Sport Industrial Complex

The notion of the sport-industrial complex was born out of a warning issued in President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address. In this well-known speech, Eisenhower introduced the idea of the military-industrial complex to the public... a term many people recognize but few have deeply considered. He cautioning against "the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," which had been established during World War II and swelled throughout the Cold War, with the potential to stretch indefinitely. "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience," Eisenhower explained. "The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government."

Where are we now, almost 50 years since Eisenhower's warning? How has it changed and grown over time? What aspects have been hidden from public oversight by Congress or active citizens? How does it impact us and how are we implicated (complicit) in its structure?

And what, if anything, does this really have to do with what I want to study?

a broad stroked "problem"

As early human records show, civilizations have played games, acting upon people’s desires to compete—and to be victorious. Societies have been captivated by athletes, their skillful performances, and the contentious battles they wage within the sporting arena. For example, the Mayan people played Pok-a-tok, a game on a stone court with sloped walls and stone rings hung high that served as goalposts. Pok-a-tok was filled with ritual, religious, and mythological significance; its winners treated as heroes, its losers facing harsh penalties, even human sacrifice, a practice that was thought necessary for the peoples' continued health and prosperity. The Greeks had their games that also carried great cultural importance, as did the Romans, and scores of civilizations throughout history. In fact, we could trace any society’s histories of sport, and understand something about its social order, and about that society’s connections between the physical body, power, knowledge, and social management.

Yet within the 20th Century, we witness the rise of a new cultural phenomenon: the sport-industrial complex (SIC), a complex, adaptive system that cultural critic Dave Zirin calls " a sprawling, overly influential industry that has impacted all of our lives," whether we like it or not. The SIC (like the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex) exists not as a secret conspiracy, but rather, as a network of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourages spending on professional sports to advance particular agendas . Consisting of private businesses and corporations that regard professional sports as a vast and profitable market, politicians who saber for public investment in pro franchises, and local communities that count on sports to sustain the local economy, to name a few, this vast global network implicates all of us in some ways.

I realize I am painting this "problem", or socio-dynamic, in broad strokes. I do promise to hone in and to illustrate an argument by localizing the problem/s, but for now, please allow me to continue casting a wide net... So connected to my research with Hargreaves in the sectors of education, business, and sport, I have begun playing with questions related to the interactions and effects of professional sports organizations across communities. I am curious about the diverse ways that these sport organizations, which operate as for-profit businesses and corporations, transact with the communities that they are linked. Within this, I have a particular interest in how youth are impacted and implicated.

First, a bit on what I mean by ‘communities.’ This can refer to the locale that hosts the pro team. For instance, the city of Paris hosts several pro football (soccer) clubs, one being Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (PSG), whose training grounds are just outside Paris and stadium, in the uber-wealthy 16th arrondissement of the city. PSG, its worth estimated around 41 million euros (BBC News, 2006), receives substantial support from Paris’ municipal government in the form of subsidies, financial incentives, and public services offered. Public support for these subsidies stems, though not exclusively, from expectations that the host community will reap certain economic and social benefits.

At the same time, current PSG players hail from communities in France, Brazil, Benin, Mali, Serbia, the Republic of Congo, Armenia, and Cameroon. PSG, as well as Paris and French society more generally, are connected to each of these communities in similar and dissimilar ways. Historically, France established and operated colonies in four of these respective nations. In our post-colonial (neocolonial?) world, in what ways can we hear any echoes of the past? Somewhat recently, investigative journalists began reporting on what has been called the ‘football slave trade’ (e.g. BBC News, 2000), whereby pro football agents travel abroad in the hope of “poaching” young talent in African and other developing nations. The teams are looking for the next star players that can be signed on the cheap. The young boys, some of them reported to be 15 years old, dream of the opportunity to play in the European leagues, and frequently enter into contractual obligations that are not in their interests. Families have been given significant cash loans in exchange for the rights to represent their son, loans that then can sink the family into deep debt and leave the athlete bound to the agent’s company. And if the player cannot hack it in the pro’s, they are shown the door, now displaced from their home community and usually without working papers. It can be said that social and racial formations from the past can be seen in present-day circumstances (Collins, 2005).

I am open to a number of research angles at this point, and am just getting my feet into the literature. I feel like I need, to some degree, to wait and see where it leads me. My rough intent would be to conduct a sociological case study on 1 pro sport organization (or possibly 2?), to examine its interactions with and impacts across communities--and with youth, in particular. I see this project, like my weird little brain, as a theoretical hybrid, drawing on historical perspectives, structural-economic research, critical pedagogy, postcolonial studies, political science, philosophy, pop culture... To start--embedded within this inquiry are matters of power--in Foucault's (1980) words: "What are the various contrivances of power, whose operations extend to such differing levels and sectors of society and are possessed of such manifold ramifications? What are their mechanisms, their effects and their relations?" (p.88).

Citations:

• BBC News (2000, Feb. 14). Africa’s football ‘slave trade.’ Accessed online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/639390.stm
• BBC News (2006, April 11). Paris Saint-Germain changes hands. Accessed online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4898746.stm
• Collins, P.H. (2005). Black Sexual Politics. Taylor and Francis.
• Foucault (1980). Power/Knowledge.
• Zirin, D. (2007). Welcome to the terrordome: The pain, politics, and promise of sports. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Sport Industrial Complex

Yesterday I was reading across a few texts on the business of sport, delving into issues like municipal subsidies to- and tax sheltering for- pro franchises. In reflecting on the flow of money to and from the ownership and players--i.e. where it goes and whom it impacts--I struck on the notion of the Sport Industrial Complex (SIC). I know some of the gritty details of the Military Industrial Complex and have written on the Prison Industrial Complex, but I'd never even considered applying this notion to sports. I need to look at this further, but I think the idea of the SIC may prove a useful concept to contextualize my study.

A quick google search and Dave Zirin popped up as somebody whose written on the subject. Zirin's book Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports explores, in his words, "how corporate interests have taken something beautiful -- sports -- and turned it into the athletic industrial complex -- a sprawling, overly influential industry that has impacted all of our lives," whether we like it or not. The book title refers to the New Orleans' Superdome, a "gruesome collision of sports and politics." Zirin was "sitting there with the rest of the country in 2005... seeing 20 to 30,000 of New Orleans’ poorest residents herded into the Louisiana Superdome, in conditions that I thought Jesse Jackson quite correctly likened to the hull of a slave ship, and seeing a New Orleans that did not have enough money for emergency shelter, that did not have enough money to even keep the levees upright, but did have enough money over the course of three decades to keep running the largest domed structure in the Western Hemisphere was something beyond compare. And when you consider that the folks herded into the Superdome never could have afforded a ticket, it just occurred to me that sports really is not sports anymore. It’s become an athletic industrial complex, that...impacts all of our lives" (Citation: Watch Dave talking about this book or read the interview transcript on Democracy Now).

As the title suggests it's not all about social pain and misery, but also about the promise (and potential) of sports. Zirin's writings have put a spotlight on activist athletes and coaches who have used the sports arena as a platform to struggle for social justice.