He Shoots! He Scores!

The news this weekend was partly about the firing of Don Cherry and the termination of “Coach’s Corner” on Hockey Night in Canada. Then on Sunday here in Saskatchewan, it was primarily about the Western Final of the Canadian Football League, and in the evening, the sad rationalizations of the Roughriders’ loss to the Bombers.

That’s a lot of sports for one weekend and for Rider fans and “Coach’s Corner” aficionados, not a happy one, apparently. Although I’m far from being an expert on professional sports, on how games are played and how the fact of hockey, basketball, football, baseball, curling fit into our culture in Canada, I’m apparently entitled to an opinion (at least if supporters of Cherry are right).

I have questions of all those who are boldly arguing the meaning of Cherry’s firing or the Riders’ failure to defeat the Bombers.

One: What is the basis of fan loyalty to professional sports teams and personalities? It seems logical to me that people who live in Saskatchewan would tend to prefer the Saskatchewan Roughriders over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, but when we think of the players as Saskatchewan kinfolk—our boys—the Bombers are as “Saskatchewan” as the Riders aren’t they? (The Riders’ active roster this past season had 30 Americans and 16 Canadians of which only 4 were at home in Saskatchewan.)

Two: Venues for professional sports are built with public money drawn from the taxes of the population, including the majority who have little or no interest in the fate of professional sports franchises. How can this be justified, especially in the CFL where the bulk of salary dollars are taken out of the country? (The construction budget for Mosaic Stadium’s was 278 million. The Saskatchewan Government would contribute 80 million in grant and 100 million in loan, Regina committed 73 million funded by a property tax increase. The total government contribution—253 million—necessitated an average outlay of ca. $210 by every man, woman and child in Saskatchewan, including those who are uninvolved. An aside: there is room in the stadium for only 2.75% of the people who built it, and a decent seat for the 2020 Grey Cup will cost you $475)

Three: What is the net benefit to the development of children who are watching, aspiring to, being encouraged to become fans of professional sports by fan parents or coaches, considering that the vast majority will never qualify as participants? Time spent on any activity is always at the expense of other activities. Quite obviously, arena or sports-field time is not language, history or mathematics-learning time, and choices have to be made.

Four: Sport has always been a zero-sum culture. That is, governed by a winner/loser mentality. At the same time, successful communities run on cooperation, not on “dog-eat-dog.” Are we sure that zero-sum thinking isn’t being encouraged generally by professional sports? And if it is, how could we be sure that our culture doesn’t degenerate into win/lose practices in elections, in education, in children’s play, in board meetings, in churches for that matter?

My disaffection for professional sports may be obvious in the above. I think it began when I decided to go to a Canadiens/Oiler game while living in Edmonton. It was a lopsided, acrimonious game and I left after the first period. Around the same time, I attended a Roughrider/Eskimo CFL game. I’d rented a seat near the 10-yard line because I’m cheap. From that vantage point, anything happening beyond the 30 yard line was like listening to a radio play-by-play with the sound turned off! There’s only one good seat in a football stadium, and that’s the one on the line of scrimmage . . . which keeps moving!

I’m sure there are plenty of opinions out there¹, plenty of people who would say that professional sports encourage children to participate in amateur sports where health and skills and sportsmanship-training are adding good stuff to their lives.

In a well-functioning community, we’d sit down and search for compromises that minimize any harm and maximize any benefit.

Normally, though, we just yell at each other while those with the authority to write cheques on our behalf make sure nothing changes.

‘Tsa pity.

1. Probably the crassest criticism of professional sports goes like this: people pay good money to sit in stadiums and arenas because they want variety, diversion, something to ease their boredom. But that makes it possible to see the managers of sports franchises as pimps, the players as hookers and the fans, as johns. Mosaic Stadium in this argument is a brothel. The weakness in this line of thinking is that the same analogy can be applied to books, authors and readers; to film makers, actors and viewers; to artists, gallery-attendees and galleries; to agents, musicians and concert venues; indeed, to many facets of a normally-lived life . . . whatever that is!