Sports as culture

A number of years ago I had a blog discussion with someone (read the linked thread if you want the name) whom I took to be claiming that a deep knowledge of classical European music was a necessary condition of being in his terms "reasonably cultured." I disagreed, saying that while it may be a sufficient condition, claiming it was necessary was sheer chauvinism. I then claimed that you could take a deep knowledge of sports as "cultural literacy" and thus as a sufficient condition for being "reasonably cultured." To counter his boast that he could propose a quiz about classical music that would stump us philistines, I proposed a quiz about sports: 

1. Who was better, John Smith or Dan Gable? Why? (Bonus points, who was the only man to defeat Gable in NCAA competiton, and what style did he use?)

2. What was “total football”? What part did the training style of Ajax play in its development? [2010 addition: was it really that revolutionary, compared to the Hungary teams of the 1950s?]

3. Who developed the “triangle offense”? What was its original name? Which one is more descriptive?

4. Said Aouita, Noureddine Morceli or Hicham El Guerrouj? Henry Rono or Haile Gebrselassie? Why?

5. What was the great tragedy of Evelyn Ashford’s career?

My interlocutor claimed I was asking about sports trivia. But I wasn't, I was asking about sports as culture. The key part of the argument went like this: 

I don’t know much of anything about classical music. I would explain this by saying there is only so much time in one’s life, and that I concentrated on sports / physical activity: doing it, watching it, reading about it, and thinking about it. And it rankles me to have someone say that a lifelong involvement with sports is not a “reasonably cultured” thing to do, and I think many of the “reasonably cultured” among the ancient Greeks would agree with me. So all I’m saying is that while a knowledge of classical music is a sufficient condition of reasonable culture, it is not a necessary condition. There are many areas of human endeavor worth thinking about, and since we’re finite, we can’t all learn about all of them in depth. The point is that it’s not so much the traditional prestige of the area that counts, but the quality of the engagement with it that counts. 

So, for instance, if we really wanted to discuss the tragedy of Evelyn Ashford’s career, it would take us to the probable use of steroids in 1988 by Florence Griffith-Joyner, a use that robbed EA of a second gold at 100m. But that takes us to the Cold War, the East Germans, images of femininity among Af-Am women athletes (images that are deeply intertwined with many strands in American history), and a whole bunch of other stuff that is not trivial in the least. If I asked you what was EA’s time in Seoul, that would be trivia. But that’s not what I asked for.

Unfortunately, my interlocutor quit the thread, never responding to this. In any case, any suggestions for items that might go to a quiz on baseline sports culture knowledge? Here's a World Cup proposal: 

Discuss the 1974 WC final match: Dutch hubris, German grit, or both? 

Comments

[Sean Smith]

John, I agree with you fully about the general premise of the argument. Most certainly you can understand sport as a cultural form that can have a literacy marking one as "reasonably cultured."

But I'm afraid you lose me when you switch to the particulars of your quiz. Ignoring, for a moment, the slippery potential (in)distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow that remain on the periphery of your argument, the questions themselves in my view are not great for determining a "cultural literacy" of sport.

Perhaps a few points to consider for future quizzing:

1. Sport is based around the event in a way that classical European music is (mostly) not. If we were to be culturally aware of the latter we would expect to know genres, composers, how various instruments contribute to the final work, etc., but we would be less likely to know specific concert performances. Sport seems to demand more of an indexing of events in its literacy -- not sure if this is fair.

2. US-centric!! 3 out of 5 questions are "American"-based? Most people outside of the USA would have no idea what the NCAA is, let alone why we should care if they weren't the best in the world at their sport (and despite Gable's excellence, he was competing against 20-year old American college kids -- and whoever beat him is the very lapse into trivia you said you'd avoid). While basketball is certainly more globalized, the triple-post offense (also developed in the NCAA) only transcends the American NBA culture due to worldwide television broadcasts.

3. I think that questions #2 and #3 are the best ones here, as they display the type of "cross-cultural" literacy that would show understanding of gestural qualities that make each version of the sport so unique -- without lapsing too much into the eventedness described earlier. After all, there is only so much time in one's life!

[John Protevi]

Dear Sean, thanks very much for these great comments.

1. Yes, the event focus on sports is probably greater than that for European classical music. But even then there are great debates about conductors and interpretations and performance, no? "I was there the night in Milan that Callas sang XYZ: it was the greatest of her career!" And there would be even more event focus for jazz, I think. Or maybe not: is there one best "Night in Tunisia" that Dizzy Gillespie did out of the thousands of times he did the tune? Finally, I don't know enough about dance to say much, but there's an interesting discussion of the dance transcription system in Daniel Stern's wonderful new book, _Forms of Vitality_ (Oxford, 2010).

2. Guilty as charged -- but only for the most part. Isn't Dan Gable world famous? He did win gold in Munich after all. And note that Gable was himself a college kid when competing in the NCAA. In any case, what I was after in the Gable vs Smith comparison was a sort of technique vs conditioning comparison. Of course Gable had great technique and Smith was superbly conditioned. But I have the impression that they are sort of archetypes for those attributes in wrestling.

3. I think you mean 2 and 4 are the best questions, in that soccer (football) and track (athletics) are global sports?

[Sean Smith]

I meant #2 and #3 in that they both refer specifically to what for lack of a better term we could describe as "cultural variations" within a gestural language that is soccer or basketball. Total football and the triple post offense would best test that cultural element, in my opinion. Track is a global sport, yes, but #4 is really just a more sophisticated version of the bar-stool debate that attempts to compare athletes from different eras, and devolves into opinion more readily than a more "pure" cultural literacy would.

Anyways, dunno if I have been really clear, since I *think* I know what I am trying to say much more clearly than I am actually saying it......but hope we can continue the discussion in the future!

[John Protevi]

Okay, I see what you're saying. Good point. Though I think you can approach #4 somewhat objectively in terms of advances over previous WRs, the amazing range of Aouita, and so on. But you're general point would hold I think, though I'll want to ponder the "variation on gestural language" aspect of running. Swimming is much more technical in that water resistance punishes lapses in form so severely, so technique rather than power is really what counts. (Apparently Phelps generates a considerable amount less force on his strokes, but he's so streamlined he makes up for that and more by his body position.) Whereas air resistance and track friction allow a wider range of in efficient running forms. But it would be fun to get really technical about running styles. Especially the bit about relaxation in sprinters being the key to a smaller deceleration after 60 meters (where everyone decelerates, but Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt being prime examples of lower rates of deceleration due to their ability to relax.)