COLUMN: It's just a game, except when it's not

Football season is wending its way toward the climatic end of the season, and across our country passions are running high.

A little too high.

In San Bernadino, Calif., a paratrooper is laid up in the hospital, paralyzed, after being shot in the back at his welcome home party. Christopher Sullivan was allegedly shot by Reuben Jurtado after Sullivan intervened in a fight between Jurtado and Sullivan’s 16-year-old brother. What were Jurtado and the younger Sullivan fighting about? Apparently who’s favorite football team was best.

Meanwhile, in Appleton, Wis., a 36-year-old mom and Green Bay Packers fan twice strangled her 11-year-old daughter while watching the Packers blow their shot at a perfect season by losing to the Kansas City Chiefs on Dec. 18. The woman’s husband said she also threw her dinner on the floor, broke a lamp and attempted to punch him in the face because she was upset about the game.

As a Packers’ fan let me just say that while losing to the Chiefs was disappointing, there’s nothing that’s ever happened that would make it right to strangle your kid or anyone else. Hope that’s not too profound for anyone. Just in case, it is, let’s try this little exercise. Take a breath, all together now, and say, “It’s just a game.”

But maybe I am missing something. An 11-year hitch as a sports writer, and 30-plus years in journalism, does create a different point of view. I understand the passion and the excitement without getting swept up in it.

OK, without getting completely swept up in it. …

OK, without getting dangerously, strangle-ready swept up in it.

Coach Granny

I’m a huge fan of sports. I’ve enjoyed playing, watching, coaching and even (for awhile, way back in the past) officiating various games, and in the heat of the moment have done lots of crazy things.

In a church league softball game I deliberately tried to hit a Baptist preacher/pitcher with a line drive (just missed). As a the coach of a bunch of 9- and 10-year-old baseball players I used a loophole in the rule book to acquire a player for my time by claiming his grandmother as an assistant coach. Granny wasn’t much of a coach, but the way her son could throw and hit, she didn’t need to be.

In a high school football game, I jumped offside on the game’s first play and delivered a hard and illegal blow to future NFL lineman (it was the coach’s idea, our entire defense jumped, just so we could get the first lick in). Not a good idea as it turned out, but it did get our “blood up.” So …

… So, this is not a lot of fun to write, because the conclusion is obvious: we take sports too seriously, and I don’t really like that verdict. But you have to go where the trail leads.

The fruits of our obsession are manifested in outbreaks of foolish violence, but also in the power and position we have allowed sports and sports stars to assume. I’m not talking about the Charles Barkley role model debate. I’m just thinking about several thousand 20-somethings who are multi-millionaires for no real good reason, or all the colleges who had sold their souls to the athletic devil, or the cities who’s future is literally mortgaged to the fortunes of some professional sports team.

It’s impossible to think about this topic and not wind up writing about Penn State, where, it can safely be argued, the grandeur of the football program played a role in ruining the lives of 9 or 10 (the figure continues to grow) young boys. Might as well throw in Syracuse while we’re there. It’s basketball, but same idea.

Same as it ever was

Some may see this as a modern assault, brought on by the accelerating flow of cash into the sporting world. And there is truth to that. Gigantic stadiums and TV contracts bigger than Belgium’s GDP do create a platform for unseemly actions. But with sports in America, thus has it ever been.

College football was viewed as a menace to society right from the start, and the violence that accompanied the game during its formative years nearly led to its extinction.

Much of that action was played out in the north, where the big-time game really began, but we hot-blooded southerners played our role, too. The Auburn-Alabama game was called off for 40 years after a riot following the 1907 game spilled over into the streets of Birmingham, and here in the Palmetto State, Clemson cadets (it was once an all-military school) brandished swords and bayonets against a throng of South Carolina fans equipped with firearms following the 1902 football game. The standoff, which involved hundreds of students in downtown Columbia, occurred two days after the Gamecocks’ 12-6 upset victory, and was triggered by ongoing USC (then South Carolina College) taunts. This being a little before facebook and twitter, the taunting manifested itself through holiday parade paraphernalia. South Carolina students carried a large “transparency” of a triumphant Gamecock crowing atop a subdued Tiger. The Clemson cadets attached swatches of garnet and black to their shoes, the better to drag their opponent’s colors through the dirt.

The armed altercation occurred after the parade, on the grounds of the nascent South Carolina College. Real bloodshed seemed likely, but coaches and other authorities intervened before a trigger could be pulled and the game’s first shotgun attack unleashed.

One hundred or so years later, the stories are different, the sentiments are unchanged.

It’s not just a game to many, but it should be.

Tucker Mitchell is Regional Editor of the Morning News. Contact him at 843-317-7256, or by email at cmitchell@florencenews.com.