Pigskins et Circenses – The American conservative

Last weekend, video surfaced of eager Dallas Cowboys fans running into AT&T Stadium posted on X by Jon Machata, covering the Cowboys for the athletic The scene looked more like one of those Black Friday videos of shoppers trying to scramble to save a few bloated dollars on a flat screen TV.

Commentators were quick to point out that the reason for the frenzy was that AT&T Stadium has a lot of standing-room-only seating that is first-come, first-served, making the behavior even more “reasonable “.

The Latin phrase “bread and circuses,” or “bread and circuses,” is usually used whenever crowds and entertainment are mixed; there is no exception here. The bread and circuses of Imperial Rome are usually presented by historians and commentators as palliative distractions meant to keep the masses appeased and docile to maintain the popularity of the regime – a tool used by the powerful to keep the underclass happy.

However, it also makes one wonder whether “bread and circuses” are an inherent feature of imperial prosperity, rather than a to this solution promoted by the rulers of Rome. Two millennia ago, the resistant Romans were filled with “republicans virtue” they were able to defeat the Samnites and Carthaginians in a series of brutal and existential wars, paving the way for Rome to quickly sweep across the Mediterranean and bring great riches and exotic luxuries to the Eternal City. But, as happens throughout history, when men become rich, they become bored and quickly seek to fill their lives with basic entertainment and distraction. Look no further Petronius Satyricon, which is filled with scenes of lavish banquets and debauched orgies that look like they were taken from 2023 and not 63.

The US has shared a similar trajectory. Since the end of World War II, and even more so since the fall of the Berlin Wall, America has enjoyed levels of prosperity unknown in human history. The same spirit that animated the humble farmers and militiamen who took the field at Lexington and Concord also catapulted our country to such heights that our chief executive is known as “the leader of the Free World.”

But that same spirit is alive and well in modern men who spend hundreds of dollars and hours of their time (on a day that is supposed to be devoted to? rest) to get fat and watch grown men play ball, not to mention the countless other “distractions” in modern life: music, movies, and television? Doubtful This peculiar and excessive obsession with small distractions, and professional sports in particular, seems more like the behavior of a people fit to be conquered.

I grew up both playing and watching sports. As a native Clevelander, he was an ardent devotee of our proud history of losing. I remember getting into football before it was popular and trying my luck as a Liverpool fan. I remember setting up our fantasy football draft with my cousin and his friends, with football magazines and a giant whiteboard, before the internet streamlined the process.

However, between 2015 and 2018, coinciding with LeBron James’ return to Cleveland and the Indians’ renewed prospects—or so they said at the time—of finally winning a World Series, I found myself filling my free time with sports media, following the latest drama, keeping a close eye on the latest predictions, buying memorabilia, all while acquiring an encyclopedic knowledge of the players and stats only really useful to those who play and coach the game, but utterly useless to me. I wasn’t addicted, but it was something like addiction; Looking back, I could see how it could have easily consumed me and still consumes many of America’s youth.

A key saving grace was that I didn’t really have the means or inclination to combine sports with alcohol and gambling. Now, with the rise of sports betting and online betting that turn your smartphone into a glorified slot machine, I see a bleak future of countless debt-ridden youth trying to get by, drunkenly watching their favorite team lose, all while commercials and in-game ads condemn the “White Supremacy” and celebrate. trans athletes are interspersed among the units.

Covid came along and made me ask, “What’s the point?” Empty stadiums, politically motivated moralisms, and the name change of my beloved Indians wiped out any interest I had left in professional sports. At the time, newly married and locked in by lockdowns, I found raising a family, spending time with my wife, reading and praying to be more enjoyable and fulfilling activities than tuning in to the weekly sports game. With sports out of my life, Qoheleth’s words ring even truer than “all is vanity.”

Modern sports culture, while having its origins in America’s post-war prosperity, really serves as a palliative distraction for today’s youth. It doesn’t seem like past generations have ever had such a fixation on athletic competition, or the bloated media complex that surrounds it. Imagine if the time, treasure and talent invested in following sports were channeled into the pursuit of physical excellence, intellectual enrichment or holiness. In an echo of Plato, men might come out of the “man cave” and start asking each other “what are my children being taught”, “where does my tax money go”, “what do I eat exactly” instead of “who won the game last night?”

The danger this awakening would bring was best summed up recently by online personality Raw Egg Nationalist in the Tucker Carlson Original documentary. The end of men: “The globalists want you fat, sick, depressed and isolated. The better to control you and milk you for as much economic value as they can… Groups of well-ordered, disciplined, friendship-bound men, they are dangerous. Precisely because of what they can do. They can disrupt the status quo as well as this. A few hundred men can conquer an empire.”

Let’s hope a few hundred men can look away from one of our modern sirens, turn off the game, come out of the man cave and topple the “Big Sports” empire. As for me and my household, with one child and the potential for another (I’m not allowed to say yet), sports will continue to have a place. I can see myself tuning in to a major tennis match every now and then and still playing every once in a while. But I will prioritize playing instead of watching play sports with my boys. My kids will have saints and poets and conquerors to look up to instead of athletic talents, and they’ll learn to be good for its own sake, not because it makes you a good teammate or something.

After all, the memory of my father playing catch with me on an autumn eve is so incredibly vivid in my mind. However, my only vivid memory of the Cavaliers breaking Cleveland’s championship drought in 2016 was a friend asking me afterward, “Who cares?” I’m starting to think he was right.