February 7, 2022 • 30 mins
With the Super Bowl a week away, and the Olympics playing out now, Shanny invited Robert Sirabian, professor of English at UWSP, and Art Remillard, professor of Religious Studies at St. Francis University in Pennsylvania, to talk about sports, community, narrative, heroes, transcendence, and politics.
Readings referenced in this podcast:
- Arthur Remillard, "Steelers Nation and the Seriously Religious Side of Football," The Marginalia Review (2013).
- Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O'Connell, Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever. (2014).
- Howard Bryant, The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism. (2019)
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Send comments to nocureforcuriosity@outlook.com.
Our intro music was written by UWSP music student Derek Carden and our logo is by artist and graphic designer Ryan Dreimiller.
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Our intro music was written by UWSP music student Derek Carden and our logo is by artist and graphic designer Ryan Dreimiller.
You can send comments to nocureforcuriosity@outlook.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Shanny Luft (00:08):
Welcome to no cure for curiosity, a podcast for
curious people. I am ShannyLuft, associate professor of
religious studies and AssociateDean of general education and
honors at the University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point. No cure
for curiosity launched one yearago this month, and it's been my
attempt to promote and modelbroader curiosity in the liberal
(00:29):
arts. This upcoming season,. I'mgoing to explore my curiosity
along with my brilliantcolleagues in things like The
Matrix, and the Supreme Court,Dungeons and Dragons, slang, and
much more. But with the Olympicsupon us and the Super Bowl on
the way, I was getting curiousabout sports. So I invited a
professor of English and aprofessor of religion in America
(00:49):
who both write and teach aboutsports to join me. Art Remillard
is professor of religiousstudies at St. Francis
University in Pennsylvania,where he teaches courses on
Christian history, ethics,interfaith literacy, and post
apocalyptic literature. Art iscurrently finishing a book
manuscript tentatively entitledBodies in Motion: A Religious
History of sports in America,and he's already planning his
(01:11):
next book, asemi-autobiographical
exploration of his lifelongrelationship with distance
running. And my second guest isRobert Sirabian, professor of
English at UWSP, who teacheswriting and literature courses.
Robert's main teaching andresearch area is 19th century
British literature. He teaches asports and literature course as
well as a composition coursefocused on the theme of sports.
(01:34):
I started the conversation byasking Robert Sirabian about one
of the biggest sports stories ofthe last few months. The first
thing that came to mind isathletes and the Coronavirus
vaccine, athletes that won't getit or will get it or are
fighting about it. In the lastcouple days, the tennis player
Novak Djokovic, one of thegreatest tennis players, perhaps
(01:57):
of all time, refused to get thevaccine and had to, I think
forfeit a tournament. He waskicked out of Australia, because
of his vaccination status. KyrieIrving in the Brooklyn Nets.
Aaron Rodgers, of course, triedto skirt around the issue of
whether he was vaccinated. Butit came out that in fact, he was
not vaccinated. I was curiousabout what you make of these
vaccine or anti vaccine storiesin sports, does it connect to
(02:21):
either sports and narrative orsports and religion in ways that
either of you find interesting,
Robert Sirabian (02:26):
I think in part in sports with the tension
between freedom and structure,the way that sports, you know,
require that everybody followrules, but one of the paradoxes
of sports of games is that therules have to by necessity limit
freedom, and in order forcompetition to work. And so I
(02:47):
think that's -- part of that isthis, I think certain ath--, you
know, certain individuals,certain athletes, trying to push
even more generally just againstthe idea of rules that limit
what they do. The same way thatplayers try and bend rules for a
competitive advantage during agame. You know, what can they
get away with? How far can theypush and not get called? I think
(03:10):
that's a certainly a part of it.
And at the same time, there'sthe notion, I think, of going
along with the rules, goingalong with the vaccine
requirements, as part of a team,as being part of a community.
That -- you know, team sports,particularly like football, you
know, are not about oneindividual. They're a team
effort, a collaborative effort.
Shanny Luft (03:32):
Art, is there anything you want to add or any
thoughts you have about?
Arthur Remillard (03:35):
When we're talking about narratives, we're
talking about, how are westructuring our sense of good
and evil. How are we sense --structuring our sense of what
success is and what failure is,right? But then, once we
introduce the discussion ofCOVID, and vaccines, then we get
a whole different layer of teamallegiance. Am I Team
Vaccinated, or am I TeamUnvaccinated? The statement, I
(03:57):
am vaccinated, or I'm notvaccinated, aligns you with a
community who has an entirenarrative around their identity.
That then can connect all sortsof political topics and themes
and put you from a footballfield in a football game out
into this broader nationaldebate that's, that's funneled
(04:18):
and fueled by these competingtruth claims -- I'm saying truth
in quotes here.
Shanny Luft (04:24):
I mean, I think sports in some sense is
obviously reflecting where ourpolitical division is right now.
But then is that actuallygreater than it has in the past?
Have either of you thought aboutto what degree does sports
reflect political divisions inthe past? And to what degree is
this something new? Because noweverything that's divided by
politics (04:43):
what channel you watch, what movies you like,
what, you know, t-shirts youwear.
Arthur Remillard (04:47):
You know, in the 19th century, prior to the
Civil War, some of the biggestsporting events were horse races
between horses from the northand horses from the south.
Right? Regional rivalry was madeon the turf. And then it
continued after the war, butthere was also international,
you know, contests that weresimilar. So, you know, one of
(05:08):
the great boxers of Americanhistory is Tom Molineaux. And,
you know, the kind of legend is,is that he was born an enslaved
person, fought his way out ofenslavement, quite literally,
you know, won a match, and thenwent over to England to find
fame, and he fought Tom Cribb,and, and, and it was U.S., you
know, versus, versus England,right? In these these boxing
(05:28):
matches, not that long after therevolution. And so, you know,
our sporting places have alwaysbeen these kinds of proxies for
local, national, andinternational rivalries.
Robert Sirabian (05:41):
Just to jump in, too, of course, this is a
unique moment, right, becausethe Super Bowl is being played
during the Olympics. And so,right, I mean, I mean, the fact
that China is hosting theOlympics, and all, you know, the
the idea of at least adiplomatic boycott by the U.S.,
but even, you know,historically, the, you know, the
(06:02):
U.S. and the USSR and hockey,but, you know, I mean, even
during the Cold War, right, thethe Olympic -- there were always
those political rivalries, eventhough the Olympics were, at
least in theory, supposed to beapolitical, right? It's a chance
where the world competes, onequal footing, not on a
battlefield, but on a playingfield. That's another
(06:25):
interesting dimension, too.
Shanny Luft (06:27):
So, I've taught religion, pop culture, and
sports always comes up to somedegree. And the question that
students always want to talkabout is, are sports a religion?
Art, I'm curious, in yourteaching, or in your experience
with students, is that issue ofsports as religion has that come
up?
Arthur Remillard (06:42):
Oh, it's the first thing anybody ever asks
me? Right?
Shanny Luft (06:46):
Yeah.
Arthur Remillard (06:47):
The fir-, I mean, it's anytime I'm talking
to anybody, and they say, Oh,what are you writing? I'm
worrying about religion insports, the first thing they're
gonna say is something to theeffect of like, I had this
completely novel and unique ideathe other day, that football is
the new religion of America. Andand right, like, Everybody kind
of has this intuitive sense, and
Shanny Luft (07:04):
Yeah, I think that there's a couple of
things driving it. First, thereis the social trend of, you
know, a waning influence ofinstitutional religions in
American life. Right? We've seenthe numbers and, you know, the
lacking allegiances to toinstitutional religions. And
then you turn on your TV on aSunday, and see 120,000 people
watching a football game, youknow. It's the juxtaposition,
(07:28):
you know, one of my friendssays, that, he wrote a book
called The New Cathedrals as away of talking about the
building of these theseincredible sporting complexes
that we have all across acrossAmerica, right? That these are
our new cathedrals. But thenthere's also the fixation on the
curious things that people doaround sports that just don't
(07:49):
make any sense, except for thatcontext. And that has a kind of
religious feel to it, right? Sothere is this kind of residue
there that I think people justas I said, like they intuitively
see and they intuitively want tointerpret the activities that
they're seeing in these sportingevents through a religious lens.
(08:09):
I really like yourpoint about rules, even rules
around fighting, right? I don'tknow, you probably know the old
joke, I went to a fight and ahockey game broke out. Right?
So, hockey is a is a sport inwhich fighting -- it's as close
to part of the sport as like anysport other than like boxing.
Right? My son played ice hockeyfor one year. And even at his
(08:32):
age, he was like in elementaryschool, they did not have rules
that said, you absolutely can'tfight. It was more like, you
shouldn't fight. And I thought,you know, in other sports, we
just say you can't punch people.
We don't say, you should do yourbest to avoid it. That really
stood out to me as only inhockey are they, are they not
drawing that clear of a linebetween what the game is and
(08:55):
fighting? I don't know, Robert,you must have thought about this
with your interest in hockey.
Robert Sirabian (09:02):
Well, in hockey, that's again that when I
was talking about the blend ofaesthetics and violence, I mean
fighting is part of the game.
It's an integral part of thegame. Checking, the hitting,
because it's a way, right? Andwhen you're playing a team that
is a better skating team thanyou, let's say, it's a way that
you can nullify that advantage.
(09:22):
You can use the body, you cancheck, you can hit, fighting,
you know, it used to be, too,like, people have argued when
there was fighting in hockey itwas self-enforcing. So in other
words, if I'm a player, I'm notgoing to cheapshot someone,
because I know if I do, they'regoing to -- one of their guys is
going to come after me. And I'mgoing to pay the price for it.
(09:45):
And you know, some people arguethat with the -- adding more
stringent rules against it,you've now, you know, because
now it depends on a referee tocall it, you get more, you know,
slashing, high, you know,high-sticking, cross-checking,
and those kinds of things,trying to manipulate the rules,
because now it depends on thefact, you know, if the ref
doesn't see it, or you don't getcalled, you know, you're not
(10:06):
going to do it. But the rule --yeah, I think your point, too,
is interesting, because therules of games are not
necessarily logical in thenormal way we think of it.
They're designed to promote andenhance competition. And so
somebody -- you get theseseemingly odd rules, because
they're a way that you promotecompetition and keep the game
(10:26):
moving, keep the action moving,and not having just quick, easy
results.
Shanny Luft (10:30):
Right. And the rules are sometimes not written
down, but understood. There aresort of understood rules. And so
like my example of kids playingfreeze tag, the community has
agreed upon these rules, even ifthey don't consciously
articulate them. They can seewhen someone's gone too far, and
what amount of, of rule bendingthey're allowed to do.
Robert Sirabian (10:49):
Yeah, it'll sometimes even depend, you know,
teams players know, you know,because especially bate baseball
or more basketball, hockey, whenyou have the same referees,
because a number of games, youknow, they'll start to learn,
you know, what, rafts, you know,their sort of patterns for what
types of you know, how often andwhat type, they're going to call
(11:09):
penalties, and some are morestringent, and they'll know the
rest of they're more stringentknow, the ones that are, you
know, more lenient, and they'lltake advantage of that, too.
Shanny Luft (11:18):
It strikes me that the, that the vaccine issue
might be related to that rightthat some players might perceive
vaccines as bending the rules bynot getting a vaccine, and other
people see it as breaking therules, right? That's kind of
where the tension is, how muchof this rule are you required to
do? It's an example of wherethere's not an agreed upon set
(11:39):
of standards for what you arerequired to do, or some people
think they are hiring otherpeople have a different
perspective. Unlike in sports,where for the most part, I think
there are the expectations ofbehavior are clearly understood
whether they're written down ornot, I think
Robert Sirabian (11:53):
I think it's back to Art's point, too, is
that, you know, behavior thatwould never be -- that's just
simply not allowable in dailylife -- in sports, it's not --
you don't look at -- themorality ethics is not viewed
through the same lens. And soyou, again, a lot, some of that,
too, is within the structure ofcompetition. So it's looked at
(12:15):
not as bad behavior, but it'slooked at as the game when we
say the game within the game,it's part of the getting that
competitive edge. And so it'sunderstood. And even as a
player, you don't necessarilytake it personally, because
you're going to do it, too.
Arthur Remillard (12:30):
One of the things that I've noticed is in
sports, where violence is in theforefront, and even sports where
it isn't, but I'm just thinkingprizefighting boxing, in
particular MMA, maybe? Well,yeah, now MMA would be another
one is that there is a push andpull. Between the understanding
(12:54):
of this being a metaphor forlife. These are these are
physical and bloody, and you'vegot to put yourself out there
and and there's something heroicto this, or is this just
destructive? Is this destructiveto mind, body and spirit? And is
this distracting you from whatreally matters in life, so that,
(13:15):
you know that that idea that theviolence is really just preying
on our ID, sensibilities anddrawing us in and turning us
into our worst selves, is thekind of flip side of that. And
so there's this constant pushand pull, morally, that I've
(13:35):
seen, as I said, like prizefighting is the one place that
I've looked into distancerunning, believe it or not, is a
place where you see it,especially in the early 20th
century, right that, that, youknow, a young man dies training
for a marathon and everybody'slike, well, this is too much
this is damage to the body. Thisis violence to the body that
that's, that's unnecessary.
There was a great book a coupleyears ago from Steve Allman
(13:57):
called against football, and hewent into that in detail. And it
does bring up these moralquestions.
Robert Sirabian (14:05):
Even in hockey, you know, I think in the, you
know, even in, you know, therewere moments, she's in the 70s
and 80s, even where, you know,the violence was, it was really
just, it become too extreme. Imean, it was, you know, at times
gladiatorial combat, you know,in the guise of a game and you
know, it was necessary to limitthat, you know, at a certain
(14:28):
point you can't just wreck itrationalize it all the way by
saying it's part of the gameit's right to the game. So I
think that's important even ouryou know, your article on
Steelers nation toward the endwhen you talk about you know,
the state of the rap of Steelersbeing the dirtiest team, right?
I mean, again, I mean, at whatpoint you can't just you to look
at that and say well, no, that'snot okay. There are limits, you
(14:52):
know, even within so on, quote,unquote bending the rules where
it doesn't affect the integrityof the game. You know, I often
In class ask why, you know, whatstudents like? Why do we care
about, let's say in baseball,about doping? If it's just a
game, who cares? Right? So theseplayers are doing it not. And I
think I've always tried arguingthat, you know, we expect, in
(15:16):
all places, at least in sports,that sports get it, right.
Right, they're supposed to bebetter, because they are, in
essence, their own, they createtheir own structure, their,
their, their own space. And ifyou can't, if you can't get it
right, in sports, if you can atleast have honesty, and fairness
and equality in sports, thenwhat's the hope for the there's
(15:37):
no for the rest of society atall?
Shanny Luft (15:39):
The other issue you're bringing up? And I did
not mean to keep pulling in thevaccine question. But the issue
that connects to what you'reboth saying now, and that is the
question about role models. Sowe have the sense that athletes
are supposed to be role models,but like a lot of actors, they
don't want to be wrong,necessarily. That's not in fact,
why they chose this profession,or what why they do what they
(16:03):
do, but we project onto them anexpectation of behavior that is
sometimes unrealistic, maybeoften unrealistic, about how we
expect people to behave.
Arthur Remillard (16:15):
This is an interesting topic to me, right?
What constitutes a hero, whatconstitutes a flawed hero, what
constitutes a fallen hero, a lotof the mythmaking that happens
around hero making is driven bycommerce is driven by our
markets. So if we're talkingabout Michael Jordan, yeah, he
is he is a phenomenal talent.
Right one of the best basketballplayers to ever step on the
(16:38):
court. Nike helped to build hismythology, that is an absolute
right, who else did they help tobuild, they helped to build
Tiger Woods, somebody who wewould probably put into the
fallen hero category, somebodywho kind of had that, you know,
lapse, he fell out of favor, hecame back, right? He had that
that story arc, and then Nikecreated another hero, Lance
(17:00):
Armstrong, he has been cast out.
And I think Robert mentionedthis before, one of the things
that Nike helped to do was toreinforce the narrative that he
is just a fierce competitor thathe at the end of the day is
doing all kinds of good forcancer and cancer research.
Specifically, you're talkingabout Lance Armstrong. Yeah.
(17:23):
Lance Armstrong, right. And nowhe has become the archetypal,
fallen hero. And if you everread the book Wheelmen, about
that whole doping regime thatthey had developed, it becomes
clear that what Lance Armstrongyou know, he's always like, hey,
you know, it was an even playingfield. We were all using the
same No, no, they have the vastdoping program. That's it that
(17:48):
that was my takeaway from thatbook, and that he was so
belligerent and so bullheaded,about maintaining that secret
that he was ruining people'slives to keep it. Oh, yeah. But
that book alone, right,deconstructs any kind of heroic
persona that you might havestill had coming into reading
(18:10):
it.
Shanny Luft (18:11):
So I wanted to in the time we have remaining, I'm
really interested in talking toyou both about specifically
football. I lived through aperiod of time in the 1980s,
where football and the NFL andthe Super Bowl became a bigger
cultural phenomenon than theyhad been, something had changed.
I think baseball would love it,if we continue to call it
America's pastime, but it'sclearly not. There's something
(18:34):
that changed, I think, in thelate 20th century, in terms of
the sport that most Americansare interested in, why that
would be what happened. How dowe distinguish America's love of
baseball, that kind of pistolgame to this really, you know, a
game that's more famouslyassociated with kind of like a
war metaphors.
Robert Sirabian (18:52):
I just take it back to the idea of narrative. I
think the reason the Super Bowlis so popular is it's not just
the game itself. It's the factthat the Super Bowl is the last
part of the narrative. It'swhere we're going to get the
climax, and then the denouementto the season. And even when you
listen, you know, the way thatyou build up to the Super Bowl,
(19:17):
it's going back to thepreseason. And we we reminisce
and remember, the whole all ofthe season, what teams went
through the players and wentthrough it, you know, and it's
that combination of the story,how is it all gonna add? You
know, and I think that thiscaptivates us again, it goes
back to, again how we lovestorytelling.
Shanny Luft (19:39):
There is something that seems to have happened in
the last 40 years where certainsports and I think the Superbowl
in football, it's probably thepeak example of this. They
generate so much attention andcultural focus and dollars in a
way that didn't used to happen.
What's changed? That's the SuperBowl and certain sports are are
so much more prominent than theymight have been in the past.
Robert Sirabian (20:03):
Baseball is just not I mean, baseball is a
is a radio game. Ultimately,it's not really it's not well
suited for TV. But fantasyfootball is just hugely popular.
And then also video, right? Imean, you know, John Adams, as
you know, John Madden, who justdied the legendary culture from
graders. But you know, it's soadaptable to video gaming, as
(20:28):
well in ways that baseball just--
Arthur Remillard (20:31):
let me throw in gambling,
Robert Sirabian (20:34):
baseball as a thinking game, I don't know.
Shanny, maybe that's part of itis that baseball, just if you're
going to go and actually watch agame, you have to have patience.
You have to enjoy the art of it,the pauses of it, the ability to
reflect, to appreciate thesubtleties, I think, in ways
(20:54):
maybe that we've lost a certainamount of patience as hopefully,
Shanny Luft (20:58):
yeah.
Arthur Remillard (21:00):
Just to get kind of meta on a little bit is
you remember, it was 1984 wasthe Apple commercial.
Shanny Luft (21:05):
Right?
Arthur Remillard (21:06):
Right. And it was the play on 1984. And you
know, what Apple understood was,you're not selling a product,
you're selling an idea.
Apple Commercial (21:15):
On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce
Macintosh. And you'll see why1984 won't be like 1984.
Arthur Remillard (21:25):
And it's like you're we're the
countercultural, we're the oneswho go against the stream,
right. And they created aneffective story that has created
such allegiance from people thatthey will line up every time
that new iPhone comes out. Ithink that football has done the
same thing. They've created aneffective story that makes
(21:45):
people give their allegiance toit again, like people around
here, they take a Terrible Towelto their grave. Right? You know,
they are in their coffins withtheir terrible towels. That says
something about allegiance
Shanny Luft (22:01):
Back up what are these towels? I don't know about
these towels. Explain what thatis
Arthur Remillard (22:04):
oh, the Terrible
Towel. Sorry. So it's a so thisgoes back to the 1970s. In the
1970s. There was, you know thisthis one sports announcer as a
kind of like a gimmick said,Hey, bring bring a yellow towel
to the game because that's thecolor, right? And so the yellow
towel became this thing that ifyou ever turned on a Steelers
game, people were alwaystwirling their terrible towels,
their yellow towels. And soaround here, it's a marker of
(22:27):
identity. So if I go into thebar right down the street from
me, and I went in with aTerrible Towel, and I blew my
nose into it, call 911 becauseit's gonna end bad. That's a
sacred object. You don't messwith those things. You know,
Shanny Luft (22:42):
we talked earlier about the idea of sports as
transcendence, either of you,are you interested in sharing
from your own sports viewershipor your own sports background?
Do you have a transcendentexperience that you had? That
comes to mind?
Arthur Remillard (22:58):
You know, I think that there have been these
kind of moments in my life as itis a distance runner where just
you find the groove. And it'smotion without effort. And
everything's just clicking. Andthe time just blurs past. And,
(23:20):
you know, if I'm teaching aboutChristian understandings of
grace, that's what I'm alwaysthinking about. That's right,
that you know, that that will,an effort can only get you so
far, that every now and again,something else has to step in
and fill in the gap. And thosebrief moments in my life that I
(23:43):
can probably name to you on onehand and half a few fingers not
quite up. Right. Is that wouldbe another kind of place where I
would
Shanny Luft (23:52):
Art when that's happening to you, do you know
it's happening? Are you thinkingI'm having a transcendent
experience? Or is it only inretrospect that you've realized
while I was in a differentmental space?
Arthur Remillard (24:04):
Yeah, it's only in retrospect, because
because it's one of these thingslike, it's flow states, right?
As soon as you recognize it,it's done. I think there was a,
I can't remember the specificsof but you're mentioning Michael
Jordan, but there was some gamewhere he was just hitting a
ridiculous number of freepointers, like just just just
(24:25):
everything was going in. Andthen finally, somebody said
something to him, or he just wasaware of it and made aware of
it. And that was the end of it.
Robert Sirabian (24:34):
Yeah, I would just say, for me too, I guess,
to just examine if they'retranscendent, transcendent
experiences, but as a MichiganWolverine, like I can tell you
when I watched them when theymade it to College Football
Championship playoff semifinalgame, and they lost. I mean, I,
(24:55):
Shanny, and I'm not kidding you.
Like I was just like,emotionally just -- just like
depressed, depressed, I don'tknow that that's too strong of a
word afterwards. And just asactual, even physically
manifested sort of letdown, andgoing to those football games
with 100,000, at the time I went100,000. Now under 7000 loss,
you know, you're in there. Andit is being like in a mass
(25:21):
service, in a way, but it's theway you identify, you know, it's
part of being at Michigan. Andit was, you know, you were
invested in, in that performingand I remember just the euphoria
when they would win. And justthe the sense that, you know,
this team bill out there, andjust the power and the speed and
(25:42):
the art of it all, and that youwere you could be part of that
experience. It's hard to findother aspects in life that match
that
Shanny Luft (25:55):
children being born may
Robert Sirabian (25:58):
being born, right.
Shanny Luft (25:59):
Yeah,
Robert Sirabian (25:59):
yeah. Right, you're probably gonna get angry
emails. How can you say that?
No, but children being born,marriage, I mean, you know,
those kinds of things. On theother hand, I can tell you,
being a Detroit sports fanlosing almost becomes a
trancendent experience.
Shanny Luft (26:12):
Right?
Robert Sirabian (26:13):
Because in an odd way you identify, you know,
with that idea of always fallingshort of always being the
underdog,
Shanny Luft (26:23):
right? Cubs fans had that, right. A great example
of that,
Robert Sirabian (26:26):
yeah.
Shanny Luft (26:27):
Where part of the identity of the community of
Cubs fans is that they lose. Andwhen they win, it's it
undermines something that theywere sharing.
Robert Sirabian (26:38):
Exactly,
Shanny Luft (26:39):
there's so many interesting kind of religious
parallels to having these kindsof communal experiences together
positive or negative. But right,but the fact that we're all in
it together, we all experiencedtogether, that's what's key
about those kinds of things. Theother big story, I started off
by talking about vaccines andhow that's such a prominent
story right now. And there'sanother example like that,
(26:59):
specifically in football, whichwas in 2016. When Colin
Kaepernick he and some of histeammates started kneeling
during the national anthem,right? He was kneeling
specifically to protest racismand police brutality. And that
went on up until, like, 2020,there's a host of reasons why
that's interesting to me. First,why are we playing the national
(27:22):
anthem before sports at all?
What does this have to do withpatriotism? Why is that ritual
important to people?
Arthur Remillard (27:28):
To your point?
You know, how did this happen?
That we have the nationalanthem, sporting events, that's
started World War One ish, andreally took out took off after
World War Two. But Howard Bryanthas a really good book called
The Heritage that I just cannotrecommend enough. And he really
locates the the backlash comingfrom post 911. Because if you
(27:52):
can remember, you know, after911, where was the place that
our eyes fixated? It was on theYankees.
Shanny Luft (27:59):
Right? They were America's team,
Arthur Remillard (28:01):
right? And this was kind of like the place
where people turned. And sportsvery much started to kind of
take on much more of a role inthese sort of patriotic
expressions, military, a lot ofmilitary things start to happen.
Military shows up and flyingover it over Yes, you know, all
(28:25):
kinds of advertisements,military, that sort of thing.
And so all of these things, kindof all these streams get fused
together, where sports in andpatriotism and military and the
wars and all of that stuff comesinto meeting and then you boom,
Colin Kaepernick startskneeling, as you said, any other
(28:48):
setting, you know, it was notthat long before everybody was
Tebowing, which is kneeling.
Right.
Shanny Luft (28:55):
Right.
Arthur Remillard (28:55):
But where you do it and how you do it, and
who's doing it, and for whatreason, ends up becoming really
important.
Shanny Luft (29:03):
Art Remillard, Robert Sirabian, it was a blast
to talk to you both. I reallyenjoyed the conversation. Thank
you so much. Part of what I loveabout this podcast is the way in
which and part of what I'mtrying to model is how the kinds
of things we study academicallycan be connected to questions of
entertainment, and therelationship with sports to
community identity, ritual,narrative, heroes, destiny. I
(29:27):
think all those themes areclearly relevant. And so thank
you so much for the conversationit was a blast to talk with you.
Arthur Remillard (29:33):
Likewise.
Robert Sirabian (29:34):
Yeah, thank you very much, Shanny.
Gretel Stock (29:43):
This podcast is brought to you by University
College at University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point. Our
mission is to providecoordinated, intentional, and
inclusive services andopportunities through our core
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engaging. Learn more aboutUW-Stevens Point and all our
programs at uwsp.edu.
Welcome to no cure for curiosity, a podcast for
curious people. I am ShannyLuft, associate professor of
religious studies and AssociateDean of general education and
honors at the University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point. No cure
for curiosity launched one yearago this month, and it's been my
attempt to promote and modelbroader curiosity in the liberal
(00:29):
arts. This upcoming season,. I'mgoing to explore my curiosity
along with my brilliantcolleagues in things like The
Matrix, and the Supreme Court,Dungeons and Dragons, slang, and
much more. But with the Olympicsupon us and the Super Bowl on
the way, I was getting curiousabout sports. So I invited a
professor of English and aprofessor of religion in America
(00:49):
who both write and teach aboutsports to join me. Art Remillard
is professor of religiousstudies at St. Francis
University in Pennsylvania,where he teaches courses on
Christian history, ethics,interfaith literacy, and post
apocalyptic literature. Art iscurrently finishing a book
manuscript tentatively entitledBodies in Motion: A Religious
History of sports in America,and he's already planning his
(01:11):
next book, asemi-autobiographical
exploration of his lifelongrelationship with distance
running. And my second guest isRobert Sirabian, professor of
English at UWSP, who teacheswriting and literature courses.
Robert's main teaching andresearch area is 19th century
British literature. He teaches asports and literature course as
well as a composition coursefocused on the theme of sports.
(01:34):
I started the conversation byasking Robert Sirabian about one
of the biggest sports stories ofthe last few months. The first
thing that came to mind isathletes and the Coronavirus
vaccine, athletes that won't getit or will get it or are
fighting about it. In the lastcouple days, the tennis player
Novak Djokovic, one of thegreatest tennis players, perhaps
(01:57):
of all time, refused to get thevaccine and had to, I think
forfeit a tournament. He waskicked out of Australia, because
of his vaccination status. KyrieIrving in the Brooklyn Nets.
Aaron Rodgers, of course, triedto skirt around the issue of
whether he was vaccinated. Butit came out that in fact, he was
not vaccinated. I was curiousabout what you make of these
vaccine or anti vaccine storiesin sports, does it connect to
(02:21):
either sports and narrative orsports and religion in ways that
either of you find interesting,
Robert Sirabian (02:26):
I think in part in sports with the tension
between freedom and structure,the way that sports, you know,
require that everybody followrules, but one of the paradoxes
of sports of games is that therules have to by necessity limit
freedom, and in order forcompetition to work. And so I
(02:47):
think that's -- part of that isthis, I think certain ath--, you
know, certain individuals,certain athletes, trying to push
even more generally just againstthe idea of rules that limit
what they do. The same way thatplayers try and bend rules for a
competitive advantage during agame. You know, what can they
get away with? How far can theypush and not get called? I think
(03:10):
that's a certainly a part of it.
And at the same time, there'sthe notion, I think, of going
along with the rules, goingalong with the vaccine
requirements, as part of a team,as being part of a community.
That -- you know, team sports,particularly like football, you
know, are not about oneindividual. They're a team
effort, a collaborative effort.
Shanny Luft (03:32):
Art, is there anything you want to add or any
thoughts you have about?
Arthur Remillard (03:35):
When we're talking about narratives, we're
talking about, how are westructuring our sense of good
and evil. How are we sense --structuring our sense of what
success is and what failure is,right? But then, once we
introduce the discussion ofCOVID, and vaccines, then we get
a whole different layer of teamallegiance. Am I Team
Vaccinated, or am I TeamUnvaccinated? The statement, I
(03:57):
am vaccinated, or I'm notvaccinated, aligns you with a
community who has an entirenarrative around their identity.
That then can connect all sortsof political topics and themes
and put you from a footballfield in a football game out
into this broader nationaldebate that's, that's funneled
(04:18):
and fueled by these competingtruth claims -- I'm saying truth
in quotes here.
Shanny Luft (04:24):
I mean, I think sports in some sense is
obviously reflecting where ourpolitical division is right now.
But then is that actuallygreater than it has in the past?
Have either of you thought aboutto what degree does sports
reflect political divisions inthe past? And to what degree is
this something new? Because noweverything that's divided by
politics (04:43):
what channel you watch, what movies you like,
what, you know, t-shirts youwear.
Arthur Remillard (04:47):
You know, in the 19th century, prior to the
Civil War, some of the biggestsporting events were horse races
between horses from the northand horses from the south.
Right? Regional rivalry was madeon the turf. And then it
continued after the war, butthere was also international,
you know, contests that weresimilar. So, you know, one of
(05:08):
the great boxers of Americanhistory is Tom Molineaux. And,
you know, the kind of legend is,is that he was born an enslaved
person, fought his way out ofenslavement, quite literally,
you know, won a match, and thenwent over to England to find
fame, and he fought Tom Cribb,and, and, and it was U.S., you
know, versus, versus England,right? In these these boxing
(05:28):
matches, not that long after therevolution. And so, you know,
our sporting places have alwaysbeen these kinds of proxies for
local, national, andinternational rivalries.
Robert Sirabian (05:41):
Just to jump in, too, of course, this is a
unique moment, right, becausethe Super Bowl is being played
during the Olympics. And so,right, I mean, I mean, the fact
that China is hosting theOlympics, and all, you know, the
the idea of at least adiplomatic boycott by the U.S.,
but even, you know,historically, the, you know, the
(06:02):
U.S. and the USSR and hockey,but, you know, I mean, even
during the Cold War, right, thethe Olympic -- there were always
those political rivalries, eventhough the Olympics were, at
least in theory, supposed to beapolitical, right? It's a chance
where the world competes, onequal footing, not on a
battlefield, but on a playingfield. That's another
(06:25):
interesting dimension, too.
Shanny Luft (06:27):
So, I've taught religion, pop culture, and
sports always comes up to somedegree. And the question that
students always want to talkabout is, are sports a religion?
Art, I'm curious, in yourteaching, or in your experience
with students, is that issue ofsports as religion has that come
up?
Arthur Remillard (06:42):
Oh, it's the first thing anybody ever asks
me? Right?
Shanny Luft (06:46):
Yeah.
Arthur Remillard (06:47):
The fir-, I mean, it's anytime I'm talking
to anybody, and they say, Oh,what are you writing? I'm
worrying about religion insports, the first thing they're
gonna say is something to theeffect of like, I had this
completely novel and unique ideathe other day, that football is
the new religion of America. Andand right, like, Everybody kind
of has this intuitive sense, and
Shanny Luft (07:04):
Yeah, I think that there's a couple of
things driving it. First, thereis the social trend of, you
know, a waning influence ofinstitutional religions in
American life. Right? We've seenthe numbers and, you know, the
lacking allegiances to toinstitutional religions. And
then you turn on your TV on aSunday, and see 120,000 people
watching a football game, youknow. It's the juxtaposition,
(07:28):
you know, one of my friendssays, that, he wrote a book
called The New Cathedrals as away of talking about the
building of these theseincredible sporting complexes
that we have all across acrossAmerica, right? That these are
our new cathedrals. But thenthere's also the fixation on the
curious things that people doaround sports that just don't
(07:49):
make any sense, except for thatcontext. And that has a kind of
religious feel to it, right? Sothere is this kind of residue
there that I think people justas I said, like they intuitively
see and they intuitively want tointerpret the activities that
they're seeing in these sportingevents through a religious lens.
(08:09):
I really like yourpoint about rules, even rules
around fighting, right? I don'tknow, you probably know the old
joke, I went to a fight and ahockey game broke out. Right?
So, hockey is a is a sport inwhich fighting -- it's as close
to part of the sport as like anysport other than like boxing.
Right? My son played ice hockeyfor one year. And even at his
(08:32):
age, he was like in elementaryschool, they did not have rules
that said, you absolutely can'tfight. It was more like, you
shouldn't fight. And I thought,you know, in other sports, we
just say you can't punch people.
We don't say, you should do yourbest to avoid it. That really
stood out to me as only inhockey are they, are they not
drawing that clear of a linebetween what the game is and
(08:55):
fighting? I don't know, Robert,you must have thought about this
with your interest in hockey.
Robert Sirabian (09:02):
Well, in hockey, that's again that when I
was talking about the blend ofaesthetics and violence, I mean
fighting is part of the game.
It's an integral part of thegame. Checking, the hitting,
because it's a way, right? Andwhen you're playing a team that
is a better skating team thanyou, let's say, it's a way that
you can nullify that advantage.
(09:22):
You can use the body, you cancheck, you can hit, fighting,
you know, it used to be, too,like, people have argued when
there was fighting in hockey itwas self-enforcing. So in other
words, if I'm a player, I'm notgoing to cheapshot someone,
because I know if I do, they'regoing to -- one of their guys is
going to come after me. And I'mgoing to pay the price for it.
(09:45):
And you know, some people arguethat with the -- adding more
stringent rules against it,you've now, you know, because
now it depends on a referee tocall it, you get more, you know,
slashing, high, you know,high-sticking, cross-checking,
and those kinds of things,trying to manipulate the rules,
because now it depends on thefact, you know, if the ref
doesn't see it, or you don't getcalled, you know, you're not
(10:06):
going to do it. But the rule --yeah, I think your point, too,
is interesting, because therules of games are not
necessarily logical in thenormal way we think of it.
They're designed to promote andenhance competition. And so
somebody -- you get theseseemingly odd rules, because
they're a way that you promotecompetition and keep the game
(10:26):
moving, keep the action moving,and not having just quick, easy
results.
Shanny Luft (10:30):
Right. And the rules are sometimes not written
down, but understood. There aresort of understood rules. And so
like my example of kids playingfreeze tag, the community has
agreed upon these rules, even ifthey don't consciously
articulate them. They can seewhen someone's gone too far, and
what amount of, of rule bendingthey're allowed to do.
Robert Sirabian (10:49):
Yeah, it'll sometimes even depend, you know,
teams players know, you know,because especially bate baseball
or more basketball, hockey, whenyou have the same referees,
because a number of games, youknow, they'll start to learn,
you know, what, rafts, you know,their sort of patterns for what
types of you know, how often andwhat type, they're going to call
(11:09):
penalties, and some are morestringent, and they'll know the
rest of they're more stringentknow, the ones that are, you
know, more lenient, and they'lltake advantage of that, too.
Shanny Luft (11:18):
It strikes me that the, that the vaccine issue
might be related to that rightthat some players might perceive
vaccines as bending the rules bynot getting a vaccine, and other
people see it as breaking therules, right? That's kind of
where the tension is, how muchof this rule are you required to
do? It's an example of wherethere's not an agreed upon set
(11:39):
of standards for what you arerequired to do, or some people
think they are hiring otherpeople have a different
perspective. Unlike in sports,where for the most part, I think
there are the expectations ofbehavior are clearly understood
whether they're written down ornot, I think
Robert Sirabian (11:53):
I think it's back to Art's point, too, is
that, you know, behavior thatwould never be -- that's just
simply not allowable in dailylife -- in sports, it's not --
you don't look at -- themorality ethics is not viewed
through the same lens. And soyou, again, a lot, some of that,
too, is within the structure ofcompetition. So it's looked at
(12:15):
not as bad behavior, but it'slooked at as the game when we
say the game within the game,it's part of the getting that
competitive edge. And so it'sunderstood. And even as a
player, you don't necessarilytake it personally, because
you're going to do it, too.
Arthur Remillard (12:30):
One of the things that I've noticed is in
sports, where violence is in theforefront, and even sports where
it isn't, but I'm just thinkingprizefighting boxing, in
particular MMA, maybe? Well,yeah, now MMA would be another
one is that there is a push andpull. Between the understanding
(12:54):
of this being a metaphor forlife. These are these are
physical and bloody, and you'vegot to put yourself out there
and and there's something heroicto this, or is this just
destructive? Is this destructiveto mind, body and spirit? And is
this distracting you from whatreally matters in life, so that,
(13:15):
you know that that idea that theviolence is really just preying
on our ID, sensibilities anddrawing us in and turning us
into our worst selves, is thekind of flip side of that. And
so there's this constant pushand pull, morally, that I've
(13:35):
seen, as I said, like prizefighting is the one place that
I've looked into distancerunning, believe it or not, is a
place where you see it,especially in the early 20th
century, right that, that, youknow, a young man dies training
for a marathon and everybody'slike, well, this is too much
this is damage to the body. Thisis violence to the body that
that's, that's unnecessary.
There was a great book a coupleyears ago from Steve Allman
(13:57):
called against football, and hewent into that in detail. And it
does bring up these moralquestions.
Robert Sirabian (14:05):
Even in hockey, you know, I think in the, you
know, even in, you know, therewere moments, she's in the 70s
and 80s, even where, you know,the violence was, it was really
just, it become too extreme. Imean, it was, you know, at times
gladiatorial combat, you know,in the guise of a game and you
know, it was necessary to limitthat, you know, at a certain
(14:28):
point you can't just wreck itrationalize it all the way by
saying it's part of the gameit's right to the game. So I
think that's important even ouryou know, your article on
Steelers nation toward the endwhen you talk about you know,
the state of the rap of Steelersbeing the dirtiest team, right?
I mean, again, I mean, at whatpoint you can't just you to look
at that and say well, no, that'snot okay. There are limits, you
(14:52):
know, even within so on, quote,unquote bending the rules where
it doesn't affect the integrityof the game. You know, I often
In class ask why, you know, whatstudents like? Why do we care
about, let's say in baseball,about doping? If it's just a
game, who cares? Right? So theseplayers are doing it not. And I
think I've always tried arguingthat, you know, we expect, in
(15:16):
all places, at least in sports,that sports get it, right.
Right, they're supposed to bebetter, because they are, in
essence, their own, they createtheir own structure, their,
their, their own space. And ifyou can't, if you can't get it
right, in sports, if you can atleast have honesty, and fairness
and equality in sports, thenwhat's the hope for the there's
(15:37):
no for the rest of society atall?
Shanny Luft (15:39):
The other issue you're bringing up? And I did
not mean to keep pulling in thevaccine question. But the issue
that connects to what you'reboth saying now, and that is the
question about role models. Sowe have the sense that athletes
are supposed to be role models,but like a lot of actors, they
don't want to be wrong,necessarily. That's not in fact,
why they chose this profession,or what why they do what they
(16:03):
do, but we project onto them anexpectation of behavior that is
sometimes unrealistic, maybeoften unrealistic, about how we
expect people to behave.
Arthur Remillard (16:15):
This is an interesting topic to me, right?
What constitutes a hero, whatconstitutes a flawed hero, what
constitutes a fallen hero, a lotof the mythmaking that happens
around hero making is driven bycommerce is driven by our
markets. So if we're talkingabout Michael Jordan, yeah, he
is he is a phenomenal talent.
Right one of the best basketballplayers to ever step on the
(16:38):
court. Nike helped to build hismythology, that is an absolute
right, who else did they help tobuild, they helped to build
Tiger Woods, somebody who wewould probably put into the
fallen hero category, somebodywho kind of had that, you know,
lapse, he fell out of favor, hecame back, right? He had that
that story arc, and then Nikecreated another hero, Lance
(17:00):
Armstrong, he has been cast out.
And I think Robert mentionedthis before, one of the things
that Nike helped to do was toreinforce the narrative that he
is just a fierce competitor thathe at the end of the day is
doing all kinds of good forcancer and cancer research.
Specifically, you're talkingabout Lance Armstrong. Yeah.
(17:23):
Lance Armstrong, right. And nowhe has become the archetypal,
fallen hero. And if you everread the book Wheelmen, about
that whole doping regime thatthey had developed, it becomes
clear that what Lance Armstrongyou know, he's always like, hey,
you know, it was an even playingfield. We were all using the
same No, no, they have the vastdoping program. That's it that
(17:48):
that was my takeaway from thatbook, and that he was so
belligerent and so bullheaded,about maintaining that secret
that he was ruining people'slives to keep it. Oh, yeah. But
that book alone, right,deconstructs any kind of heroic
persona that you might havestill had coming into reading
(18:10):
it.
Shanny Luft (18:11):
So I wanted to in the time we have remaining, I'm
really interested in talking toyou both about specifically
football. I lived through aperiod of time in the 1980s,
where football and the NFL andthe Super Bowl became a bigger
cultural phenomenon than theyhad been, something had changed.
I think baseball would love it,if we continue to call it
America's pastime, but it'sclearly not. There's something
(18:34):
that changed, I think, in thelate 20th century, in terms of
the sport that most Americansare interested in, why that
would be what happened. How dowe distinguish America's love of
baseball, that kind of pistolgame to this really, you know, a
game that's more famouslyassociated with kind of like a
war metaphors.
Robert Sirabian (18:52):
I just take it back to the idea of narrative. I
think the reason the Super Bowlis so popular is it's not just
the game itself. It's the factthat the Super Bowl is the last
part of the narrative. It'swhere we're going to get the
climax, and then the denouementto the season. And even when you
listen, you know, the way thatyou build up to the Super Bowl,
(19:17):
it's going back to thepreseason. And we we reminisce
and remember, the whole all ofthe season, what teams went
through the players and wentthrough it, you know, and it's
that combination of the story,how is it all gonna add? You
know, and I think that thiscaptivates us again, it goes
back to, again how we lovestorytelling.
Shanny Luft (19:39):
There is something that seems to have happened in
the last 40 years where certainsports and I think the Superbowl
in football, it's probably thepeak example of this. They
generate so much attention andcultural focus and dollars in a
way that didn't used to happen.
What's changed? That's the SuperBowl and certain sports are are
so much more prominent than theymight have been in the past.
Robert Sirabian (20:03):
Baseball is just not I mean, baseball is a
is a radio game. Ultimately,it's not really it's not well
suited for TV. But fantasyfootball is just hugely popular.
And then also video, right? Imean, you know, John Adams, as
you know, John Madden, who justdied the legendary culture from
graders. But you know, it's soadaptable to video gaming, as
(20:28):
well in ways that baseball just--
Arthur Remillard (20:31):
let me throw in gambling,
Robert Sirabian (20:34):
baseball as a thinking game, I don't know.
Shanny, maybe that's part of itis that baseball, just if you're
going to go and actually watch agame, you have to have patience.
You have to enjoy the art of it,the pauses of it, the ability to
reflect, to appreciate thesubtleties, I think, in ways
(20:54):
maybe that we've lost a certainamount of patience as hopefully,
Shanny Luft (20:58):
yeah.
Arthur Remillard (21:00):
Just to get kind of meta on a little bit is
you remember, it was 1984 wasthe Apple commercial.
Shanny Luft (21:05):
Right?
Arthur Remillard (21:06):
Right. And it was the play on 1984. And you
know, what Apple understood was,you're not selling a product,
you're selling an idea.
Apple Commercial (21:15):
On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce
Macintosh. And you'll see why1984 won't be like 1984.
Arthur Remillard (21:25):
And it's like you're we're the
countercultural, we're the oneswho go against the stream,
right. And they created aneffective story that has created
such allegiance from people thatthey will line up every time
that new iPhone comes out. Ithink that football has done the
same thing. They've created aneffective story that makes
(21:45):
people give their allegiance toit again, like people around
here, they take a Terrible Towelto their grave. Right? You know,
they are in their coffins withtheir terrible towels. That says
something about allegiance
Shanny Luft (22:01):
Back up what are these towels? I don't know about
these towels. Explain what thatis
Arthur Remillard (22:04):
oh, the Terrible
Towel. Sorry. So it's a so thisgoes back to the 1970s. In the
1970s. There was, you know thisthis one sports announcer as a
kind of like a gimmick said,Hey, bring bring a yellow towel
to the game because that's thecolor, right? And so the yellow
towel became this thing that ifyou ever turned on a Steelers
game, people were alwaystwirling their terrible towels,
their yellow towels. And soaround here, it's a marker of
(22:27):
identity. So if I go into thebar right down the street from
me, and I went in with aTerrible Towel, and I blew my
nose into it, call 911 becauseit's gonna end bad. That's a
sacred object. You don't messwith those things. You know,
Shanny Luft (22:42):
we talked earlier about the idea of sports as
transcendence, either of you,are you interested in sharing
from your own sports viewershipor your own sports background?
Do you have a transcendentexperience that you had? That
comes to mind?
Arthur Remillard (22:58):
You know, I think that there have been these
kind of moments in my life as itis a distance runner where just
you find the groove. And it'smotion without effort. And
everything's just clicking. Andthe time just blurs past. And,
(23:20):
you know, if I'm teaching aboutChristian understandings of
grace, that's what I'm alwaysthinking about. That's right,
that you know, that that will,an effort can only get you so
far, that every now and again,something else has to step in
and fill in the gap. And thosebrief moments in my life that I
(23:43):
can probably name to you on onehand and half a few fingers not
quite up. Right. Is that wouldbe another kind of place where I
would
Shanny Luft (23:52):
Art when that's happening to you, do you know
it's happening? Are you thinkingI'm having a transcendent
experience? Or is it only inretrospect that you've realized
while I was in a differentmental space?
Arthur Remillard (24:04):
Yeah, it's only in retrospect, because
because it's one of these thingslike, it's flow states, right?
As soon as you recognize it,it's done. I think there was a,
I can't remember the specificsof but you're mentioning Michael
Jordan, but there was some gamewhere he was just hitting a
ridiculous number of freepointers, like just just just
(24:25):
everything was going in. Andthen finally, somebody said
something to him, or he just wasaware of it and made aware of
it. And that was the end of it.
Robert Sirabian (24:34):
Yeah, I would just say, for me too, I guess,
to just examine if they'retranscendent, transcendent
experiences, but as a MichiganWolverine, like I can tell you
when I watched them when theymade it to College Football
Championship playoff semifinalgame, and they lost. I mean, I,
(24:55):
Shanny, and I'm not kidding you.
Like I was just like,emotionally just -- just like
depressed, depressed, I don'tknow that that's too strong of a
word afterwards. And just asactual, even physically
manifested sort of letdown, andgoing to those football games
with 100,000, at the time I went100,000. Now under 7000 loss,
you know, you're in there. Andit is being like in a mass
(25:21):
service, in a way, but it's theway you identify, you know, it's
part of being at Michigan. Andit was, you know, you were
invested in, in that performingand I remember just the euphoria
when they would win. And justthe the sense that, you know,
this team bill out there, andjust the power and the speed and
(25:42):
the art of it all, and that youwere you could be part of that
experience. It's hard to findother aspects in life that match
that
Shanny Luft (25:55):
children being born may
Robert Sirabian (25:58):
being born, right.
Shanny Luft (25:59):
Yeah,
Robert Sirabian (25:59):
yeah. Right, you're probably gonna get angry
emails. How can you say that?
No, but children being born,marriage, I mean, you know,
those kinds of things. On theother hand, I can tell you,
being a Detroit sports fanlosing almost becomes a
trancendent experience.
Shanny Luft (26:12):
Right?
Robert Sirabian (26:13):
Because in an odd way you identify, you know,
with that idea of always fallingshort of always being the
underdog,
Shanny Luft (26:23):
right? Cubs fans had that, right. A great example
of that,
Robert Sirabian (26:26):
yeah.
Shanny Luft (26:27):
Where part of the identity of the community of
Cubs fans is that they lose. Andwhen they win, it's it
undermines something that theywere sharing.
Robert Sirabian (26:38):
Exactly,
Shanny Luft (26:39):
there's so many interesting kind of religious
parallels to having these kindsof communal experiences together
positive or negative. But right,but the fact that we're all in
it together, we all experiencedtogether, that's what's key
about those kinds of things. Theother big story, I started off
by talking about vaccines andhow that's such a prominent
story right now. And there'sanother example like that,
(26:59):
specifically in football, whichwas in 2016. When Colin
Kaepernick he and some of histeammates started kneeling
during the national anthem,right? He was kneeling
specifically to protest racismand police brutality. And that
went on up until, like, 2020,there's a host of reasons why
that's interesting to me. First,why are we playing the national
(27:22):
anthem before sports at all?
What does this have to do withpatriotism? Why is that ritual
important to people?
Arthur Remillard (27:28):
To your point?
You know, how did this happen?
That we have the nationalanthem, sporting events, that's
started World War One ish, andreally took out took off after
World War Two. But Howard Bryanthas a really good book called
The Heritage that I just cannotrecommend enough. And he really
locates the the backlash comingfrom post 911. Because if you
(27:52):
can remember, you know, after911, where was the place that
our eyes fixated? It was on theYankees.
Shanny Luft (27:59):
Right? They were America's team,
Arthur Remillard (28:01):
right? And this was kind of like the place
where people turned. And sportsvery much started to kind of
take on much more of a role inthese sort of patriotic
expressions, military, a lot ofmilitary things start to happen.
Military shows up and flyingover it over Yes, you know, all
(28:25):
kinds of advertisements,military, that sort of thing.
And so all of these things, kindof all these streams get fused
together, where sports in andpatriotism and military and the
wars and all of that stuff comesinto meeting and then you boom,
Colin Kaepernick startskneeling, as you said, any other
(28:48):
setting, you know, it was notthat long before everybody was
Tebowing, which is kneeling.
Right.
Shanny Luft (28:55):
Right.
Arthur Remillard (28:55):
But where you do it and how you do it, and
who's doing it, and for whatreason, ends up becoming really
important.
Shanny Luft (29:03):
Art Remillard, Robert Sirabian, it was a blast
to talk to you both. I reallyenjoyed the conversation. Thank
you so much. Part of what I loveabout this podcast is the way in
which and part of what I'mtrying to model is how the kinds
of things we study academicallycan be connected to questions of
entertainment, and therelationship with sports to
community identity, ritual,narrative, heroes, destiny. I
(29:27):
think all those themes areclearly relevant. And so thank
you so much for the conversationit was a blast to talk with you.
Arthur Remillard (29:33):
Likewise.
Robert Sirabian (29:34):
Yeah, thank you very much, Shanny.
Gretel Stock (29:43):
This podcast is brought to you by University
College at University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point. Our
mission is to providecoordinated, intentional, and
inclusive services andopportunities through our core
values of connecting,supporting, collaborating, and
engaging. Learn more aboutUW-Stevens Point and all our
programs at uwsp.edu.
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