Joy of Sports, Revised by Michael Novak

Author:Michael Novak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Madison Books
Published: 1994-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part Three

IN SPORTS

WE (SHOULD NOT)

TRUST

MUHAMMAD Ali reads a sentence as though he were being tortured and has an army IQ rating of 85, but who could deny the sharpness and clarity of his brain when he is under fire in the ring? Joe Namath might never have qualified for Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, but who will deny that in his craft he is an artist of analytic power? Recognition of the different orders of intelligence, Aristotle once wrote, is the first mark of a well-developed mind.

A new class of fan—and athlete, too—is involved in the passions of sports. College-educated, professional in a special part of life, sophisticated through travel or the media, the new fan is a thinking person. Not necessarily a better person. Nor even, necessarily, a deeper person. (“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”) Older persons who have not gone to college, who are decidedly not “well-informed,” who do not try to keep up with changing fashions in thought, honor the enthusiasms of the new fans with skepticism. The new class boasts of its own intelligence, probing, criticizing. The occupational hazard of the new class is a passion for Utopia, a disrespect for institutions and traditions. It is a two-edged passion, needlessly destructive sometimes, at other times creative.

A certain cynicism is in order. In sports we trust—no one. Questions must be raised. Establishments need criticism. Criticism of the critics is also necessary. The critics are numerous, complacent, and now conventional. One joy in sports today is its engagement of intellect: criticism and countercriticism.

To uncover the meaning of sports for men, we must also consider sports for women. The relation of sports to politics and morality, to the press, to regionalism, and to money is, in each case, complex and tangled. The intellectual task—the sport of intellect, perhaps—is to make two or three distinctions that allow light to stab in unaccustomed places. Money and an entertainment ethic sicken sports today. A lover of sports is driven to propose a reformation; in my case, Burkean in style.

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