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.

[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....

[quuf.livejournal.com]

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

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.