is in their midst.
 
With the power the media holds in our society, fans tend to be more likely to blindly believe the words of these talking heads rather than to use their own critical reasoning to draw a conclusion.  At this point, projection utilizes the “fanboy” experience, as fans pick sides on the opinion with the subconscious goal of ignoring facts simply to be on the correct or winning side of a debate.  The resulting effect is a populus that declares the truth to be whatever the group decides rather than what the facts state.
 
None of this is to say that officials don’t miss calls.  Incorrect calls are made, and officials tend to lose sleep over their mistakes.  But officials make the fewest mistakes out of anyone on the field, pitch, rink, or court that day.  Statistically speaking, players who strike out, drop passes, and miss shots happen all the time; are these failures not mistakes?  Projection due to association causes fans to ignore these mistakes but recognize the ones from the officials which are few and far between.
 
It's always possible that an incorrect call could change the trajectory of a game, but the odds of it being the sole fulcrum that influenced the outcome of victory versus defeat is microscopic.  Those who criticize the holding penalty easily forget that the Eagles’ defense was putrid that day:  out of the 23 games they played all season (from preseason through Super Bowl), they gave up more than 30 points in six of them (including the Super Bowl), winning only two of those six.  Regardless of the circumstances (preseason vs. postseason, for example), it’s very difficult to win a football game when your defense gives up more than 30 points.
 
It’s perfectly fine to be disappointed that the Eagles lost.  It’s not okay to blame the officials when it was the correct call.

"Both teams on the gridiron that night decided to stop playing.  Fans of both teams joined each other in prayer, putting aside rooting interests to comfort one another as they shed tears.  Humanity dug into their pockets and turned a fundraiser Hamlin had established for his charity into a remarkable story of its own:  what was once an attempt to raise a couple hundred dollars [has] approach[ed] $10,000,000 ... 


But why does the world need a situation like this to wake up?  Why does a man need to innocently brush against death for the population to see there is a problem with this entertainment cycle? ...
 
This is not a call for legislation that forces humanity to behave a certain way ... This is a request that individuals think deeply and critically about the decisions made each day in the name of entertainment.  At what point will we reach the determination that football is too violent? ... Will it require someone to perish in battle while millions watch in horror?  If football changes, will a less violent version of the game keep the same entertainment value and hold the attention of its audience?"

Answering these questions (from last month's post) in the wake of Damar Hamlin's injury at the Buffalo Bills-Cincinnati Bengals game would require at least a few changes:


1. Sports leagues need to regard their fans as more than consumers. 

While they hemmed and hawed over whether or not to postpone the game, it appeared the NFL's leadership (not the on-field officials) showed how out of touch they were, as they were forced into the right choice by backlash from their constituents.  Accounts claim they badly underestimated the character not only of the guys on the field, who refused to resume after a near-tragedy, but the fans around the world who were united in grief and support for Damar Hamlin.  And through the lens of a dim view of fans as reckless consumers who would demand another three quarters of football at all costs — rather than people capable of empathy and horror at what they had just witnessed in the middle of a game — the NFL provided one of the reasons that sportsmanship has been a tough sell:  professional sports leagues apparently do not believe the fans are ready for that.


The message has been sent from the big leagues to the little leagues:  the "normal" way of doing things is built on the assumption that empathy is impossible or too much to ask.  Just as politicians can choose to exploit fear and ignorance to gain power instead of appealing to the "better angels of our nature" (as Abraham Lincoln put that), leagues like the NFL have conditioned fans to tolerate a degree of violence, injury to the players, and bad behavior by fans that can seem inevitable.  Cynicism breeds cynicism. 


But in an instant, a public shocked by Hamlin's injury proved that a better way is within reach.

2. Fans need to regard themselves as more than just fans. 

One of the ways these leagues have seduced fans is by conning them into believing that rooting for a team is a noble pursuit or a bond of affection like a family.  But wanting a team to win at best is amoral:  unlike a family where love is shared freely and burdens are carried by everyone, the players usually have no clue who individual fans are, and the fans don't give an iota of effort relative to the players who make the game what it is. 


When these illusions are stripped away, fans can understand why the agreed-upon basic ethics in society should be no different in the realm of sports than anywhere else.  Imagine how outrageous that would be if a stranger confidently punched another stranger for wearing a different style of shirt or using a different brand of phone.  Or imagine how ridiculous that would seem as these strangers yelled at television commercials in a bar in the belief that somehow yelling would win them their preferred shirt or phone. 


Shedding childish beliefs won't destroy the mystique or the entertainment value of sports.


3. Societies need to regard and reward greatness beyond the realm of entertainment. 

If the kindness shown to Damar Hamlin by millions of people demonstrates anything, it's the need to put greater value in the ordinary good deeds of the majority of the public.  Giving "our better angels" a chance to thrive also requires greater respect for other areas of public life.  As strange as that may seem from an organization dedicated to sportsmanship, one of the surest ways to guarantee better sportsmanship is to de-escalate the societal obsession with sports, entertainment, and celebrity.


Aside from the responses of fans, my favorite Tweets in the aftermath of the Hamlin injury were from practicing doctors who have actually saved lives, like Megan Ranney, who's an ER doctor, the incoming dean of the Yale School of Public Health, and a Buffalo native and Bills fan.  For no money, Ranney offered her expertise to calmly suggest what might have happened to Hamlin while she joined everyone else in wishing him well.

And as she sent these Tweets from hundreds of miles away, many anonymous people in Cincinnati averted a tragedy as they administered CPR on the field and cared for Hamlin in the hospital.  Until we reward them with eight-figure contracts and ads for sneakers and cars, another rhetorical question seems appropriate:  why not just start by teaching kids to admire what they did with half the zeal that we train them to admire athletes?