Michael Serazio - The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture

Michael Serazio

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

www.nyupress.org

2019 by New York University

All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Serazio, Michael, author.

Title: The power of sports : media and spectacle in American culture / Michael Serazio.

Description: New York : New York University Press, [2019] | Series: Postmillenial pop | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018037667 | ISBN 9781479887316 (cl : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH : Mass media and sportsUnited States. | SportsUnited StatesSociological aspects. | Sports in popular cultureUnited States.

Classification: LCC GV742 .S47 2019 | DDC 070.449796dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037667

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Also available as an ebook

For Lucy, future Padres fanyou are our greatest blessing and we root for you above all

Ignoring [mediated sports] today would be like ignoring the role of the church in the Middle Ages or ignoring the role of art in the Renaissance; large parts of society are immersed in [it]... and virtually no aspect of life is untouched by it.

Michael Real, sports scholar

We recognize that sport is the religion of the western world... So we decided to use the Olympics, the most sacred ceremony of this religion, to make the world pay attention to us.

Black September Organization on its 1972 Munich Games attack

Toward the end of my grandfathers life, we did notbeyond geneticshave a great deal in common. He was six decades older and lived 2,500 miles west, on the other side of the country. But I loved him dearly, yearned to connect, and wanted to have something to talk about when I dialed him up every few weeks. So we talked, as many men do, about sports. Specifically, we talked about what, besides family, might have been the last vessel that united us in faith and love: our hometown San Diego Chargers.

We harrumphed about local sportswriters pulling their punches in covering a perennially disappointing franchise; griped about team ownership trying to shake down taxpayers for a sweetheart stadium deal; and lamented the infestation of advertising that was consuming sports media. But we also reminisced fondlystories of my grandfather taking my uncles to games at the old Balboa Park field and my own dim, sweet memories of the 1994 season. Whenever I was back in town, I felt an inexplicable urge to pick up a cap or a shirt with the lightning bolt logo on it. After my grandmother passed, I recall my mother remarking that fall seemed to go faster for Pops because football was in season; it got him through the week and filled the days with something to think about and look forward to. I suspect that, though the details will vary for other teams fans, the fundamental texture of this ambivalenceeconomics and culture pulling us in different directionswill feel true and familiar. What mattered most is that my grandfather and I were talking, period. Nowadays, that is no small accomplishment.

In an era of cultural fragmentation, political polarization, and the relentless distraction that comes with living amidst media abundance, sport represents one of the last institutions of unifying mass ritualbringing together enormous audiences, focused on the present, live moment. In that, it retains a timeless totemic cultural power long ago revealed to be at the core of religious worship, but given new import in the DVR and smartphone age. Yet, conversely, that power is being strained, co-opted, and artificially manufactured. A variety of media convergence trends are revolutionizing the way that sports are packaged for us: an explosion in opinion-oriented, hot take journalism formats; branded content commercializing and corrupting new frontiers; and social media accelerating news cycles and displacing traditional gatekeepers. And becausenot in spiteof its escapist value and its (allegedly) apolitical sheen, sports can smuggle in powerful but subtle ideological messages about inequality, war, and labor, even as signs of racial activism reemerge. Simultaneously, the shifting dynamics of gender roles and masculine power, writ large across society, are being reflected in the experiences of female sports journalists, the coverage of violence against the male body, and the ascendance of analytics as a labor ideal.

Through in-depth interviews with dozens of high-profile leaders and professionals in sports media and journalism as well as those in the business and marketing of sports, The Power of Sports explores, maps, and critiques the cultural production of todays lucrative, ubiquitous sports landscape. The book is about how sports explain and reflect life in contemporary American culture: our spiritual experience, technological disruption, commercial greed, economic disparity, military hawkishness, and manhood ideals. If we hold up a mirror to sports, we see the realities of the nation staring back at usdespite what those myths of escapism might like to suggest.

At my grandfathers funeral, my cousin brought up to the altar a faded blue Chargers hat that Pops had worn for many years, and it rests today on my aunts fireplace mantle as a reminder of him. Sport thus helps us endure in every sense of the wordexistentially, palliativelybut it does so at an enormous cost and without navet among stakeholders about the value and purpose of the spectacle. This book is an attempt to understand that medium, that social glueits causes and consequences: economic, political, and cultural. Many of these dimensions and issues of sports power have held true for decadeseven centuriesbut the subject feels newly urgent today given the transformations both within and beyond: the media evolution, market necessity, and ideological consequence embedded in the games and the wider societal upheaval, discontent, and contestation that swirls beyond the boundaries of simple play. As former NBA commissioner David Stern told me:

Its a natural flowing dynamic: You build a building where 18-to-20,000 perfect strangers come together for the communal purpose of rooting the home team onto victory, where people who sometimes dont even know each other are high-fiving a spectacular shot or a winning performance. As life gets more impersonal, as we retreat into our homes and we getwe order our food, we get our EKG, we buy our cars, we do a tremendous amount from the comfort of our smart devices in a chair at homethe last places that people are likely to gather are going to be... houses of worship and houses of sports worship. No doubt about it.

The spectacle is, simply put, big-time. Perhaps the defining feature of sports culture over the last quarter-century has been how it has ballooned in slow motion before our eyes: more interest, more outlets, more money. Ours is an age of sporting excess right down to the amount of statistical information that now crawls across the ticker updates during TV broadcasts. Depending on which estimate one consults, the global sports industry is pegged somewhere between $200 and $700 billion.