{"id":408,"date":"2017-04-02T10:32:04","date_gmt":"2017-04-02T14:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/?p=408"},"modified":"2017-04-02T10:32:04","modified_gmt":"2017-04-02T14:32:04","slug":"its-not-just-a-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/2017\/04\/02\/its-not-just-a-game\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not Just a Game….."},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose if you came right down to it , you could say Sports and\/in Society goes as far back as the Roman days when emperors put on shows at the Colosseum for their own glory and pleasure but just as much for entertainment of the masses…There was wrestling, boxing, racing (think chariot races in Ben Hur<\/a>) and what movie glorified the slaves versus the lions better than “Gladiator”<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Today you could easily compare NASCAR and MMA with the earlier games but what’s more relevant to remember is that we’ve always looked for a way to express ourselves physically and that’s where sports does it best…And then there’s the fans…Interestingly, a definition of the word fan-atic, from which fan is derived looks something like this;<\/p>\n

“a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause.”<\/span><\/p>\n

So just how did it become so associated with sports?…Why did it become so important?<\/p>\n

“You’re trying to give it meaning, you’re trying to see yourself in it, you’re trying to sure up your identity, says Professor Todd Crosset<\/a> of the UMass Isenberg School of Management and the Director of the Sport Management Program…Crosset and Gary Washburn<\/a>\u00a0of the Boston Globe joined us recently as the Boston University Sports Journalism Seminar Series and we spent a couple of hours kicking around the age old question, “does sport imitate society or does society imitate sport?”…I’m not sure we answered it but we gave it the old college try…<\/p>\n

I’ve played, followed, covered sports for more than sixty years now and I’ll be the first to admit I may be too close to it…I love it, it’s fun (to play and watch), it matters to me and I make a living from it…So maybe i’m biased…But is Sport any different than any other group in society?…Don’t lawyers work as hard at it, don’t doctors practice for years, don’t educators climb the ladder to get to the highest rung? \u00a0Or is it just that there’s people covering what happens in sports and publicize every facet of it?<\/p>\n

“If it’s out there, it’s gonna come in here, Crosset said, But it’s gonna come in in different ways. \u00a0It’s gonna be re-shaped and re-formed, there’s gonna be some uniqueness to it.”…<\/p>\n

Much of that notoriety falls back on our need for immediacy…”Social media, Instagram, Snapchat, all that has just polluted everything, mentioned Washburn, \u00a0What is appropriate, what is inappropriate, what people want, what they don’t want. \u00a0It has throw everything into a frenzy.”<\/p>\n

One of the more compelling topics we discussed, and there were many, centered around Charles Barkley’s now famous line and Nike commercial<\/a> “I am not a role model”…”We’re fooling ourselves when we say athletes are role models, Crosset told the group, that’s a way to try and get them to behave.”<\/p>\n

Let’s face it, all of us has played sports at one time or other, something we picked up, something our moms and dads thought was important, something, perhaps, we were good at and stayed with…<\/p>\n

But what turned out to be the most important lesson<\/a> we learned from sports, is that it’s a mirror of our lives and the way we choose to live them..Sure we’d rather win than lose, \u00a0but learning how to lose, learning how to be a part of a team, learning how to share are far more important exercises than the scoreboard….<\/p>\n

“It’s all about respect” Crosset left us with…a perfect way to sum things up….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose if you came right down to it , you could say Sports and\/in Society goes as far back as the Roman days when emperors put on shows at the Colosseum for their own glory and pleasure but just as much for entertainment of the masses…There was wrestling, boxing, racing (think chariot races in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}