The Politics of Collegiate Sports

[cbertsch]

While reading the comments to the Arizona Daily Star article on the Wildcats humiliating defeat at UCLA yesterday -- I'm entitled to a little Schadenfreude -- I came across another comment by a man who insists on using the sports pages as a soapbox for political commentary:

Although I obviously do not agree with his position, despite musing recently on the way that institutions like the University of Arizona seem to combine the worst aspects of Eastern Bloc bureaucracy and corruption with an ideological attachment to feudalism, I have to give him props for presenting his views in the forum where they are least likely to meet with favor. I mean, nodes of libertarian thinking dot the landscape here like cactus. But the Cats are usually exempt from its delusionally penetrating gaze. My sympathy for his lonely quest to bring Ron Paul's economic wisdom to the McKale Center is heightened by the realization, as this reply to his comment indicates, that his "readers" might not even recognize that he is opposed to socialism:

I have to admit, though, that the idea of affixing the label "pinko" to libertarians does have a perverse appeal.

Comments

[catfishvegas.livejournal.com]

Don't ever bother to read those comments, not on sports stories, not on news, not at all.

[cbertsch.livejournal.com]

But if I didn't read them, I wouldn't have stumbled upon this "exchange," which is the find of the day!

[wondrousbeauty.livejournal.com]

That is hilarious. I can't figure out which is worse, wondering if the second commenter actually read the first person's comment, or wondering if the second commenter read it and actually believed he/she understood it....

[cbertsch.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think the second possibility would be worse. I also fear that it's more likely to be true.

One of the interesting things about American politics as lived by the majority of its citizens is that the impulse to find and fix on a center seems almost impossible to override. We talk about the extreme right or the extreme left, but the fact is that most of the people who get classified as such believe themselves to be centrists.

What this means for those who suggest radical alternatives to the status quo -- as someone who lived in College Station, you'll know what I mean when I state that the anti-collegiate sports sentiment of the first commenter constitutes over-the-top blasphemy in a university town without professional sports franchises -- is that, regardless of the ideological positions they seek to articulate, they are most likely going to be classified with the most clichéd signifiers of radicalism. Hence the "pink" and "Berkley" (sic) of the second commenter's reply.

BTW, as far as LJ friends go, I hear you. I've mostly just added people who added me first or whom I got to know via other means. But I'm looking to branch out. Apparently, the communities are a good place to find like-minded individuals.

[quuf.livejournal.com]

I don't know which made me laugh more: the reference to Berkley [sic] or the evocative handle Depilator2 . . .

[cbertsch.livejournal.com]

I guess he's one person who won't be going for the hair of the ___ that bit him. . .

so west we're in russia--ca. the great purge

[babyiwasshot.livejournal.com]

despite musing recently on the way that institutions like the University of Arizona seem to combine the worst aspects of Eastern Bloc bureaucracy and corruption with an ideological attachment to feudalism

DUDE!!! Where is this published? Send me the url or a copy via e-mail becuase I couldn't agree more.

As for the "spectre" of libertarianism; I think the appeal is the ARDOR these individuals exhibit with respect to liberty of both a good (social) and bad (economic) nature. The appeal is in the passion--pure pathos, mixed with a little ethos. I personally hybridize libertarian social views with "pinko" economic views, to an extent, yet my identity is constantly being defined/re-defined.