It's only a game--if only it could be. But it is far too obvious to point out sport is more than just a game, as it far too easy to insist that sport is simply capitalism's way of life. While sports players may very well "parody freedom in their readiness for service" to an irrational order, Adorno's ceaseless aphorisms won't allow for the admission that subjectivity is never so restricted as to be subject to Selective Services. Adorno's style was exaggeration: very little of modern cultural phenomena were spared his critique, which was, as theorist of sport John Hoberman tells us, "unsparing and ingenious in its range of abuse."¹¹ While the above account might lead one to believe Adorno's abuse is far more unsparing than it is ingenious, there is something to keep in mind: the 1950s were not all that Adorno had weathered, having spent the 40s in the United States as a German Jew in exile from the Nazis. If one considers the role it plays in any dictatorial regime, sport is as guilty of barbarism as Adorno is of exaggeration: "Only in the totalitarian terror-states," he maintained, "does [the technical world of things] appear as what it really is:¹² "the direct servant of domination.

This sort of explanation might also too easy, as Adorno was not simply a German Jew. So to be safe, let us just assume for a second, with Adorno, that "sport itself is not play but ritual in which the subjected celebrate their subjection;" that sport is a sado-masochistic ritual in which, as he says, "one can play the master by inflicting the original pain upon oneself and others again symbolically through a kind of compulsive repetition." Who is to say there is not value to that? Another intellectual, French rather than German, Michel Foucault, who in his day was no stranger to the leather bars of San Francisco, spoke of his own experience with S/M:

On this point the S/M game is very interesting because it is a strategic relation, but it is always fluid. Of course there are roles, but everybody knows that those roles can be reversed. Sometime the scene begins with the master and slave, and at the end the slave has become master. It is an acting out of power structures by a strategic game that is able to give sexual pleasure or bodily pleasure.¹³

Foucault's idea of fun certainly is not everyone's cup of tea, as I am sure he would admit; thus it is important not to lose the point in the specifics. The point being that not all power is domination; not all power is pain. While a certain power--domination--ends at the Head of State, another form--resistance--runs circles around it. As it matters to a degree that Adorno was a German Jew, that I'm a white guy from an American suburb 15 miles northeast of Seattle, it very much depends on who is playing the game. My memories of sport--and Adorno's, I hasten to add--would be much different if I were, say, a woman;¹⁴ a Marxist cricket player in Trinidad; or a Zapatista footballer in the province ¹⁵of Chiapas, Mexico.¹⁶

This is not to deny that often times, sport is just a time-out from the reality of domination. After all, as long capitalism and the State are with us, "children from disadvantaged areas," like Ike, won't be getting their wishes anytime soon; nor will they, unlike Ike, ascend to the presidency. But State or no State, capitalism or no capitalism, sport is safe at home. Not every sporting event exists for the Superbowl or the South Lawn. Or, as they say, it's not whether you win or lose, its how you play the game.

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Notes:

¹ “Transcript: White House Press Briefing, Friday, March 30, 2001” http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/peace/archives/2001/march/0331b.html

² A footnote for unbelievers: simply do a Google image search for Nancy Reagan and Mr. T for copious examples.

³ Byron York. “Bush to a ‘Tee:’ The president’s most heartfelt values initiative.” National Review, Sept. 3, 2001; “Tee Ball on the South Lawn” Program, June 23, 2002; David Plotz. “Bush League.” Slate.

⁴ Theodor Adorno. “Schema of Mass Culture.” The Culture Industry (New York: Routledge, 2002), 90

⁵ Andrei S. Markovits and Steven L. Hellerman Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism. (Princeton University Press, 2001), 271.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Adorno. “Schema of Mass Culture,” 89.

⁸ “Presidents and Baseball”.

⁹ Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 67.

¹⁰ Thomas Frank. “Down and Out in the Red Zone” in The Baffler, Vol. 1 No. 15, 3.

¹¹ John Hoberman. Sport and Political Ideology (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1984), 245.

¹² Theodor Adorno. “Veblen’s Attack on Culture.” Prisms (London: Neville Spearman, 1967), 86.

¹³ Quoted in Lydia Alex Fillingham, Foucault for Beginners (New York: Writers and Readers, 1993), 150.

¹⁴ Joli Sandoz and Joby Winans, eds., Whatever It Takes: Women on Women's Sport (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).

¹⁵ C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (Duke University Press, 1993).

¹⁶ Subcomandante Marcos and Massimo Moratti, “Zapatista Soccer,” Znet.