The Sports Fan’s Manifesto By Ralph Nader
By Ralph Nader
In the Public Interest
Why do many serious readers of newspapers go first to the Sports section? Maybe because they want to read about teams playing fun games by sports journalists and columnists, who have more freedom to use imaginative words and phrases than others in their craft.
The trouble is that ever-more organized and commercialized sports are squeezing the fun out of the games. I’m not just referring to struggles between multimillionaire players against billionaire owners–as in the current NFL lockout and the looming NBA imbroglio. I am referring to what our League of Fans Sports Policy Director, Ken Reed, calls the “win-at-all-costs (WAAC) and profit-at-all-costs (PAAC) mentalities, policies and decisions that are resulting in a variety of abuses from the pros all the way to Little League.” When WAAC and PAAC run amok–and what’s best for the players, the fans and the game are shoved aside–“sport begins to lose its soul.”
In his first of ten “League of Fans” reports, Reed makes the case against this “soul sickness” in a 27 page Sports Manifesto. The range of endemic and often worsening problems is startling for how often they have been exposed without anything significantly being done about them.
Here is a list of Reed’s choices for civic action:
-Academic corruption in college and high school athletic programs.
-Rampant commercialization from the pros to our little leagues.
-Publicly-financed stadiums for wealthy owners.
-The perversity of forcing loyal fans to purchase personal seat licenses (PSLs) in pro and college football just to have the right to buy season tickets.
-The sports cartel in Division I football known as the Bowl Championship Series
(BCS)–which limits revenues and opportunities (e.g., a legitimate chance at a national championship) for the conferences and schools left on the outside.
-Work stoppages in the professional sports leagues in which fans have no voice.
-Exorbitant ticket and concession prices at taxpayer-funded stadiums (where most, if not all, ticket, concession, merchandise and parking revenues typically go to the franchise owners). In addition, there are also television blackouts from these taxpayer-financed stadiums.
-A focus on elite athletic teams in high schools and middle schools at the expense of diminishing intramural programs and physical education classes for all students.
-The practice of requiring college athletes to pay their own medical bills, even though they were injured while playing for their university.
-Disparities in opportunities for females, disabled individuals, and people of color despite Title IX and other civil rights advances.
-The proliferation of youth club sports organizations that have a financial vs. an educational mission.
-The specialization and professionalization of young athletes at earlier and earlier ages.
-The increasing use of performance-enhancing drugs at all ages, by both males and females.
-The erosion of the core ideals, values and ethics of sports, resulting in escalating incidents of poor sportsmanship.
-An increase in sports injuries, most alarmingly concussions.
-A shocking increase in obesity, accompanied by a decline in physical fitness–especially among our youth.
-Dehumanizing coaches at all levels, most disturbingly, at the youth level.
As a college varsity player, a coach, marketer, teacher and author, Reed is in touch with many worried and upset sports lovers. They include parents, current and retired players, leading analysts, academics, educators, physicians, reporters and civil rights advocates. League of Fans, which I started, wants to build a strong and growing reform movement not just to curb the “excesses of the monied interests,” to use a Jeffersonian phrase, but to open up opportunities for more participatory sports right down to the neighborhood levels. We have too few players and too many spectators–a reality that sports journalism should pay more attention to regularly.
There is a problem afflicting sports journalism and its comparatively immense space and time devoted to professional sports. It goes beyond a largely indifferent attitude toward this imbalance between spectators and participatory sports. Even though the concerns of many sports-lovers are based on the occasional investigatory reports or columns documenting abuses, when people acting as citizens try to do something about them, their efforts receive little, if any media coverage.
So what’s the point to these exposes other than to make readers and viewers angry, cynical or frustrated, if when the readers use this information to follow up and sound the alarm to do something, the sports media looks the other way and gives the space to some athlete who is pouting or showing up late for practice?
Sports journalism has to introspect a little about a larger view of newsworthiness. Otherwise they continue to uncritically cover the big league sports business that, with few exceptions, knows few restraints to its greed and insensitivity toward fans whom they are increasingly turning off.
League of Fans wants to hear from you. E-mail comments/questions to [email protected] or write to League of Fans, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036.
Sports Forum Podcast
Episode #22 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Rethinking Sports Fandom with Author Craig Calcaterra – We discuss Calcaterra’s new book “Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game” and explore new ways to be a fan in the year 2022.
Listen on Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Anchor and others.
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More Episodes on Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Google Podcasts; PocketCasts; & Anchor
Episode #21 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Chatting About a Broken Game With Baseball Writer Pedro Moura – Moura is a national baseball writer for Fox Sports. We discuss how and why the game of baseball is broken, what factors caused it, and offer a few thoughts on how to “fix” a great game.
Episode #20 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Coaching Youth and High School Sports Based On What’s Best for the Athlete’s Holistic Development – We chat with long-time youth, high school and college basketball coach Jim Huber.
Episode #19 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Capturing the Spirit of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League with Anika Orrock – We discuss the hoops AAGPFL women had to jump through to play the game they loved as well as the long-term impact and legacy they have in advancing sports opportunities for girls and women.
Episode #18 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Talking about the 50th Anniversary of Title IX and the Lia Thomas Controversy with Nancy Hogshead-Makar – Hogshead-Makar is a triple gold medalist in swimming, a civil rights attorney and CEO of Champion Women.
Episode #17 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Talking Sports With Legendary New York Times Sports Columnist Robert Lipsyte – We chat about Lipsyte’s amazing career and some of the athletes he covered.
Media
"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- League of Fans Sports Policy Director Ken Reed quoted in Washington Post column titled "What happened to P.E.? It’s losing ground in our push for academic improvement," by Jay Mathews
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
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