Page 16, April 18, 1979 - North Shore News _

The Stanley Cup playoffs will be with us until:
nearly the end of May and -— oh joy of joys. — we'll

be able to catch a game on the
second: evening from now until then.

‘Not only that, we'll be able
to fit in the game of the week
in baseball, the National

‘Basketball Association
playoffs, the occasional

North American Soccer -

League game, Wide World
of Sports, Sportsworld, some

golf tournaments and, for —
appreciate.
vaudeville in tights, the -

those who

Just how many hours of
TV viewing in the course of
any given week all this will

‘ supply is something Ill leave
to you to add up..P'm afraid
to. That’s because TH be
watching much of it, and if I
were to suddenly discover
just how much time ['m
wasting, [Td immediately
classify myself as some kind
of nut.

HE HAS A PROBLEM

Suppose a person went to
the movies every single
night. If he didn’t have to, if
he weren't in the film
business, people would say
of him that he had a most
unfortunte and unhealthy
compulsion; that maybe he
should go see a psychiatrist
and find out just what's
wrong.

Yet, thanks to television,
_ it’s possible to watch a sports
event every single afternoon
or evening of the week and
twice and three times a day
on the weekends. Many
people do just this and no
one thinks them strange.

Karl Marx had it all
wrong. It’s not religion that’s

Eos

the opiate of the masses, it’s

spectator sport. If anyone .

has it in his mind to stage a |
coup and .take ‘over the
country, all he Has to do is
time his strike with the
opening kickoff of the Grey
Cup game or the start'of the-
seventh game of the Stanley
Cup final.

Long before either game is
over, Canada would be in
new- hands and nobody
would know about it, not

even the politicians in Ot- ~ ilar‘a-year industry {not to

tawa. For they, of course,
wouldn't be within miles of :
the captured Parliament
Buildings. They'd all be
home, glued to their TV
sets.
| Theforegoing is all. in aid
of trying to explode the myth
that spectator sports are
“people’s harmless escape
from all the woes and
troubles of the real worid.
The myth appears to be
accepted. as fact almost
everywhere. And without
any questioning of its
validity.
THE GREAT HOPE

Even as normally a
perspicacious person as
political pundit James
Reston, editor of the New
York Times, recently wrote:
“Sport in America plays a
part in our national life that
iS more important than even
the social scientists
believe.....For sports and
games, in a funny way, are
not only America's diversion
and illusion, but its hope.”

GROUND SCHOOL

TRAINING FOR

\

AIRCRAFT PILOTS

set every “iffer-

That's rm “pretty “high
Sounding: stuff, but I beg to
Television and the
ratings game shoot holes in
this elegant. argument.
Diversion and illusion? No.
A passion and. an obsession?
Yes.

If sparts are our - nope for
the future, then we're in real
trouble. Both at the amateur

and professional levels these -
allegedly once pure and™

uplifting pastimes are rid-
died with all the evils and
corruptions. . of backstage
politics.

‘Sport has become a
sprawling, -multi-million-do-

. mention unions, |

‘they're involved, too), made
‘ all the worse by an overlay of

hypocrisy. The pretense of a -

love of fun and games is used
to mask the basic:
motivation: greed. ~— —

- In his book, The Jocks,
Leonard Shecter writes:
“There is no other business
in this country . which
operates so cynically to
make enormous profits on)
the one hand, ed a
demanding to be favored.

a public service on the
other.” |

He was wri about the
States. Ribas inc lade can
too. Sport is\ the onl
business going for which the
taxpayers shell out their -
dollars to build the place of
business, then lure the
professional teams into it
with sweetheart rental deals
the club owners can hardly

" refuse.

If any other industry ) tried
to swing a similar deal te
locate its widget factory, or
whatever, in a community, it
would be branded — in the
words of David Lewis — as a
corporate welfare bum.

We heap big money and

‘because

"boys | games. Do we demean
“ourselves in the process? For

not only do we overpay them
because of their value in the
marketplace, but we rush to

bestow honors and awards 7
upon them far out of any

; Sane proportion to the:

_ service they perform to

: society.

indeed, it may ‘be doubted
if the modern system of
cultivating athletes, namely
by fierce competition
Stimulated by heavy bribes,
‘does not
moral injury by developing
animal intensity of the
will....and a hungry greed
for more money earned
without toil, of all the
passions that renders the
heart most callous. Nobody
is quite so ‘hard’ as the
professional sporting man,
jquite so incapable of pity,
remorse or self-restraint in
the pursuit of gain.

Do you agree with that last
paragraph? You do? That
makes you terribly old
fashioned, for this is not out
of a recent issue of Sports
' Hlustrated, but appeared in
1870 in a British magazine.
The more things change, the
more they stay the same, eh?

In our modern society we

inflict pesitive .

a century ago — of sports’
_champions' teing held up as
examples to youth; while on
the other.hand we regularly
witness a playing surface
morality that says anything is
okay as long as you don’ tget
caught. -

That's becausé most fans
don’t enjoy games for the
artistry or technique of the
performers. They demand a
winner above all else. They
accept as gospel the words of -
the late Maryland football
coach Jim Tatum (yes; it was

che NOT Vince- Lombardi)

who said winning — isn’t
everything, it's the only
thing.

No diversion or illusion
there. That's war. That’s
obsession and passion, not,
escape. Pipe it — in living
color and with slow motion
replays — into every living
room in the nation, almost
every afternoon or evening,
before millions ~ of hyp-
notized, distended eyeballs,
and the obsession is com-
plete.

Unhealthy? It has to be.
But.don’t bother me with ~
further discussions no ;
Don’t have the time. Have to :

- get through work early.

‘Haven't you heard? Leafs

This is the standard Ministry of Transport-
approved ground school training course for the
private flying license including.

instruction in
airmanship, airframes, engines, flight navigation,
theory, emergen¢y, radio and airtraffic control
procedures, meteorology, acrodynamics and
theory of flight.

Thursday, 7:30 to 10:00 p.m. starting April 26

12 sessions Fee: 335 Lynnmour Centre NC102
(Students will be informed of textbook
requirements at first session: you should expect to
spend approximately $15 for textbook materials
for this course and up to $70 to complete the
Might training course offered by a flying school.)

Phone Community Education 986-1911,

Local
321 for instructions on how to register.

adulation upon big men in _ have the irony — as no doubt

and Canadiens are on the
short pants, playing little our forefathers had in theirs

tube at 5 o'clock.
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