On Not Watching the Super Bowl or (Much of) the Olympics

While I have no desire to put a damper anyone’s enjoyment of today’s Super Bowl or this month’s Olympic Games, let me share with you some reasons why I won’t be watching the Super Bowl or much of the Olympics.

What’s Wrong with the Super Bowl?

In January 2015, I posted an article titled “Super Bowl Idolatry.” I don’t need to repeat what I wrote then, although I would be happy for you to read (or re-read) that here. I still think about the same as I did three years ago—although now I am having serious thoughts about not watching any NFL games next season. 

One major reason for giving up watching football is the “violence” that is part of the game. In the first half of their last game of the season, it was painful to see Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end, get up wobbly and helped off the field after a hard hit caused his second concussion in three months.

So, in addition to my objection to the over-hyped, over-commercialized, “idolatrous” nature of the Super Bowl, also because of the violent nature of the game that injuries skillful athletes such as Kelce, who is just one of many, I will not be watching again this year.

What’s Wrong with the Olympics?

But what's wrong with the Olympics, whose participants are amateurs rather than over-paid professionals? Well, I’ve written some about that before, too, and I invite you to read “Questioning the Olympics,” the article I posted (here) on Feb. 15, 2010.

Added to the misgivings I had then, there is now the sordid story of the sexual abuse of U.S. Olympic female gymnasts by the team physician. More than 150 women accused the doctor of sexual abuse, but he was not sentenced until this year although charges against him go back to 1997.

And then there is the Tonya Harding story. I haven’t seen the new movie about her, but I do remember the sordid events involving her prior to the 1994 Winter Olympics. It seems that she was psychologically abused by her mother, partly to get her into the Olympics.

The pressure on (especially?) girls to get into the Olympics and to win a medal is so strong that psychological abuse is largely overlooked, and even the response to sexual abuse has been shamefully slow.

Isn’t North Korea’s Participation Good?

One of the noteworthy aspects of this month’s Olympic Games is the participation of North Korea. For athletes from both North and South Korea to march in together under one flag and for the Korean women’s ice hockey team to have players from both countries is remarkable and perhaps a sign of hope. But maybe not.

I would like to be as positive about this as the college student who wrote “The Olympic Truce: Giving peace a chance,” a Jan. 31 piece posted on the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Sadly, I think that North Korea’s “Olympics rapprochement” is likely to be a “global scam,” as explained in this Jan. 24 article on The American Conservative website.

As you regular readers know, I don’t usually cite TAC (or agree with most of their articles), but I’m afraid the author may be right in this case: Kim’s action is likely “a ruse . . . designed to give North Korea more time to get to the only thing it really does want: a nuclear weapon.”

So, sadly, these are some of the reasons I won’t be watching the Super Bowl today or (much of) the Olympics this month. 

Race and the Olympics

The Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, opens today in Rio de Janeiro. There have been many challenges with Brazil’s hosting of these Games, but none as momentous as those surrounding the Olympics held in Berlin, Germany, 80 years ago this month. 

Many of you likely remember hearing about the 1936 Olympics, mainly because of the outstanding feats of Jesse Owens from the United States.

Last month June and I watched “Jesse Owens,” the DVD of the 2012 “American Experience” PBS documentary about the great African American athlete. The next night we watched “Race,” the 2016 movie about Owens’s life and achievements. 

In the latter, the winsome Stephan James plays Owens, and while the actor may be more handsome than Owens was, he is no more winsome. It was a joy to watch the actual movie clips of Owens in the PBS program. 

For those of you haven’t seen either film, I recommend both—and viewing them close together, if possible.

You can easily find biographical information about Owens (1913-80), so I won’t give much of that here. In addition to the Wikipedia article, for an informative, easy-to-read book I recommend Tom Streissguth’s Jesse Owens (2006).

Because of his athletic feats, Jesse was able to go to Ohio State University. Not unexpectedly, he faced much racism there as well as when going to and participating in Big Ten track meets. Still, partly due to Larry Snyder, his outstanding coach and mentor, he also excelled on the college level, setting four world records on one May day in 1935. 

It was no surprise that Jesse made the U.S. Olympic Team chosen to compete in the 1936 Olympics. Because of Hitler’s policies, however, there was a move in the U.S. to boycott those Games. Largely due to the efforts of Avery Brundage, the U.S. ended up not boycotting the Berlin Olympics.

Even then, an official of the NAACP tried to get Jesse to back out of going to Berlin. However, according to Streissguth, many black athletes “didn’t believe the United States should boycott the games. African Americans experienced racial discrimination every day. Why should the United States have the right to protest the same thing in a foreign country?” (p. 44). 

Thus, Jesse Owens went to Berlin—and sprinted and jumped magnificently. On August 9 he won his fourth gold metal—much to the consternation of Hitler and other top Nazi leaders, who were expounding the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of all other races as well as the Jews. 

Owens was snubbed by Hitler in Berlin and then, sadly, after he returned to the U.S. even by President Roosevelt. Partly for that reason, Owens became a Republican and campaigned for Alf Landon in 1940.

Many years later, at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, U.S. sprinters Tommy Smith and John Carlos won the gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter dash. On the winners’ podium, Smith and Carlos raised their fists in protest of Apartheid in South Africa and racial segregation in the United States. 

In his book Blackthink (1970), Owens tells how he was very negative about what Smith and Carlos did (see pp. 75-80). Harry Edwards calling him a “bootlicking Uncle Tom” (ibid., p. 13), though, caused him to do a lot of soul-searching, which he narrates in his intriguing last book, I Have Changed (1972).

While race may not be an issue for the black U.S. athletes in Rio this month, it is sad that some still in 2016 have to insist that Black Lives Matter.

“Jiko Manzoku”

The World Cup matches currently being held in Brazil started on June 12 and the final match between Argentina and Germany will be in Rio de Janeiro on July 13.

Perhaps, like me, you don’t know or care a lot about soccer. And many of you may be more interested in the upcoming games of the XXXI Olympiad, the Olympics that will also be held in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2016.

Ninety years ago, back in the summer of 1924, the Olympic Games were held in Paris. Many of you probably have seen “Chariots of Fire,” the British historical drama film about the ’24 Olympics.

That movie, which won the Academy Award for the best picture of 1981, is partly about Eric Liddell, the “Flying Scotsman.”

Liddell was born in China in 1902, the son of Scottish missionary parents. Eric became an outstanding athlete at Edinburgh University, excelling at rugby as well as track.

His best event was the 100-meter dash, and he was selected to run that event for the 1924 British Olympic team. He was greatly disappointed, though, when he heard that the qualifying heat for the 100 meters was going to be held on Sunday.

As a devout Christian, he believed that to engage in an athletic event on Sunday was to violate the Commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy. He refused to compromise.

So rather than competing on Sunday, later that week, on July 11, he ran the 400-meter race—and surprisingly won the gold medal, breaking the world record.

The following year, in 1925, Liddell became a missionary to China. He was ordained as a Christian minister on his first furlough in 1932.

Then in 1943 he was forced into a Japanese internment camp in China, dying there in February 1945 of an inoperable brain tumor and malnutrition.

Liddell was certainly a man of great talent, winsome personality, and deep Christian faith. But to be honest, I have mixed feelings about his refusal to compete in an Olympic event because it was on Sunday.

On the one hand, I generally admire people who stand up for, and act on, their Christian convictions. But it depends on what those convictions are and whether standing up for them enhances or detracts from one’s Christian witness.

In Japan I often heard the term “jiko manzoku,” translated into English as “self-satisfaction.” “Jiko manzoku” is often used in criticism of people who do things that don’t particularly help anyone or anything but just makes them feel good about themselves.

Back in the 1980s, I heard a preacher tell how when traveling on Sunday night, if necessary, he would wait at a service station until after midnight to buy gas because he didn’t think it was right to make purchases on Sunday.

He now laughs at his previously held belief and accompanying actions.

I’m sure he felt very “righteous” about living by his convictions then—but no doubt it was mostly a matter of “jiko manzoku.” It didn’t particularly help anyone else.

Jesus wasn’t big on keeping the Sabbath when it came to matters that were about “jiko manzoku.” But he was big on loving others and helping to meet their needs: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, lifting up the fallen, and forgiving sinners.

Liddell also served others as a missionary. His life and work in China is far more praiseworthy than what he did, and didn’t do, in Paris in July 1924.

Questioning the Olympics

I am writing this while waiting for, and then while watching some of, the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. While I was jogging earlier today I was thinking about the games starting today and began pondering some of the questions I have had about the Olympics for quite some time.

As a (rather moderate) sports fan, I certainly enjoy watching the tremendous skill(s) of the Olympic athletes, and the close competition make for a lot of interesting TV viewing. But there are lingering questions.

Although many, including my wife, disagree, it seems to me the Olympics fosters nationalism, and like most “isms,” that is not something needed in the world today. Of course, the Berlin Olympics of 1936 are infamous for strengthening the Nazi movement in Germany. By allowing only members of the Aryan race to compete for Germany, Hitler promoted his ideological belief of racial supremacy. That promotion was helped by the German athletes winning the most gold medals and the most total medals, by far.

A second is concern is the amount of time and resources that goes in to producing an Olympic medal winner. For the individual athlete, there is often such a concentration on the practicing of skills needed to exceed that it is difficult for them to develop a well-rounded life. Perhaps has been/is especially true in countries like the former Soviet Union and China where winning medals was/is often used for nationalistic propaganda.

As for the expenses involved, I recently read where a U.S. Olympic swimmer spent at least $100,000 a year preparing for the last summer Olympics. That is, no doubt, an extreme, but there are certainly great costs involved in training to be an Olympic athlete. And that is one of the reasons most medals are won by athletes from the most affluent countries in the world—or by athletes subsidized by public funds.

And then there is the problem of all countries, regardless of size or wealth, competing in the same contests. This seems to be unfair to the smaller and poorer countries. In interscholastic athletic competition, there are leagues largely based on the size of the schools. High schools with 200 students don’t compete with high schools of 2,000 students, and small colleges, like William Jewell here in Liberty with 1,000 students, don’t compete with the large state universities, like Missouri U. with 24,000 students. But in the Olympics, every country competes in the same contests. So, again, no wonder, most medals are won by the bigger countries.

For many other problems and issues, many particularly related to the current Olympic Games in Vancouver, see "Why We Resist the 2010 Winter Olympic" at http://no2010.com/node/18.