I have taught a course on sports history since the summer of 1986, when I was a graduate at the University of Pennsylvania. My course was fairly unique for its day, not looking at sports in one society, but focusing on them comparatively. Students in my course would learn not just about the history or sociology of baseball in the United States, or football in Britain, but the history of sports around the globe, including many sports with which many American students, at that time at least, were unfamiliar. Since then, rugby, cricket, and soccer have become more mainstream in the United States, and much globalization has occurred, so my course may not seem as much of a stretch to my current students as it once did. But while becoming familiar with more sports, students have become less aware of both their own history and that of other nations and societies.
One aspect of sports history with which they are certainly unfamiliar is what I would term “the road not taken.” There is a feeling that what exists is natural and inevitable and the rules of each game and the manner in which they came into being do not require explanation. There is no sense that contestation over the way sports are played and who profits from them is a major part of the story, except with regard perhaps to the policing of the performers, either in terms of their propensity to act in corrupt ways – throwing games for money, or performing no-balls at particular moments to make large sums of money for sports gamblers – or otherwise cheating – by taking body-building drugs, for example.
But one of the things that teaching the history of sports brings immediately to the fore is the fact that each of the sports that developed did so in the way that it did for particular reasons that relate to the social conditions of the time at which it developed into its modern, organized form. Association football (or soccer), for example, was fundamentally shaped by the conflict between the elite amateurs and the working-class professionals of the 1890s, the resolution of which would enable it to spread rapidly throughout much of the world, but would fundamentally limit its ability to compete for many decades in the United States. Rugby would have similar kinds of class divisions that would lead to bifurcation into a working-class sport (League) with heavy policing (refereeing) and numerous stoppages, and a middle-class sport (Union) that would be heavily reliant on notions of gentlemanly behavior and self-restraint that could be free-flowing and loosely policed (at least in the eyes of its advocates). While the Rugby League game could be easily adapted to conditions in the United States, with the creations of downs and the assumption that every action needed some form of intense surveillance to assure conformity to the rules, Rugby Union would only spread initially to those areas where English middle-class communities were vibrant.
Contestation in other areas occurred also. Societies that were divided along racial lines, like the United States and South Africa, witnessed different kinds of development in their sports – the United States instituting segregation within sports, South Africa generally doing so between them (Rugby for Afrikaners, soccer for Africans, Cricket for the English). And gender would also play its part, both in divisions between sports prescribed for women as opposed to those limited to men, and the impact of these developments on fluctuating notions of masculinity and femininity.
Such contestation within sports is similarly reflected in the historiography related to the subject. Historians and writers on sports offered different theories about the relationship between sports and society. The most important intervention, perhaps, was to begin acknowledging that sports were important social phenomena in their own right, not simply confined to leisure hours and diversions from more important occupations like earning a living wage. Two people did more in this area than perhaps any others – Ranjitsinhji an Indian prince and cricketer playing in England in the 1890s who wrote about the significance of cricket in Victorian society, and C.L.R. James a Trinidadian Trotskyist and cricket journalist who wrote the transformative work in sports history, Beyond a Boundary. The former contested the notion that sports weren’t a significant part of English life, the latter fundamentally altered his own earlier political beliefs that sports, like religion, were just an opiate keeping workers from challenging via revolutionary methods the inequities in the larger society. Without mentioning Gramsci (and before he became vogue in the Anglo-American academy), James provided a description of hegemony forming around important cultural phenomena – preeminent among which were cricket and football.
But, and we will soon get to our point of connection with Stockton College (thankfully, I hear), there were other ways of looking at sports that were less positive or complimentary than those offered up by Ranjitsinhji and James. The three most significant, which came to the fore at the same time that Stockton was being conceived (at the end of the 1960s), were those of neo-Marxism, radical feminism, and black nationalism:
The neo-Marxist moved beyond the Marxist assumption that culture (the superstructure) merely reflected the economic and social conditions of the society (the structure), to look at how the development of the corporation and the profit motive had totally infused the sports world – thus, in effect, making that world a part of the fundamental structure of society. So for the neo-Marxist, the rise of media corporations, the growing power of the owners, commissioners, and entities like the NCAA, symbolized the corruption of sports that otherwise would have been played by people for their own sake and for the joy of participation.
Along parallel lines, the radical feminist argued that sports reflected the patriarchal society in which it was embedded and these organized games simply reaffirmed the dominance of men in society. Radicalizing the notion of the “separate sphere” and assuming gender differences, radical feminists advocated their own sports, which could be built around field hockey and “girls rules” basketball, for example, or could extend to different types of less competitive and testosterone-driven games.
Finally, the black nationalist focused on the racial oppression evident in the way sports were structured, with black athletes, when they were not completely excluded, being underappreciated and exploited more than their white counterparts from the high schools all the way through the college farm system to the majors. At a time when athletes were producing Black Power salutes on the Olympic podium, many at the college level wanted to challenge the institutional and behavioral manifestations of racism.
Being informed by any of these theories would lead one to the conclusion that to just play the game along the lines defined and controlled by a white, male, or corporate elite, would only mean that one was continuing down a course and implicating oneself in a system that was fundamentally objectionable.
Enter Marty Miller.
Assigned by the Provost to oversee the development of sports at Stockton, Ken Tompkins (Dean of General Studies) had hired Marty Miller and assigned him to develop a proposal. Clearly informed by a radical critique of the role of sports in society, Miller came up with “Life Sports at Stockton: An Alternative.” This would be an attempt to chart a completely different path for the development of sports at the college, one that would differ from that found within those enmeshed in the NCAA.
Miller made his sentiments clear right at the outset, “Though the American University has professed [a goal of developing a mind-body synthesis],” he wrote, “too often college athletics has become associated with professionalism, anti-intellectualism, and practices antithetical to a purposeful academic life.” Given this situation a new college could take a different, more salutary, course. He continued,
Stockton State College has an opportunity to enhance the unique principle which govern the general college community, by forming a sports program which complements these basic tenets. Namely, the egalitarian nature of Stockton must be mirrored by athletic endeavors having mass participation by men and women, faculty and administration and having these participants provide internal direction for sports policy. Stockton will not withdraw from sports in an attempt to avoid well-publicized “excesses”, but seek excellence in this “art form” in the same manner as traditional academic departments desire a high level of competence. Similarly, the interdisciplinary nature of academic departments may have its analog in a flexible sports program which relates to other forms of motion and crosses into conventional academic courses. Sports should be a rallying point for social interaction and provide a holistic approach to the learning process which would coincide with Stockton’s total community approach. Just as one does not belong solely to a Division, the athlete is not circumscribed in a specific role which alienates him from the general student body.
This is a very radical conception, shaped by a neo-Marxist critique of college sports and making overtures to the feminist and nationalist visions (the former here, in terms of “mass participation by men and women”, the “holistic approach”, and the “art form”; the latter at other points in his proposal).
Miller’s vehement opposition to the current state of affairs in sport is most pronounced in his response to the Intercollegiate Task Force concerning the college’s relationship with the NCAA. He espoused a position that was pro-club and anti-NCAA. He writes of the NCAA:
1. I believe that the NCAA leadership has had a racist orientation, or at least has been extremely insensitive to the needs of black athletes. For example, James Decker, Syracuse Athletic Director and NCAA head of all televised sports, is the same man who in 1966 answered charges of racism leveled against one of his coaches by saying, “haven’t you ever heard a man use the word ‘nigger’”? The leadership has allowed various schools to remain in the NCAA while excluding blacks from participating in team sports – under the rationale of “manifest disobedience” or blatant segregation. (University of Washington is an example of the former case and Alabama, Mississippi, ad infinitum, are examples of the latter).
2. Philosophically the NCAA had a clear mandate in its formative years to combat the growing commercialism in college athletics. Needless to say, the NCAA which funds itself from gate receipts gleaned from the NCAA Basketball Tournament has helped college athletics become a huge industry, with millions made at various games.
After further analysis of the NCAA, in which he suggests that joining it would limit the possibilities for Stockton students, he concludes: “Thus, the NCAA framework does not seem compatible with the goals of having sport open to the general student population, and for the most proficient athletes to develop their skills to the maximum.”
In another document, the outline of a “Proposed Supporting Program in Life Sports,” Miller proceeds to expand further on what he sees as a more ideal relationship between sports and the academy. He writes:
Throughout traditional academic history, a professed goal of the college curriculum has been the study of man in his entirety; a synthesis of mind and body, spirit and matter, which encompasses the multi-faceted human experience. Sport, that, broad area of movement, evolving from games, ritual, drama, and the arts, has been relegated to a rather subordinate and very often meaningless role in understanding man’s interaction with the structures of society. On one hand, a burgeoning interest in spectator sports has generated separate professional and commercial athletic institutions on the periphery of academic life which creates the antithesis of the organic scholarly community. Yet paradoxically, this proliferation of athletic activities has not prompted a concomitant growth in serious academic commitments to study the purpose and effects of sport in modern society. To a large degree, Thinking Man and Athletic Man will remain casualties and reflections of a fragmented and specialized human emerging in a technological era unless sport begins to be integrated into the main body of academic thought.
The analysis here is dialectical. The thesis is “games, ritual, drama and the arts”; the antithesis is the form of sports found currently in the academy, with the alienation of humans and the fragmentation into Thinking Man and Athletic Man; the synthesis, will be whatever Miller and Stockton manage to create that will bring these fragmented and alienated elements back together.
From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, Marty Miller’s Life Sports proposal seems very utopian, and one’s immediate response to reading these documents is along the lines of wondering how he could have imagined his program would have gained a foothold at the college. But using hindsight in this manner is rather unfair. As I noted, his approach was informed by the critical analysis of the time, and it was that same analysis that was leading to significant changes that were occurring and that would take care of some of the more egregious and negative aspects of commercial and college sports. And this was indeed a time of change, perhaps not of revolution, but a time when people believed that things could be altered dramatically. Why couldn’t new approaches to sports be formulated along the lines that he described? And, indeed, haven’t some of the kinds of sports that Miller would have supported appeared in different guises since that time? While the college would later join the NCAA and have Division III varsity sports (which are far less invidious than is the case for Division I), it is also the case the intramural world of sports at Stockton has been very vibrant. And the sports world itself, while previously highly monopolized around major leagues that were protected by the Supreme Court from conformity with Anti-Trust regulations, now finds that these sports are competing with all kinds of games and pastimes that vie for participants and spectators through cable television and other media. So while Miller was up against a behemoth in the form of the NCAA, such that he was unlikely to have been able to keep the college from resisting its blandishments, he was not merely a deluded utopian by any means.
This is most clear in the fact that he initially received encouragement and even support from those who appointed him. Ken Tompkins was clearly up for any kind of experiment; Wes Tilley, the Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Richard Bjork, the President, also seem to have been intrigued by the ideas he was presenting. In the end, they would not be able to resist the NCAA, but they certainly gave the idea serious consideration. Perhaps the thought of trying to create and administer something totally new and extremely radical – when they were doing so much else besides – was too much for them to take on. But this does not mean that the ideas didn’t resonate and make considerable sense to them.
But the sports world is not merely divided into the world of those who have power who control things, and those who are either controlled or who endeavor to create something entirely unique to replace that which they think oppresses them. As both Ranjitsinhji and C.L.R. James knew, the sports world is one that inspires non-participants to participation -- it is one that excites the imagination. This is not merely the case of an opiate being given to the masses so that they switch off and tune out; it is rather the case that people get excited enough either to root for a team or to endeavor to advance within the structure that exists (however corrupt one imagines it to be). One reason the NCAA would have been appealing to college administrators in the early 1970s, in spite of all that it was doing to which many objected, is because inter-collegiate athletics could help to create identification with the college, to bring in revenue and so forth. Sport could be a source of recruitment and the basis for prestige. Such things are enticing, because they do, in the end, excite people.
Of course, what Miller had been suggesting might have ended up exciting many members of the Stockton community as well -- and by all accounts he was a very popular faculty member; but the wheel that he was trying to reinvent was going to be very difficult to construct, and when fabricated it would only move a cart slowly along a dusty road. The NCAA’s wheels were already so well lubricated by this time that it would not be long before the cart drivers and their passengers looked longingly over at the sports car as it zipped by leaving dollar bills flying around in its wake.
Posts
