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PAN Discussion Group Wednesday June 27th 2007
Subject: Organized Sports
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Location: Lakeview-ish RSVP for details
Time: 7pm to 10pm - ish
Bring drinks and snacks to share
General:
The articles are the basis for the discussion and reading them helps give us some common ground and focus for the discussion, especially where we would otherwise be ignorant of the issues. The discussions are not intended as debates or arguments, rather they should be a chance to explore ideas and issues in a constructive forum. Feel free to bring along other stuff you've read on this, related subjects or on topics the group might be interested in for future meetings.
GROUND RULES:
* Temper the urge to speak with the discipline to listen and leave space for others
* Balance the desire to teach with a passion to learn
* Hear what is said and listen for what is meant
* Marry your certainties with others' possibilities
* Reserve judgment until you can claim the understanding we seek
Any problems let me know...
The Articles:
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First a review of a recent book on PSorts and Society
The Meaning of the Sports Spectacle: A Review of Welcome to the Terrordome
by Ron Jacobs / June 5th, 2007
Dave Zirin loves sports. He is also one of sports’ sharpest critics. And he’s pretty damn funny. His newest book Welcome to the Terrordome (Haymarket 2007) exhibits all of these traits. It is a critical and unrelenting look at the place sports has played and continues to play in these United States and around the world. Zirin borrows the title of course from Public Enemy, the premier political hiphop group of all time (with KRS One and BDP a close second) and he opens the book with a look back on the terrordome that was the New Orleans Superdome in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You remember the stories coming out of there about murders and rapes — stories that proved to be false. However, do you remember the origins of the Superdome in the destruction of a working
class section of New Orleans — ethnic cleansing as urban renewal? In case you didn’t, Dave Zirin reminds you of the ugly role money and greed played in that construction project. He goes further, critiquing the continuing construction of sports stadiums with public monies while the nation’s educational and social services infrastructure disintegrates into nothingness.
And that’s just the beginning. Naturally, Zirin addresses racism in sports. Indeed, it is his contention that sports is where the US struggles with race are played out on a daily basis. To make his point, he discusses the manipulation of hiphop culture by the National Basketball Association (NBA) to gain new fans only for that to be followed by a nasty attack on the culture’s street roots. He also writes about the great baseball player Roberto Clemente’s antiracist attitudes and the globalized racism inherent in Major League Baseball’s (MLB) recruitment of Latin American and Caribbean players while the overall African-Americans presence in the sport continues to decline-not because of the rise of
Latino players but because of MLB’s decision to go where the talent is cheaper and easy to manipulate. Then, of course, there’s Barry Bonds who is, according to some people the bogeyman of professional baseball because he may have used steroids. As Zirin points out, there are many other players not named Barry Bonds who have admitted using steroids and they don’t get half the grief Bonds does. To be fair, Barry isn’t by most accounts the most pleasant man, but that is no reason to treat him like the Boston Strangler. Zirin rightly argues that MLB and the team owners are as much (if not more) to blame for the steroid era in professional baseball as any player or group of players. Whenever I think on the role of race in US sport, I go back to the opening pages of Ralph Ellison’s masterpiece The Invisible Man. It is there that we find Ellison’s protagonist — a nameless African-American man — in a room filled with cigar smoke and fat white men drinking alcohol. The white men are there to be entertained. They tell the the narrator (Ellison’s invisible man) and a few other black youths to don blindfolds and boxing gloves. A naked white woman with a US flag painted on her body dances in the room. The youths than proceed to fight each other for the white men’s entertainment in what is termed a “battle royal.” In the final round the invisible man, loses to the victor. The white men then throw a bundle of coins on the floor and the youths scramble for the money, only to discover that there is an electric current running through the rug that shocks the youths over and over and that the coins are not gold, but brass tokens advertising a car
dealer. In other words, they have no value, despite their prettiness, much like the fancy cars and shiny bling worn by many of today’s professional athletes.
Welcome to the Terrordome is a book that describes and analyzes the real world version of Ellison’s “battle royal.” Young men of color seem to dominate most professional sport at the major league level, yet the paying audience in most stadiums and coliseums is white and reasonably well off. The coins thrown at them are many, but they come with a downside. While it is not an electrical current, it is a demand that these athletes keep quiet and, in the NBA (and the Yankees), wear suits. It’s not that wearing a suit is a big deal, but the demand that these young men and women not speak their minds runs counter to the American illusion of free speech. The few that do speak out run the risk of
not only ticking off their employer, but losing their job and ending up far away from the highlight reels.Yet, there are those that do risk their current gig as ballplayers. It is these men and women that Zirin champions throughout his book. These are his heroes. Men and women who play games well but also stand for something more than good statistics and bling. He writes about people from the past like Roberto Clemente and Jim Bouton and current players like Etan Thomas of the Washington Wizards and Sheryl Swoopes of the WNBA’s Houston Comets. These and other like-minded athletes are anything but invisible.The late Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once said something to the effect that sports journalism is the only place in journalism where a writer could use techniques
more familiar to fiction. Dave Zirin’s writing takes the essence of Thompson’s thoughts on sportswriting and succeeds dramatically. In addition, his humor and leftist politics only enhance the points about modern sports Zirin wants to make. My son, who is one of the biggest sports fans that I know, will get a copy of this book. So will a friend or two who tell me that they could care less about sports, since there’s a political struggle to be won. In the Hegelian framework, Zirin’s book is the perfect synthesis for all of them.
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Some thoughts on sports, present and future…
PLAY BALL! Futurist 39, no. 1(Jan/Feb 2005):
How Sports Will Change in the 21st Century Robin Gunston
Welcome to the twenty-first century's wide world of world where
technology is as much a part of the game as muscle, where sports
celebrity rivals religious worship, and where winning at all costs is
the name of the game. To understand how sports will evolve during the
coming decade, let's take a look backward and examine the ongoing
tensions among sports, technology, celebrity, and politics. Those
elements and how they mix in years to come will greatly influence the
nature of sports and sportsmanship for future generations.
The Council of Europe defined sport as "all forms of physical
activity, which, through casual or organized participation, aim at
expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming
social relationships, or obtaining results in competition at all
levels." This is a good test to put to any new future of sport.
The ancient Olympic Games, which commenced in Olympia, Greece,
in 776 B.C., are often hailed as the true historical roots of
competitive sports, especially of amateurism. Among the aspects central
to the Games' success (for competitors as well as onlookers) were the
thrill of victory, the opportunity to commune with the gods, the chance
to view and participate in the spectacle of the Games themselves, the
opportunities for meeting and trading with people, and the feeling of
participating in the cultural, educational, and aesthetic ideals of
one's own culture.
The Games at Olympia (only one of four in ancient Greece) were
part of the whole development system of a democratic nation seeking to
balance its education system around knowledge, culture, religion, and
physical agility. Competitors in these events were well known, often
political figures or military leaders who competed as much for raising
awareness of their fitness for other more important tasks as for the
glory it personally brought them.
Religious influences have always been associated with much of
early sports' development. Each of the Panhellenic games was dedicated
to a god or goddess with its accompanying, usually sexually driven
rituals. In the early nineteenth century, it was often established
churches that instigated organized events in a community or in its
schools, especially as shortening working hours gave people more time
to indulge in leisure activities other than church-going.
New Zealand triathlete Hamish Carter leads the pack at the 2004
Olympics in Athens. Team sports are losing out to individual sports,
such as triathlons and marathons, under the pressure of modern time
constraints, says author Gunston.
In addition to religion, the type of work performed at various
points in history has also influenced sports. Until modern times,
armies and navies needed men with high degrees of fitness and strength,
and military training manuals record the playing of team games as well
as regimented physical exercise as core principles for building up
muscle and morale-and for reinforcing hierarchies and establishing
order.
Sports have also been used to separate social classes. Some
sports, such as tennis and horse racing, began centuries ago as the
exclusive pursuits of nobles and kings. Polo continues to be associated
mainly with wealth and royalty, and only those with considerable wealth
can indulge in such popular new sports as motor racing, despite the
sport's incredible popularity.
Another strong influence on the shape of modern sports is the
ongoing conflict between amateurs and professionals. Amateur team
sports started to surface in an organized way in the nineteenth
century, often following their introduction at English public schools
and universities or their counterparts in British colonies, including
India, South Africa, and Australia.
Professionalism remains a dirty word in some modern sports. In
ancient times, villages might pay for their champion to attend a Games
for the glory it might bring them. In Victorian English society,
however, it was considered unsporting to pay a gentleman to participate
in a sport-though it was deemed acceptable to provide financial
incentive for someone from a lower social class to play for one's club.
Leadership in bridging the professional-amateur barrier has often come
from players outside a sport's governing authority. Tennis, for
example, was long the realm of amateurs only, until Australian tennis
players such as Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall broke down the barriers that
had kept professionals out of such high-profile events as the U.S. Open
and Wimbledon by joining the World Championship Tennis circuit and
similar tours.
This led the way for professionals to dominate virtually all
areas of other, once-elite sports, including rugby. "As rugby union's
development in the late twentieth century brought it to resemble other
professional team sports, the Rugby Football Union remained steadfast
in retaining the game's officially amateur status," writes Peter
Williams in the International Journal of History of Sport. "There was a
critical period in which a combination of events set in motion forces
for change the authorities would be unable to contain. This turning
point in the sport's recent history caused the RFU to defend its
increasingly isolated position against three separate, though related,
pressure groups: the senior English clubs, the national team, and the
progressive elements on the International Rugby Board."
Major high-profile events have had the most significant impact
on the twentieth-century sporting landscape. Many major spectator
sports have moved to a World Cup system or other championship-type
series for their events, usually on a fouryearly cycle. These are
mass-marketed spectaculars where the sport is sometimes incidental to
everything else going on around it. Devoted fans spend vast amounts of
money to go on overseas tours built around their team's games, often
promoted by government tourism bureaus.
Government and politics have had an impact in other ways as
well. An inextricable link between politics (and war) and sports seems
firmly established, perhaps best summed up by George Orwell when he
said that sport is "war minus the shooting." Events demonstrating this
link include the Moscow Olympics boycott of 1980; the 1981 South
African Springbok rugby tour, which prompted antiapartheid protests in
New Zealand; and the World Cup soccer war between El Salvador and
Honduras in 1969, which claimed thousands of lives. A closer
examination of many such events throughout history shows that sports
was sometimes deliberately used as a tool of imperialism by many
nations, pitting factions and, in some cases, nations against one
another. Today, one of the best ways to recognize the political
importance of sports at a transnational level is to look at visits by
the head of the International Olympic Committee, which often take on
the full pomp and circumstance of a state visit.
KEY TRENDS IN SPORTS AND CULTURE
Here are the key trends that I believe will have the most
impact and that may lead to different possible futures for sports.
Sports have become an entertainment business. Postmodernism has
transformed sports. Sports scholars Bob Stewart and Aaron Smith note,
"By the 1990s a number of professional sport leagues had emerged as
amateurism lost its snobbish appeal and sport went about building its
commercial value." As a result, stadiums became billboards, athletes
became celebrities, competitions became sense-bombarding experiences,
and fans shifted loyalties from one team to the next, unbound by the
parochial tribalism of the ancients. "The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games
convincingly demonstrated that Australian sport had become a chaotic
mix of ancient ritual, traditional athletic contests, slickly marketed
and customized leisure experiences, and ultra-professional sports that
combine complex strategy with Hollywood-style showmanship," Stewart and
Smith conclude.
Anyone looking for further evidence that sports are big
business only needs to pick up a local television guide and look at the
sheer variety of choices available to the viewer: poker, lawn-mower
racing, bungee-jumping, elephant polo, juggling, and more. Can this
trend go on forever? Increasingly, the answer is, "no." Both ESPN and
NBC stated more than 10 years ago that their networks no longer had
a39, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 2005): p. 31-36ny "must-see" events, including the
Olympics, which only survives financially on such network revenue and
on the sponsorship of corporations and conglomerates. Many sports
organizations, participants, and viewers are also starting to resent
the intrusion of the television scheduler and advertisers into the flow
of the game.
Team sports versus the individual. An emerging trend that seems
set to continue is the demise of team sports and the ascendance of
individual sports. This trend seems closely associated with changes to
work-life balance and the culture of individualism apparent in most of
Generation X. The modern worker is losing the battle to balance
participation in organized sports with the demands of the workplace and
the home. With the demise of the standard working day and the trend
toward holding down multiple jobs, fewer and fewer chances exist for
today's busy worker to commit to a regular training schedule for a team
sport. Thus, the serious fitness addict or sporting person is turning
more to individual pursuits-such as triathlons, marathons, the personal
fitness regimen at the gym, and Iroranan competitions-to achieve
prowess.
Club ownership. The majority of team sports, including
baseball, basketball, soccer, and rugby, are in professional leagues
and managed as business franchises. Ownership comes in many shapes and
forms; baseball management, for example, consists of clubs owned by a
business that employs players on salaries. Clubs regularly change hands
for colossal sums; sometimes the entire team will change cities when
new owners are based elsewhere and want their team closer to control
management better.
Business owners, however much they may like a sport or a club,
want one thing above all else: a better-than-normal rate of return on
their investment. Inevitably, this trend will create demands on coaches
and players that create a win-at-any-cost mentality, leading to
tragedies such as the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal, the World Series
"game-throwing" incident. The true essence of sport will then be lost.
The impact of terrorism. Terrorism is normally perceived as
more of a wild card than a trend, as it usually seeks publicity about a
cause by capturing public interest through a dramatic event, such as
the 1972 Munich Olympics siege. However, modern terrorism is an
international, omnipresent movement seemingly inspired by hatred for
all things Western and American. This trend could eventually affect
sports at all levels.
The modern terrorist is prepared to take time to accomplish his
ends, often planning for events many years in advance. Today, there may
already be individuals training not only to excel as athletes, but also
to be able to disrupt major events in the future. Imagine a winning
World Cup team clutching the Jules Rimet trophy, then blowing
themselves up with it on the podium. Such an event may seem
far-fetched, but it is plausible given the international attention paid
to sports and the desperation of some individuals and groups.
Designer drugs. The trend for sports people to enhance their
performance through substances is not a modern one. Records of the
ancient Games show athletes selectively feeding on herbs for many weeks
before such major events. It was not until 1969 that robust analytical
techniques were used for drug detection in sports, and since then, both
coaches and pharmaceutical interests have been trying to find drugs
that avoid detection. When testers catch up, athletes inevitably end up
losing-their records, their medals, their sponsorships, and their
reputations.
In 2003, a new human gene-the so-called "speed gene"-was
discovered in East Africa. Geneticists hailed the day when a
purpose-built athlete could be cloned, and the American Association for
the Advancement of Science announced a conference to explore the
"potential uses of genetic enhancement in competitive sports from the
perspective of athletic organizations, athletes, scientists, and
ethicists."
High-technology equipment. We may see completely new forms of
artificial-intelligence-based machinery taking over areas of human
activity within the next 20 years. Sports are no exception to this
trend. You can now go to the local sports store and plug into a machine
that will fit each foot with a shoe designed for a particular sport. At
the golf range, a computerized swing analyzer will tell you what shaft
length you need and what club head and what ball will give the greatest
distance. Specially designed track-and-field equipment that aligns the
characteristics of the athlete and the stadium can give an individual
athlete more than a meter's advantage over competitors. In motor sports
and America's Cup yacht racing, technologists sit amid a vast array of
computers taking race data, analyzing it, and sending it back to the
driver or helmsman to make minute corrections that might win them the
race. It may not be long before a humanoid robot sits in the driving
seat of a Formula One car and the champion driver sits under the
grandstand or in an apartment at a beach in another country driving the
car remotely. The only time the fans or officials will suspect the
difference is when the champagne flows and the robot shorts out!
The sports industry. Sports are no longer just pastimes. They
are big business. Over a 20-year period, there has been a 10,000%
increase in sports sponsorship, affecting every possible sport
imaginable-even sheep shearing. Most professional sports cannot afford
to operate without guaranteed television rights payments and commercial
sponsorship. Even at the amateur level, club finances rely on the local
sportswear store to provide the uniform and equipment, while the local
butcher or hardware store may have its name adorning shirts or
goalposts, a privilege someone is collecting money for.
Will this trend continue? As ethical investors compare the
economic, environmental, and social results of a business, many are
finding it difficult to account for the benefits that sport sponsorship
actually brings in the marketplace. This can be especially problematic
when the supported sport or a particular team performs badly or has
something of a poor reputation. In Australia, for example, almost an
entire rugby league team has been recently accused of pack rape. If
they are convicted, expect to see their sponsors distance themselves
quickly from the team.
Without sponsors, there will be no teams or individual
superstar athletes. Without teams, there will be no leagues. Without
leagues, there will be no major competitions. Without major
competitions, there will be no sports television, no merchandising, no
corporate boxes. And thus it goes on.
FUTURE SCENARIOS FOR SPORTS
To understand where sport is heading, we need to examine five
key drivers of change:
1. The clear distinction between work and leisure is growing
blurrier and changing the types of sports we play.
2. The drive for instant entertainment will place high demands
on sports people and the industry.
3. The drive by media companies and other businesses to own our
allegiance to their products and services is dictating increasing
control of sporting performance and behavior.
4. As sports bodies such as the International Olympics
Committee, the International Cricket Council, and the International
Rugby Board become neopolitical entities, their decisions will control
key aspects of the destiny and sovereignty of sporting nations.
5. The loss of core values in society due to the waning
influence of the church creates a spiritual vacuum into which sports
may move.
Based on these drivers of change, we can discern four possible
long-term scenarios.
Last sportsmen standing?
Once sports become a total commodity, and the role of players,
coaches, and managers becomes secondary to making money, many
international sports will disappear. Robin Gunston predicts that only
soccer and basketball will remain-but winning at all costs will still
be the driving factor.
Religiosport could develop as major sports replace conventional
religion. Religiosport will have its shrines (stadiums), costumes
(uniforms), services (games and events), rituals (chants and songs),
high priests (star athletes), and piety (fan loyalty). Religiosport
will actively condone violence against rival sects (teams).
Machosport is a future where individual sports people become
popular idols, feted wherever they go, promoted by the media, and put
on display as being the ideal of modern man or woman. In this scenario,
knowing about the sport is incidental to knowing about the person. It
is increasingly associated with the worst forms of idolatry and leads
to individuals losing their human rights and respect. Supporters will
form fan clubs for individuals instead of participating in the sport,
and as the heroes grow older, they will pass, with their "sport," out
of existence.
Technosport develops when winning is everything and ethics
counts for nothing. At this stage, the sport exists and is managed
entirely by large businesses that appoint the sports-administration
body and control all aspects of the sport's development, rules, and
competitions. Individual players, coaches, and managers are only pawns
to winning at all costs. In this scenario, only two international
sports eventually remain-soccer and basketball-with most nations having
only one team.
Valuesport will see an end to the big business of organized
team sports and events. This future will be driven largely in response
to some wild-card event, such as a terrorist attack at an Olympiad.
Another threat to the Games' viability would be a lastminute pullout by
the broadcast media covering them, perhaps in a battle over naming
rights.
Another driver in this scenario is the obesity crisis. Health
specialists, trying to cope with the vastly increased death rates
stemming from society-wide lack of fitness, will lobby governments for
a return to a different style of sports participation at all levels of
society. They will no longer permit advertising to be linked to sports,
and all teams participating in healthy competition will be backed by
their community and financially supported by additional local taxes on
unhealthy products such as alcohol, certain drugs, and tobacco.
GLOBAL COMMUNITY GAMES
Valuesport is, in this author's opinion, the preferred
scenario. But how can we turn everything around now and prevent the
onset of one of the other possible scenarios? The key will be to
strengthen underlying values and continue to reinforce them for young
people and new participants. These moral and ethical principles have to
be continually reinforced through many avenues, including a
more-sensitive media, to ensure that sports' positive contributions to
society are not undermined.
Fortunately this work has already begun, quietly and without
fanfare. For the past five years, an international group of sports
people and community workers have been collaborating and bringing about
such a change. These dedicated volunteers are using a simple
experiential learning model used with sports and games and values
derived from Bible stories to get people of all ages involved in
improving their physical, moral, and spiritual health. Many sporting
champions have also lent their support to the program by appearing at
some of the opening and closing ceremonies of KidsGames, TeenGames,
EdgeGames, and FamilyGames to encourage people of all ages to reach
their goals. Some of these events have been the largest sporting events
ever held in their cities or countries.
The future of large sports events may no longer be with the
Olympians, but rather with those participating in something much
grander: a values-based movement committed to ensuring that sports have
a positive role in society. The result will be what the international
Sports Coalition has called Global Community Games.
Robin Gunston is chairperson of Futures Thinking Aotearoa,
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What about the money?
SPORTS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A LITERATURE REVIEW
1. INTRODUCTION: SPORTS AS SAVIOR
In recent years, professional sports teams have tended to seek stadiums
and arenas built with the latest stadium technology. The cookie-cutter,
flying-saucer, multi-use stadiums of the 60s & 70s have been replaced by
single-sport facilities, crafted to better accommodate a specific sport.
Partly in response to rising player salaries, the facilities are specially
designed to maximize revenues through such amenities as luxury sky
boxes that rent for $50,000-200,000 per year, club seats (which cost more
than regular seats), catering, concessions and theme activities. This has
led to higher revenues for teams, thus making more cities capable of
supporting franchises (Zimbalist 1996). With more cities entering the
bidding wars for franchises, cities are forced to offer ever higher bids,
including public financing, to win those franchises (Noll).
An imbalance exists between supply and demand for major professional
teams, and thus the teams have exerted more power on the terms of their
relationship with host cities. There is also a self-reinforcing cycle between
skyrocketing players' salaries and the amount of revenue a team feels
compelled to reap. This situation leads cities to bid more and more in an
attempt to win a sports franchise, or to retain an existing one (Zimbalist
1996).
Baade and Dye have investigated the reasons why cities choose to finance
new sports stadiums. First, fiscal pressures due to declining federal aid
and a loss of economic activity to the suburbs have compelled cities to
search for ways to revitalize themselves (Baade and Dye 1988). Public
officials often believe that revenues generated from a new stadium will
spill outside the stadium, and increase economic activities in other parts of
the city to a degree which makes the stadium worthwhile.
2. MONOPOLY'S ROLE IN THE BARGAINING POSITION OF
SPORTS FRANCHISES
The major sports leagues in America- the National Football League
(NFL), major league baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association
(NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL) have an effective
monopoly on each of their respective professional sports. MLB has an
antitrust exemption codified in the law, whereas the other leagues
encourage policies which preserve a monopoly/monopsony situation by
limiting the number of franchises in each league.
Roger Noll, Professor of Economics at Stanford, and Andrew Zimbalist,
professor of economics at Smith College, have observed that "Leagues
maximize their members' profits by keeping the number of franchises
below the number of cities that could support a team. To attract teams,
cities must compete through a bidding war, whereby each bids its
willingness to pay to have a team, not the amount necessary to make a
team viable" (1997, 3). A threat therefore exists that team owners could
move the team out of the city, and the team would not be replaced.
Owners often engage in what Baade and Dye call "owner extortion",
which occurs when franchises threaten to leave a city in order to gain the
most beneficial financial arrangement with the city to stay" (1988, 266).
This is greatly affected by political considerations:
The incidence of owner "extortion" is increasing for a number of
reasons. Among them, perhaps, is the recognition by owners that
politicians who fail on glamour issues like sports may be politically vulnerable. A mayor's political stock rises substantially if the
mayor secures a professional sports presence and falls just as
rapidly if his or her name is associated with the loss of a team" (Baade and Dye 1988, 266).
Noll and Zimbalist cite this monopolistic structure of professional sports
as the primary cause of "sports subsidies," spent by city governments in
the attempt to lure them to or keep them in the city (1997, 3).
3. FINANCING TOOLS
The federal government subsidizes state and local governments' sports
ventures by allowing them to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance sports
stadiums. This loss in tax revenue, according to Noll and Zimbalist,
amounts to approximately $70 million for a typical $225 million stadium,
or more than $2 million a year. State and local governments pay even
larger subsidies than the federal government - often more than $10 million
per year (Noll and Zimbalist 1997). The 1986 Tax Reform Act halted
federal subsidies to local governments for sports facilities if the revenue
generated from such facilities covered more than 10 percent of the debt
service. This failed to lower the public moneys spent to subsidize sports
stadiums, however, because it tended to cut rents below 10 percent of debt
service (Noll and Zimbalist 1997).
In 1996, Senator Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) introduced a bill to eliminate
federal subsidies of stadiums by eliminating tax-exempt financing. Noll
and Zimbalist believe that although cities may shy away from subsidies, if
such a bill is passed, because costs will necessarily be higher without
federal aid, cities will still bid for franchises, and may simply pay more
money in interest charges (1997).
4. VISIONS OF PROSPERITY: ARGUMENTS FOR THE PUBLIC
FINANCING OF SPORTS FACILITIES
These positive impacts alleged by proponents to come from sports
franchises include the generation of tax revenue, direct spending by teams and owners in an area, new jobs and community development (stadiums can be used for concerts, conventions, and festivals), improved infrastructure, and the fact that a stadium is more attractive to tourists and shoppers
than heavy industry (as has been argued in Nashville [Peters 1996]).
Thomas Chema, of Arter and Hadden, believes sports stadiums are
effective at generating economic activity. He criticizes Robert Baade, a professor at Lake Forest College and a leading critic of public financing of sports, for having published results of a study which found sports
stadiums had a negligible impact on economic growth. Chema claims
Baade researched "essentially non-urban facilities" (Chema 1996, 20) which, unlike more recent stadiums in urban
areas, were not intended as economic development catalysts. As for the
stadiums that were built in urban areas, Chema believes, "the relatively few urban venues might as well have been in the suburbs because they were separated from their host city by a moat of surface parking" (1996,
20).
Rick Horrow, an NFL consultant, wrote a recent article in Tennessee's
Business in which he advocated public financing of sports facilities,
saying investing cities have received "significant, long-term economic
benefits" in the form of tax revenue, direct spending (salaries, supplies,
food, insurance, visitors) by the sports team, and the direct impact of new
jobs and community development (1996, 29). As an example of the direct
spending associated with such a project, Horrow cited a University of
Cincinnati Center for Economic Education study in 1996 which projected
the impact of construction on two local professional sports stadiums to be
$1.1 billion.
5. SYMBOLISM AND COMMUNITY: NON-ECONOMIC BENEFITS
OF SPORTS FACILITIES
In addition to economic benefits, there are other arguments proponents of
public financing of sports stadiums use. Mathew Peters, a research
associate with the Business and Economic Research Center at Middle
Tennessee State University, discounts the focus on immediate economic
benefits of proposed sports financing projects, and instead urges the
acceptance of the view that, "the greatest benefits may not derive from
measurable economic activities attributed directly to the financial success
of the team, but rather from the improved infrastructure, urban renewal,
and construction of a venue to accommodate the diverse needs of the area"
(Peters 1996, 7). In Nashville's case, Peters (1996) stressed the improved
access to the CBD, parks that would be developed along with the stadium,
and the displacement of existing heavy industries which are not conducive
to health or tourism.
It is believed that sports strengthens a city's national and regional image:
both on television and to those who attend sporting events in person.
There is a conventional wisdom that exists among sports financing
proponents that a better image attracts more tourists, businesses, and
residents, and expands the tax base. People also believe sports facilities
lead to community pride and solidarity. Arthur T. Johnson, of the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Allen Sack, of the
University of New Haven, write that "the physical (i.e., the built
environment) and psychological well-being of a community concern
officials just as much as a community's fiscal health" (1996, 369).
Similarly, in 1992, the Baltimore Sun wrote about the effect of Camden
Yards, the new baseball stadium for the Baltimore Orioles, emphasizing
how it had "an uplifting psychological impact on the city, over and above
any direct physical or economic impact" (Gunts [1] 1992, 1G). This
impact is even harder to measure than economic impacts.
The role of sports facilities in revitalizing a city and creating a more
pleasant urban atmosphere is also one constantly raised by financing
advocates. Oriole Park at Camden Yards was the capstone of a strategic
plan to revitalize the city. The Baltimore Sun, in its approving review of
the stadium in 1992, wrote that "it provides something for the general
public to focus on, to strive for - something for a whole city to rally
around" (Gunts 1992, 1G).
Arthur T. Johnson, in Minor League Baseball and Economic
Development, reviewed the case of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's strategy of
using minor league baseball for economic development. The team made
the revitalization of City Island, a derelict wasteland, possible (Johnson).
Now 600,000 people visit the island each year.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST PUBLIC FINANCING OF STADIUMS
6. A NEGLIGIBLE IMPACT: ECONOMIC DISBENEFITS OF
PUBLIC FINANCING
The minimal economic effects of a new stadium or arena on a city have
been written about by many authors. Economic studies of these effects by
many authors show only a small positive or negative impact on a city's
economy, if any. Critics of economic development strategies which focus
on sports often point out that many other alternatives might yield a better
return on investment than that of sports. Robert Baade and Richard Dye used regression analysis to examine the relationship between the addition of a sports stadium or team in a city and area income growth. Using nine separate equations for each of the nine cities examined, only 2 showed a positive relationship that was significant, while 5 indicated a significantly negative impact, and 7 were insignificant (Baade and Dye 1988). This and similar studies by Baade are often
referred to by many scholars of the subject. Professor Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College criticized the idea that sports facilities' economic impact is significant in his article "The Economic Impact of Sports Teams on Cities." In the essay, he also finds that the main recipients of the public largesse are the owners and players; they reap millions while "the city cannot even cover its incremental debt service with rent and other stadium revenues" (1996, 10).
Another key argument is that owners and players may not live in an area
and spend money, as was feared in the case of the Houston Oilers football
team moving to Nashville. John J. Siegfried, a professor of economics at
Vanderbilt University, claims that only about 100 people in high paying
jobs, including management and players, are employed by an NFL
franchise, and most of those will not live in Tennessee (Siegfried 1996,
31). As a result, potential economic benefits from their direct spending
will not be realized in the area targeted for economic development.
In "Sports Stadiums and Area Development: A Critical Review," Robert
Baade and Richard Dye discounted proponents' of stadium construction
argument that jobs would be created by noting that the type of jobs created
would be generally low-wage and seasonal, including ticket sellers,
restaurant and bar workers, and taxi drivers. They argue that a city
engaged in such a strategy would gain a comparative advantage in that
sector of labor, as compared to a neighboring area that encouraged a sector
utilizing high-skilled workers and high-technology- which Baade
described as "growth-producing jobs" (1988, 272).
The issue of opportunity cost is another which many critics raise. Critics
of sports-based development policies ask whether it would not be better to
spend the money on schools, roads, attracting other businesses, using the
land for a private organization that would pay property taxes, reducing tax
rates, or investing the money. For example, Leslie Wayne, writing in the
New York Times, reported that a congressional study concluded that the
Sunny Day Development Fund was a far better opportunity for creating
jobs than building a new football stadium in Baltimore (Wayne 1996).
Indeed, Andrew Zimbalist compared the economic effect of a new sports
franchise on a city as being equivalent only to that of a small department
store.
Mark Rosentraub, in his 1996 paper, "Does the Emperor Have New
Clothes- a Reply to Robert J. Baade," emphasizes that sports are such a
small portion of a city's economy that, he believes, large sums of money
would be better invested in other projects. Rosentraub, Swindell,
Przybylski, and Mullins (1994) emphasize the relatively small
contribution of sports to a city's economy. They found that the total
annual impact of amateur sports from all sources was equal only to one-
third of the payroll of Indiana University's Indianapolis campus, or $120
million. Siegfried writes of the negative effects produced by a new
sports facility which displaces existing businesses. In the case of
Nashville, the new stadium for the Tennessee Oilers football team has
forced the Nashville Bridge Company to move to Ashland City with its
200 employees.
Some have found that sports just realigns residents' entertainment budgets,
it does not lead to more spending on entertainment (Noll 1974 and Baade
1990). Johnson and Sack, in their analysis of the Volvo International
Tennis Tournament, found economic results consistent with this theory.
In that case, people spent less on other leisure activities at the same time
they began spending money on the tennis tournament (1996).
Another argument is that the fan base for sports stadiums is "insufficiently
foreign",
in that not enough paying fans come from out of the city as to create a net
import of spending (Baade-2, 1996). Western cities, however, notably
Kansas City, have been found to import fans at a higher rate, perhaps
because they have more of a regional following because the pro franchises
are farther apart (Baade-2, 1996).
Other costs are in the political arena. Political capital expended and
political conflict often result when a movement arises to publicly finance a
sports stadium or arena. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the mayor and city
council clashed, with the result that most of city council was voted out in
the next elections and replaced with council members more favorable to
mayor (Johnson 1993). Johnson and Sack detailed the negative effects the
VITT had on New Haven's racial climate; the black population tended to
view the tennis project as elitist, or "one more giveaway to the old [white]
boys" (1996, 377).
7. WHICH YARDSTICK? THE DIFFICULTIES OF MEASURING
ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF SPORTS FACILITIES
The effects of a new sports facility are extremely hard to estimate due to
the complexity of the task, flawed methodology, and often-inflated expectations of the parties administering a sports development project. This results in impact studies that are overly optimistic.
Multiplier effects are generally used by jurisdictions to estimate the
indirect economic benefits caused by constructing a new stadium or luring
a professional team to an area. These are funds "that would otherwise not
be spent in an area" (Siegfried, 31). For larger metropolitan areas, the
U.S. Department of Commerce usually uses a multiplier of 2 (depending
on the area's economy and geography).
Jurisdictions commonly over inflate their multipliers, predicting
unjustifiably a multiplier such as 4, which New Haven used to estimate the
effects of the Volvo International Tennis Tournament's effect on spending
in the state (the spending that would not have occurred without the
tournament). Johnson and Sack found that if a more realistic multiplier is
used, the facility was found to have no effect on net spending, but rather
appeared just to shift spending from other leisure industries to the
tournament.
There is great difficulty in attributing changes in an area's economy to the
construction of a new stadium. For example, in Indianapolis, the sports
strategy has been alternately praised for causing a slower loss of jobs and
prosperity to the suburbs than otherwise would have been expected, while
others have attacked the strategy for what they believe caused or
contributed to an economic downturn in the city.
The smaller the circle around the stadium whose impact is being
measured, the greater percentage of customers from outside the area who
are gauged to spend money there, and thus the higher amount of "imports"
and net benefit to the area, so in many respects, the calculation of
economic benefits to an area can be manipulated by an entity wishing to
conduct a study which finds a result which justifies the construction of a
sports facility.
8. KEYS TO SUCCESS FOR PUBLIC FINANCING OF SPORTS
Baade and Dye believe that public officials will continue to consider
public financing of stadia, and thus offer advice as to what they believe
will make a stadium more successful than others, based on their research.
First, the number of usage dates for the stadium should be maximized.
The facility must be able to accommodate many different sports, and not
be a single-use facility, as many new stadiums are, such as Camden Yards
in Baltimore, built only for baseball. Second, spillover effects from the
stadium must be maximized. For example, hotels should be located
nearby if the stadium is to serve as a convention center part of the time.
Third, the facility must be integrated in its neighborhood; large parking
lots which form barriers are to be discouraged. Cities should counter the
monopoly power of owners.
Thomas Chema, of Arter & Hadden, agrees with Baade that professional
sports are not necessarily development tools, and their location and
integration with the urban environment plays a large part in the amount of
economic activity generated: "when a city establishes a development
strategy that includes sports as part of a critical mass of attractions
designed to lure people into the urban core, then a sport team or venue can
and will provide significant economic value to the city (1996, 22)."
Noll and Zimbalist believe antitrust legislation should be used to split
sports leagues up into competing leagues, because they believe this would
lead to a situation in which no franchise would leave an economically
viable city; if one did, another from a competing league would arrive to
fill the void. However, the prospects for this are found to be slim, because
the U.S. Congress and the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division are
both subject to political pressures not to meddle with professional sports.
9. AREAS WHERE MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED
The secondary, multiplier economic effects of a sports project need to be
studied in further detail. Since multipliers vary between two and four
(theoretically because of time and place differentials), there is a large
amount of latitude available when selecting a multiplier. A jurisdiction
wishing to distort the true benefits of a project may easily pad the results
of an economic analysis by choosing a high multiplier. Further study may
narrow the range of acceptable multipliers and better calibrate economic
impact models.
The non-economic disbenefits of a sports stadium need to be studied. This
was only lightly addressed by the literature, and was done in a cursory
fashion without extensive analysis. For example, Siegfried wrote "we
must also tabulate the resentment and conflict stirred up within some
families when intense devotion to the Oilers interferes with other family
responsibilities" (34).
More research also needs to be conducted on the possibility of leveraging
increased contributions from the private sector, either through solely
privately-financed ventures, such as the San Francisco (baseball) Giants'
new stadium, or through public-private partnerships with a high proportion
of private capital, as in the case of Toronto's Skydome. New stadium
technology, such as the auctioning off of the stadium's name to a private
client, increased in-stadium advertising, and concessions have made a
greater private contribution to sports financing possible.
Research into the equity issue, or how fair an impact a new sports facility
has on a community should be investigated further. Johnson and Sack's
article on the VITT touches on the discord the tennis center produced in
lower-income communities that would not be as likely to enjoy the
amenity as others, and Siegfried's article on Nashville's stadium told about
a water tax used to raise money for the project being unfair to the lower-
income residents, since a tax on water is regressive. However, due to the
changing nature of many sports stadiums, there appears to be an
opportunity, as yet, unfulfilled, to examine the effect new technology,
such as increased luxury seating, has on equity (for instance, are the
wealthy the main beneficiaries of a new sports facility?) in public
financing of sports.
Finally, more research needs to be carried out with the goal of determining
how to overcome political pressures from sports leagues and implement
some of the ideas mentioned above, in particular, how to revoke baseball's
antitrust exemption and foster the creation of professional sports leagues
which compete with each other.
10. CONCLUSION
Writers supporting the use of public financing for sports facilities are often
those who have a stake in the financial prosperity of professional sports or
those convinced of the need to build such a facility, despite the results of
careful economic analyses. Economic studies which advocates use to
support their claims of financial success are often biased and show huge
financial gains for the area. A more compelling case is made by those
who argue that there are noneconomic benefits of a sports facility which
provide a basic leisure amenity- pro sports, and enhance the image of a
city or town.
Critics of public financing of sports facilities have been conducting their
studies for the last thirty years, about as long as arguments that sports can
be an economic development tool have been made. Usually, such
arguments are ignored by advocates or political sponsors of such
strategies. As the costs of stadiums rise ever higher, though, the private
sector should play an increasingly larger role in financing projects to
reduce the strain on public budgets, and efforts should be made to break
up the major leagues into competing entities.
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And are those green playing fields really so ;Green’…
Putting the Earth in Play: Environmental Awareness and Sport
Since time immemorial, people have entertained themselves with sports. Sports are emblematic of health, with the best matches played by athletes in peak physical form. But ironically, even as sports promote health, they can also degrade the environment upon which good health depends. Whether played or watched, athletic endeavors have the potential to produce huge environmental “footprints” in terms of their use and abuse of natural resources. Ski slopes, for instance, disrupt fragile alpine ecosystems, while snowmobiles spew exhaust fumes into the air. Golf courses sprawl across the land, and consume large amounts of pesticides and water, while parking lots for stadiums and arenas produce vast paved surfaces. And major sports events use energy, emit greenhouse gases, and produce voluminous trash. The 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit produced 500 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (from transportation and utility usage), while the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens produced half a million tons in two weeks--roughly comparable to what a city of 1 million people would emit over a similar period. Each match during the 2006 World Cup this summer will use up to 3 million kilowatt-hours of energy (similar to the annual consumption of 700 European households), and produce an estimated 5-10 tons of trash. These impacts have spawned an environmental movement with two broad goals: toreduce the ecological footprint of sports activities, and to exploit the popularity of sports to raise environmental awareness in general. “Like any other sector, sport has environmental consequences,” says David Chernushenko, president of Green and Gold, a sports sustainability consulting firm in Ottawa, Canada, and author of the first book on the subject-- Greening Our Games, published in 1994. “But sports are also heavily impacted by degraded environments, and that’s important to an athlete who can’t run on smog days, or
to those in the golf industry who get told they can’t build a new course because bad practices have tarred their image. So, sports create opportunities to produce leaders for better environmental practice.”
UNEP at the Fore
The sports sustainability movement now encompasses numerous environmental groups, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), a veteran influential player in this arena, was among the first to get involved. In 1994, UNEP created a Sports and Environment Program, and charged it with promoting environmental awareness through sports as well as the design of sustainable sports facilities and equipment. Currently headed by Eric Falt, UNEP’s director of communications and public information in Nairobi, Kenya, the program has fostered numerous initiatives. In 1994, the Centennial Olympic Congress of Paris established the environment as a “third pillar” of the Olympic charter, along with sport and culture. In a pivotal milestone, UNEP teamed with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1995 to host the first World Conference on Sport and Environment, held in Lausanne, Switzerland. Participants there created a Sport and Environment commission within the IOC. The latest world conference, held in Nairobi in November 2005, yielded the Nairobi Declaration on Sport, Peace, and Environment, which calls upon the IOC and national Olympic committees to act as leaders in promoting environmental sustainability through sports. UNEP has also organized three meetings of the Global Forum for Sport and Environment (G-ForSE) since 2001, in which sports stakeholders in and beyond the Olympic Movement review their contributions to sustainable development. At the July 2005 Sports Summit for the Environment, a G-ForSE meeting held in Aichi, Japan, participants signed the Joint Declaration on Sports and the Environment, in which they pledged to help address environmental problems and create a sustainable world society through sports.
UNEP has also worked with the IOC to develop an “Agenda 21” for the Olympic Movement based on environmental sustainability guidelines created by delegates at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. By adopting its own Agenda 21, the IOC committed itself to encouraging sustainability among its member nations and sports governing bodies. This agenda is being used by several National Olympic Committees for sustainable development work at the national level. NGOs working in this area include the Global Sports Alliance (GSA), based in Tokyo. The GSA, which is supported by UNEP, partners with numerous sports groups including the IOC to help create an environmentally aware sports culture. GSA members try to spread environmental awareness in part by sending “ecoflags” to schools and sports clubs, which these organizations fly during games to affirm ecological commitments. The GSA also sponsors several projects and, with UNEP, the G-ForSE.
Greening of the Olympics
The 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, are now viewed as the first attempt to create a “green” Olympic Games. Local activists in Lillehammer successfully forced the country’s Olympic Organizing Committee (OOC) to make changes based on environmental concerns. Because of their actions, a speed skating rink was redesigned to avoid impacts to a nearby bird sanctuary, and officials agreed to an environmental plan emphasizing renewable building materials and energy-efficient heating and lighting for facilities, trash recycling, and arena designs that harmonize with the local landscape.
Since Lillehammer, the IOC has tried to make the Olympics a showcase for environmental sustainability. With the 1999 adoption of the Olympic Movement’s Agenda 21, any country that wants to host the Olympics has to produce a strategic environmental assessment to accompany its bid. David Crawford, a Winnipeg, Canada-based sustainability advisor to OOCs, says these assessments must describe environmental commitments around energy use, water consumption, waste generation, and sustainable building construction, in addition to social commitments to include local communities in the planning process. “If you look at who won the last three Olympic bids--Beijing in 2008, Vancouver in 2010, and London in 2012--you see environmental assessments played a major strategic role in that success,” he says.Intent and implementation aren’t one and the same, however. Despite successful bids, some host cities have found their Olympic sustainability obligations hard to meet. The Athens Games, for instance, are widely viewed as an environmental failure, particularly with respect to sustainable construction and green energy. Despite Athens’ commitment to use 100% renewable energy during the Games, almost all the energy expended there ultimately came from nonrenewable sources.
Beijing could also have trouble meeting its environmental obligations. The city’s air quality ranks among the world’s worst--indeed, the highest nitrogen dioxide levels in any city are found there. Exposure to Beijing’s air can therefore irritate and damage the respiratory tract, posing an obvious hazard to competing athletes. To prepare its Olympic bid, Beijing promised to achieve 230 “blue sky” days per year, meaning days when air quality is “good or moderate.” To achieve this, the city ordered the Shougang Corporation, a major steel maker, to move its coal-fired smelters--and some 120,000 employees--to a small island in neighboring Hebel province. City officials also imposed tighter auto emissions standards two years ahead of national implementation. These measures have produced some success: Beijing’s air quality has improved, and the city claims it achieved 234 blue sky days in 2005. But air quality in January 2006 was the worst in six years, with only nine blue sky days reported.
The IOC’s choice of Beijing underscores the notion that environmental sustainability--while important--isn’t a deal breaker for host city selection. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Crawford says. “The Olympic Movement is global, the Games can’t always be held in the same continents. Beijing’s air quality is bad, so the Chinese are using the Olympics for a public environmental education campaign. They are keenly aware they have a problem; the Olympics can be a positive catalyst for change.” As for the Torino Winter Olympics, a full picture of its environmental performance is now emerging. Falt acknowledges some problems at Torino: for instance, bobsledding created environmental and sustainability challenges, he says. The bobsled track, which Falt describes as a “huge fridge in the mountains,” has a coolant system containing 48
tons of ammonia that could harm wildlife and human health if leaked. What’s more, the track’s annual maintenance cost of up to US$1.1 million will likely exceed visitor-generated revenue. On a more positive note, in a press release dated 1 March 2006, UNEP executive director Klaus Töpfer commended Torino for building skating rinks and other facilities in the city center to promote continued use. He also lauded efforts to limit erosion and runoff from ski slopes, and the use of renewable materials and energy-efficient systems in building construction.
The Carbon Counting Game
Two of the environmental programs employed by Torino’s OOC are particularly notable. One is its use of the European Union’s Eco-Management and Audit System, through which registered organizations in Europe evaluate, report on, and improve their environmental performance. Twenty-nine Olympic sites in Torino, including training facilities and buildings in the Olympic village, were built by companies registered with the system. The other notable program is Heritage Climate Torino, which strives to offset the estimated 300,000 tons of greenhouse gases released during the two-week event. According to Ugo Pretato, the Torino OOC head of environmental programs, the Regional Public Administration in Piedmont (the Italian province of which Torino is the capital) allocated approximately US$6 million for carbon credits linked to several greenhouse gas mitigation projects, including a reforestation project in Mexico,renewable energy projects in India and Sri Lanka, and an energy efficiency scheme in Eritrea. “The expectation is that Heritage Climate Torino will become more developed over time,” says Pretato. “We hope our example will be followed by other big sports events in the future.”
Offsetting carbon emissions from spectator events is a noble gesture, but also one that’s new and untested. An obvious question concerns the amounts of greenhouse gases that events like the Olympics actually produce. Quantifying them is no easy task, says Mark Bain, director of Cornell University’s Center for the Environment. “Do you count the extra flights, hotel stays, and changes in personal habits?” he asks. “It’s not just the spatial boundaries you have to consider, it’s also the downstream and upstream consequences to the carbon cycle. I think lots of organizations want to say they’re making up for their environmental effects, but most haven’t fully considered what this actually means.” For his part, Pretato says the Torino OOC counts all transportation to and from the Olympics, including air travel, in addition to energy consumption by all Torino venues and stadiums. Data collection is still ongoing, he says. The U.S. National Football League (NFL) also plays the carbon counting game. Seeking to offset the greenhouse gas emissions of Super Bowl XL, played 5 February 2006 in Detroit, the NFL consulted with scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratories and Princeton University, who concluded that an acre planted with 250 native Michigan trees would absorb 75 tons of carbon over the trees’ life span. The NFL ultimately planted 2,500 trees over 10 acres in Michigan to offset the Super Bowl’s carbon emissions, a number that Jack Groh, director of the NFL Environment Program, says far exceeded what was necessary to mitigate the game’s climate impact. Meanwhile, organizers with the 2006 World Cup, which overtakes Frankfurt, Germany, in June, are striving for “climate neutrality” (i.e., zero impact), which they hope to achieve by offsetting the expected 100,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions with investments in renewable energy and energy-efficient technology. Climate neutrality is just one aspect of the World Cup’s extensive environmental agenda, however. As described in Green Goal: Environmental Goals for the FIFA 2006 World Cup, published by the Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin, additional objectives are found in the areas
of water use, recycling, energy efficiency, and traffic mitigation. World Cup organizers and The Coca-Cola Company have agreed to use recyclable cups at the event. And rain will be channeled into storage systems designed to provide water for cleaning playing surfaces and parking lots, in addition to toiletry needs. Indeed, organizers plan to save as much as 10,000 cubic meters of drinking water by installing the latest in water-free urinals.
Major sports events like the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and the World Cup generate large environmental footprints over short durations. But what of the day-to-day sports played by billions of ordinary people? Many are environmentally benign. But others do have potentially serious environmental consequences. Here are some examples.
Skiing: A Slippery Slope
Skiing--a sport whose very existence is in some places threatened by global warming--can produce substantial environmental impacts. Ski slopes disrupt the natural landscape, sometimes harmfully so, according to Ryan Bidwell, executive director of Colorado Wild, a Durango-based environmental group. “Downhill ski terrain typically gets carved into ecologically sensitive high-alpine environments,” he explains. “And these areas have short growing seasons, so they aren’t quick to recover.” Trail building contributes to erosion because it removes trees and shrubs that anchor soils. Other negative impacts come from snow making, which could become more prevalent in some areas because of global warming. Snow making diverts natural waters, altering the normal flows of rivers and streams that supply the necessary water, and resulting in dry stream beds, effects on irrigation, and consequences for species that depend on stream flow.Some streams in Colorado and other western states are contaminated with acids and metals such as cadmium, copper, lead, and zinc--a legacy of the region’s mining industry. Snow made from these sources might contaminate otherwise pristine areas, Bidwell says.In one high-profile case, owners of the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort will soon make snow from treated wastewater. Their announcement of doing so drew a sustained outcry from the local Navajo population, which views the surrounding San Francisco Peaks as a sacred natural shrine. But these objections were overruled by U.S. District Court judge Paul Rosenblatt in January 2006, clearing the way for wastewater snow making to begin. Snowbowl officials say the wastewater poses no health risks, but caution skiers against eating the snow, which--according to the resort’s website--contains residues from “animals, litter, boots, saliva, petroleum products, etc.”
Another key issue concerns the ongoing expansion of western ski resorts on public lands. In these cases, resorts expand until they buttress private land boundaries, attracting the development of multimillion-dollar homes built by those who can pay for residential slopeside access. Construction of these homes in delicate high-alpine areas brings numerous problems, however, including erosion, air emissions, impacts to endangered species, and water withdrawals.
To improve their environmental performance, 178 U.S. resorts have endorsed the National Ski Areas Association’s Sustainable Slopes Initiative, a collection of environmental best practices for ski owners and operators that was adopted in June 2000. The initiative promotes 21 principles in areas such as planning design, water and energy use, recycling, air quality, and forest management. A total of 71 resorts also participate in “Keep Winter Cool,” an initiative sponsored by the National Ski Areas Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council that promotes energy efficiency in ski operations and also supports anti-climate change legislation. While notable, these initiatives have critics who counter that they don’t go far enough.
Bidwell, for instance, blasts the Sustainable Slopes Initiative, suggesting it does little to address secondary impacts from land development and the destructive consequences of snow making, which he says pose the greatest environmental damage from skiing. “The charter has no accountability and no system to document whether resorts follow through on any of their proposals,” he adds.To counter these perceived gaps, the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition, also based in Durango, produces an annual “Ski Areas Environmental Scorecard,” which grades 77 resorts on their performance in areas such as energy efficiency, reduced habitat impacts, and efforts to expand operations within existing area boundaries. In the 2005/2006 scorecard, the coalition reported that only 50% of resorts supported legislation to combat climate change. Just 21% used alternative fuels such as biodiesel, 31% used wind or solar power, and 60% supported mass transit programs.
Teed Off at Golf
Many golfers prefer their courses to be blanketed in velvety green grass, regardless of where the course is sited, be it the beach, the desert, or a naturally lush locale. Golf courses thus must be intensively coddled with lots of water and lots of pesticides. Each of the more than 17,000 golf courses in the United States alone can consume hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day. And according to Stuart Cohen, president of the Wheaton, Maryland-based consultancy Environmental & Turf Services, golfing greens are among the most intensive nonagricultural users of pesticides. Cohen says approximately 50 pesticide active ingredients are commonly used by the golf industry, although the number typically used on any one course is much lower, ranging from 4 to 12 per year, depending on location. Among the chemicals used are chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide whose residential uses are banned by the EPA due to developmental hazards; carbaryl, a carbamate insecticide; and chlorothalonil,
an organochlorine fungicide. Despite high-level use, documented cases of environmental harm from pesticides on golf courses are rare. In one instance, dating back to the mid-1980s, hundreds of Canadian geese were found dead on the Seaway Harbor fairways in Hempstead, New York--apparently poisoned by diazinon, an organophosphate insecticide that was subsequently banned from golf course applications in 1990 and from all residential uses in 2005. Another organophosphate pesticide--fenamiphos--has produced fish kills when washed
into waterways from golf courses after heavy rains. Fenamiphos is now being phased out in Florida, where these fish kills have occurred, and a nationwide ban will be complete in 2007, Cohen says. Cohen has conducted the largest survey to date of water quality impacts from U.S. golf courses, which was published in the May-June 1999 issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality. This review of 17 studies performed on 36 golf courses found little evidence of environmental harm, however. Cohen wrote, “None of the authors of the individual studies concluded that toxicologically significant impacts were observed,” but he also concluded that “there are major gaps in this review, particularly in the mid-
continent area.” He is now updating and expanding this survey with funding from the U.S. Golf Association and the Golf Course Superintendent Association of America. Cohen believes that when properly applied, golf course pesticides pose a low risk of exposure to players and nearby residential populations. This is in part, he says, because turf is a dense “living filter” with a thatch underlining that not only grips pesticides but also prevents them from leaching into groundwater. The turf system is also microbially active, and thus tends to degrade pesticides.
Water conservation is perhaps a more pressing problem for golf courses, and many
facilities are trying to conserve. According to the 2001 report Water Right: Conserving Our Water, Preserving Our Environment, published by the International Turf Producers Foundation, the U.S. Golf Association has spent more than $18 million since 1982 seeking solutions to environmental issues related to golf, including the development of new grasses that require less water and pesticides, improved irrigation techniques, and use of alternative water sources, such as treated wastewater and storm runoff collected in storage ponds.
NASCAR: The New Baseball
NASCAR racing is the fastest growing sport in America. In 2004, a total of 3.5 million fans watched races sponsored by NASCAR (the National Association of Stock Car Racing). Once concentrated mainly in the Deep South, NASCAR now lays claim to audiences throughout the United States, and even in Mexico. While a day at the races might seem like good clean fun, NASCAR can also produce significant environmental problems, including noise pollution, polluted runoff from tracks and parking lots, and reliance on an old health villain: leaded gas.
Although the EPA phased leaded gas out of the consumer market more than 30 years ago, its use in stock cars has gone on with the agency’s blessing--an exemption was written into the Clean Air Act. Lead lubricates engines, helping them run smoothly, but it’s also a neurotoxicant that can lower IQ, particularly among young children.
And a bit about having God on your side…
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/37193/
Onward Christian Shortstops The Colorado Rockies make a noble—if problematic—plan for winning. Collin Hansen
It's not every day you see the Colorado Rockies on the front page of USA Today. The Rockies last reached the playoffs in 1995—their first and only postseason appearance. Actually, they're not even that great this year. After losing Tuesday night, the Rockies dropped to 27-25. Not bad, but not exactly above-the-fold material.But the Rockies didn't make the front page of America's most-read newspaper for their on-field success. Apparently Colorado's favorite baseball team has a new strategy for winning—signing and developing high-character Christian players. Now that's a front-page story.
Rockies officials insist they don't only sign Christian players. But team CEO Charlie Monfort did say that Christians closely match their standards for behavior. USA Today reported that the Rockies clubhouse shows no hint of the pornography and obscene music common among other ballclubs. The club hopes to avoid the embarrassment they endured in 2004, when pitcher Denny Neagle was charged with soliciting a prostitute. Rockies executives prefer the team to be known for players such as Todd Helton, a mainstay at first base, and Matt Holliday, a promising young outfielder, both of whom regularly attend chapel and Bible studies.The team seems to owe its emphasis on character to at least two factors. One, the Rockies were once the toast of Denver, selling out all their games at beautiful Coors Field. But years of losing grated on fans, and many stopped coming. The team appeared to have little idea how to manage high-scoring games altered by the thin mountain air. Now the Rockies hope high-character players will build team unity, improve effort, and lead to more wins. Plus, it can't hurt among Colorado's sizable evangelical community to feature a team of clean-living ballplayers. The other factor might be more significant. Monfort, the CEO, and manager Clint Hurdle told USA Today they became Christians three years ago. Monfort abandoned a party lifestyle that had landed him 18 months of probation for driving while impaired. Interviewed by USA Today, Hurdle made no effort to cover up his team's Christian zeal. "We're not going to hide it," he said. "We're not going to deny it. This is who we are." Rockies general manager Dan O'Dowd was more wary. "We're nervous, to be honest with you," he said. "It's the first time we ever talked about these issues publicly. The last thing we want to do is offend anyone because of our beliefs." O'Dowd can expect some backlash. Some will charge that no matter what he claims, the team discriminates against non-Christians. They will resent clubhouse pressure to conform with Christian values and attend Christian gatherings. USA Today ran a fair,
balanced, mostly positive story about the Rockies. But the editors didn't put this on the front page to encourage other teams to adopt the Rockies model.
This story plays into fears of undue Christian influence on American institutions—including the national pastime. Last year, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig moved quickly to condemn remarks by Washington Nationals outfielder Ryan Church, who spoke to a chaplain about how Jews must believe in Jesus in order to be saved. Baseball's keepers have no interest in fostering dialogue on the exclusivity of Christ.I can't say I blame them. I'm all for what the Rockies are doing. It's nice to see good guys rewarded, and I'll be rooting for them in the NL West standings from now on. Nevertheless, theology in the hands of baseball professionals can be a dangerous thing. "You look at things that have happened to us this year," O'Dowd told USA Today. "You
look at some of the moves we made and didn't make. You look at some of the games
we're winning. Those aren't just a coincidence. God has definitely had a hand in this." Pitcher Jason Jennings said, "They do preach character and good living here. It's a must for them, and that starts from the very top. But we're not a military group. Nobody is going to push their beliefs on each other or make judgments. We do believe that if you do things right and live your life right, good things are going to happen."Far be it from me to challenge God's providence. God's hand is everywhere—even at Coors Field. And Proverbs offers plenty of affirmation for Jennings's viewpoint. I just don't know how to square these beliefs with the other side. Baseball, like life in general or Christianity in particular, isn't so simple. What do we make of players who cheat, win titles, make gobs of money, and never get caught? And what about Christian athletes who can't ward off injuries, never play for winning teams, and suffer teammate ridicule for their faith? Finally, if this character strategy doesn't result in continued winning, will the Rockies abandon the plan?
This is where the metaphor for baseball as life breaks down. God does not promise that our good behavior will reap financial rewards—or wins. He does not promise to protect us from suffering—or injuries. He promises much more for his people—that justice will ultimately be done, that if we remain faithful, we will live with him and enjoy him forever.
Collin Hansen is an associate editor of Christianity Today.
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The Meaning of the Sports Spectacle: A Review of Welcome to the Terrordome
by Ron Jacobs / June 5th, 2007
Dave Zirin loves sports. He is also one of sports’ sharpest critics. And he’s pretty damn funny. His newest book Welcome to the Terrordome (Haymarket 2007) exhibits all of these traits. It is a critical and unrelenting look at the place sports has played and continues to play in these United States and around the world. Zirin borrows the title of course from Public Enemy, the premier political hiphop group of all time (with KRS One and BDP a close second) and he opens the book with a look back on the terrordome that was the New Orleans Superdome in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You remember the stories coming out of there about murders and rapes — stories that proved to be false. However, do you remember the origins of the Superdome in the destruction of a working
class section of New Orleans — ethnic cleansing as urban renewal? In case you didn’t, Dave Zirin reminds you of the ugly role money and greed played in that construction project. He goes further, critiquing the continuing construction of sports stadiums with public monies while the nation’s educational and social services infrastructure disintegrates into nothingness.
And that’s just the beginning. Naturally, Zirin addresses racism in sports. Indeed, it is his contention that sports is where the US struggles with race are played out on a daily basis. To make his point, he discusses the manipulation of hiphop culture by the National Basketball Association (NBA) to gain new fans only for that to be followed by a nasty attack on the culture’s street roots. He also writes about the great baseball player Roberto Clemente’s antiracist attitudes and the globalized racism inherent in Major League Baseball’s (MLB) recruitment of Latin American and Caribbean players while the overall African-Americans presence in the sport continues to decline-not because of the rise of
Latino players but because of MLB’s decision to go where the talent is cheaper and easy to manipulate. Then, of course, there’s Barry Bonds who is, according to some people the bogeyman of professional baseball because he may have used steroids. As Zirin points out, there are many other players not named Barry Bonds who have admitted using steroids and they don’t get half the grief Bonds does. To be fair, Barry isn’t by most accounts the most pleasant man, but that is no reason to treat him like the Boston Strangler. Zirin rightly argues that MLB and the team owners are as much (if not more) to blame for the steroid era in professional baseball as any player or group of players. Whenever I think on the role of race in US sport, I go back to the opening pages of Ralph Ellison’s masterpiece The Invisible Man. It is there that we find Ellison’s protagonist — a nameless African-American man — in a room filled with cigar smoke and fat white men drinking alcohol. The white men are there to be entertained. They tell the the narrator (Ellison’s invisible man) and a few other black youths to don blindfolds and boxing gloves. A naked white woman with a US flag painted on her body dances in the room. The youths than proceed to fight each other for the white men’s entertainment in what is termed a “battle royal.” In the final round the invisible man, loses to the victor. The white men then throw a bundle of coins on the floor and the youths scramble for the money, only to discover that there is an electric current running through the rug that shocks the youths over and over and that the coins are not gold, but brass tokens advertising a car
dealer. In other words, they have no value, despite their prettiness, much like the fancy cars and shiny bling worn by many of today’s professional athletes.
Welcome to the Terrordome is a book that describes and analyzes the real world version of Ellison’s “battle royal.” Young men of color seem to dominate most professional sport at the major league level, yet the paying audience in most stadiums and coliseums is white and reasonably well off. The coins thrown at them are many, but they come with a downside. While it is not an electrical current, it is a demand that these athletes keep quiet and, in the NBA (and the Yankees), wear suits. It’s not that wearing a suit is a big deal, but the demand that these young men and women not speak their minds runs counter to the American illusion of free speech. The few that do speak out run the risk of
not only ticking off their employer, but losing their job and ending up far away from the highlight reels.Yet, there are those that do risk their current gig as ballplayers. It is these men and women that Zirin champions throughout his book. These are his heroes. Men and women who play games well but also stand for something more than good statistics and bling. He writes about people from the past like Roberto Clemente and Jim Bouton and current players like Etan Thomas of the Washington Wizards and Sheryl Swoopes of the WNBA’s Houston Comets. These and other like-minded athletes are anything but invisible.The late Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once said something to the effect that sports journalism is the only place in journalism where a writer could use techniques
more familiar to fiction. Dave Zirin’s writing takes the essence of Thompson’s thoughts on sportswriting and succeeds dramatically. In addition, his humor and leftist politics only enhance the points about modern sports Zirin wants to make. My son, who is one of the biggest sports fans that I know, will get a copy of this book. So will a friend or two who tell me that they could care less about sports, since there’s a political struggle to be won. In the Hegelian framework, Zirin’s book is the perfect synthesis for all of them.
That’s all folks
Colin
