I hear tell Detroit Lions star wide receiver Jameson Williams apologized to his teammates Thanksgiving afternoon in the locker room after the difficult win over the Chicago Bears.
And well he should. Williams, despite all his natural talent, made one of the most boneheaded moves at a critical juncture in a 23-20 ballgame while the Lions were driving for a touchdown to put the game away. After he was pushed out of bounds around midfield, he flipped the ball directly at the defensive player.
No one was hurt in the incident, but the intent to disrespect his opponent was unmistakable. It was bush league behavior and it cost him and his team 15 yards with a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
The Lions came close to getting the first down anyway, but it forced them to attempt a 45-yard field goal, which poor Mr. Bates missed for the first time this season. And then the Bears were presented with an excellent opportunity to tie the contest with a field goal or even win it with a touchdown.
I must admit that Mr. Williams is not alone in costing his team with boorish and stupid behavior. A Bears’ player was whistled for losing his temper and throwing his helmet, again resulting in a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Lions star running back Jhymir Gibbs was tagged with an unsportstmanlike conduct violation the previous Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts. Meanwhile, Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes, the current media darling in the NFL, was fined more than a thousand dollars for making offensive comments about a game earlier this season.
The point here is that grown football stars are making offensive comments and gestures that remind me an awful lot of behavior in the political arena during the the miserable overhyped 2024 election. It makes me wonder if football, with its ready made excuses of “in the heat of battle,” has something to do with the alarming lack of civility in public we’re seeing, especially on Twitter, X and Facebook.
I was struck a couple of weeks ago when I listened to a podcast segment on Malcolm Gladwell’s “Revisionist History.” He said a lieutenant with Adolph Hitler’s regime in Nazi Germany, had lived in the U.S. and told Der Fuhrer that American sports, especially football, had a knack of creating instant loyalty and adoration. Sports also quickly and easily identify the opponent not only as the enemy, but also evil and reprehensible.
I have long explained that the modern America’s lack of willingness to compromise and negotiate and its identification of the opponent as lower than insects can be traced to fundamendalist religion. And now I’d like to add sports. It’s a matter of unnecessary toxic masculinity.
