Sports gladiators, bread and circuses

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 3, 1998 | by Sean Paige

The economics of sports entertainment have transformed many star athletes into multimillionaire prima donnas with little in common with -- or use for -- even their fans.

Often waiting in line overnight, crowds -- sometimes hundreds of thousands strong -- would surge into the stadium at first light, jostling for their places before the big game. Oblivious to the elements -- slashing rain or scorching sun -- spectators spent the day wildly cheering their favored team and colors to victory or defeat, with the most dramatic contests sometimes ending in sudden death or a street riot.

But the Super Bowl or World Cup this was not. It was Constantinople, circa 500 A.D., under the Roman emperor Anastasius, and on this day the Green team came through in the clutch, British historian Edward Gibbon recounts, producing daggers and stones smuggled onto the field to murder 3,000 of the Blues. Although admittedly a bloody day for the Blues, who were to avenge this loss many times over during the reign of Justinian (a stalwart Blues backer), the slaughter represented a relatively mild afternoon at the city's colossal hippodrome, where the ferocity of the contests had been only slightly tamed by the Christian influence.

Imperial Rome had its gladiators, America has its gridiron greats. And just as Gibbon held up Rome's growing preoccupation with grotesque circuses as a barometer betraying a society's decay, the fall from grace of America's sports idols may be auguring something troubling about our own national soul.

Of course, Americans are not yet taking "bread and circuses" -- government giveaways and sport spectaculars -- to the extremes described by Gibbon in his famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Rather than feeding Christians to the lions, our Sunday-afternoon bloodlust more often is sated by pitting the Lions against the Saints, two National Football League teams seemingly caught in a Grail-like quest for a wild-card playoff spot.

Yet in Gibbon's account of the ancients we still can see eerie reflections of ourselves: cities staking their sense of identity and prestige on the games (see "Nashville Hot With Sports Fever," p. 18); public funds being plundered for ever more gaudy spectacles and grandiose stadiums (see "Public Welfare for Billionaires," p. 16); "idle multitudes" of citizens, "their minds agitated with hope and fear," devoting their lives to their beloved colors (see "The Minors: Good Clean Fun," p. 14); politicians being drawn into sports rivalries and issues (see "Can New Laws Level the Field?" p. 12); and a win at any cost used to excuse every excess of increasingly lawless gladiators.

"Every law, either human or divine, was trampled under foot, and as long as the party was successful, its deluded followers appeared careless of private distress or public calamity" Gibbon writes. Before long the empire's "dissolute youth," taking their cues from the lawless gladiators, were caught up in the mayhem, the historian reports. And because "the laws were silent" in response, Gibbon laments, "the bonds of society relaxed."

The "relaxing" of societal discipline is something with which America, too, is wrestling, and our own elite athletes, once held up as heroes personifying strength, courage, fair play and other national virtues, often seem to be surfing the wave of chaos sweeping the country. Consider some of these instant replays -- boxer Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist, biting a piece off the ear of Evander Holyfield; Golden State Warriors shooting guard Latrell Sprewell choking coach P.J. Carlesimo; Baltimore Orioles second baseman Roberto Alomar spitting in an umpire's face; Chicago Bulls forward Dennis Rodman kicking a spectator in the groin; and, yes, O.J. Simpson trying on the bloody glove. Who will say that in all of this we are not looking at our societal pathology writ large?

While the vast majority of our most celebrated athletes may be good citizens and worthy of emulation, increasingly the sports pages are filled with tales of criminality, greed, drug abuse, illegitimacy, spousal abuse and sexual license, with our pampered millionaire gladiators showing an impudent disregard for their actions and images. Into the admittedly idealized world America's sports heroes once inhabited come barbarian vandals, smashing the pedestals we put them on.

From baseball's Babe Ruth evolved basketball's Charles Barkley, who stirred up controversy three years ago by officially repudiating his status as role model, suggesting that parents alone should bear that responsibility.

The sports world since has split into camps: those who ascribe to the Barkley philosophy, seeing his declaration of independence as a green light for licentiousness, and those who don't, such as former college-football star and now Republican Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, who believes that an athlete's responsibilities as a citizen should temper his or her words and actions.

While Watts agrees with Barkley's point that parents matter most as role models for their children, his own experience as an athlete and politician testifies to the profound impact sports can have on character. "I agree with Charles when he says, `Look, Mom and Dad can't put this responsibility on me,'" Watts tells Insight. "But I am also a firm believer that it is much more important to be a good citizen than it is to be a good athlete.