Sporting Times

So, a major doping scandal rocks the cycling world just before the start of the Tour de France. This can't be a surprise, can it?

Cycling, track and field, ML baseball here in the United States, even the NFL, if some of the reports I've heard are true . . . are drowning in a sea of performance-enhancing drugs and techniques. This era of world-class athletics will be remembered as the age of performance-enhancing drugs. But I think that this may be a good thing, if sports fans react in the right way. Namely, by turning off the television.

This may sound a bit like heresy, but the lesson here, I think, is that sports should be something that you do, not something that you watch. Instead of watching the Tour, or coverage of it, at least, why not hop on the bike and put in some miles yourself? Instead of spending precious time watching baseball, why not join a league of your own? Instead of watching the World Cup, join in a soccer match on the local pitch.

Sure, you won't be as good as Lance or Barry Bonds or . . . some soccer player, but why should that matter? Plus, it will do your body some good.

If sports were more participatory, one might still be interested in "the best of the best," but from a different angle. Indeed, participating in a sport is the best way to understand it. I think that I really appreciate the little running that I follow (the Boston Marathon, the Olympics) much better than I do baseball, or even the NFL games I've wasted so many Sundays watching. Because I run. So the runners I watch on the tv are engaged in an activity that I understand, in a very physical sense. But I'd much rather go for a run than watch others running.

There are two things that complicate matters here. First, and this is the 800-pound pink gorilla in the room, much of the interest in sport isn't in sport, but really in wagering. And one thing that gamblers like to have is a sense that they know something about the game on which they're betting. (Not true of Bertie Wooster, who is eager to bet on middle school sporting events, but he is, after all, fictional.) So, premier leagues serve a market niche for gamblers. Gamblers aren't going to turn off their televisions . . . and as long as there is gambling, there will be sports.

This is the 800-pound pink gorilla because no one, or almost no one, talks about this aspect of sports, and interest in sports. At least not in the United States.

Second, sports is largely a question of marketing today. (But what isn't? This is, overall, the Age of Marketing.) I would amend an earlier post on how sports is purely conventional to add that new conventions can be created, like consumer demand . . . or, rather, consumer demand for new sports can be created. Not for everything, mind you. You can't convince people that they really want to watch Arena Football, or hockey. (Sorry, hockey fans.) But you can persuade people that things like, say, the World Cup are interesting and "must-see."

My theory of a more participatory sports meets the Age of Marketing at an odd angle. It's not that a more participatory sporting world would provide less in the way of revenue. Indeed, people would need to buy more sporting equipment. (And, of course, elite athletes would be in demand for advertising. Think here of the sport of rock climbing, which I don't really follow, but of which I do know that elite rock climbers get sponsored by companies like Patagonia, in order that Patagonia can sell more rock climbing gear.) But it would mean less in terms of advertising revenue, which would complicate television, for example. But television, in its present form, is a dying technology, anyway. So why worry about that?

The point, I guess, is that if we were less consumers of sports programming, and more consumers of sporting gear, and, actually, users of sporting gear, we would be better for it, and then things like steroids and human growth hormone . . . these would be things that we wouldn't have to ever hear about. And that would be great.

Btw, it's human growth hormone in the NFL, not steroids. Or that's what I hear, at least. Plus, some thoughts on steroids and records from last October's baseball playoffs.