11-25-05,9:29am
I want to thank Dr. Christian Christensen for his principled disagreement with my recent columns about Diego Maradona and Terrell Owens. (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1117-33.htm.) However, let's not confuse being principled with being correct. His arguments reflect common views about sports, which I believe must be discarded if we are to develop a fuller understanding of how these innocuous games influence our everyday lives.
The two columns in question are in fact quite different. One lauds soccer legend Maradona for helping lead recent demonstrations against George W. Bush and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement in Argentina. The other column simply argues that Owens, the brilliant and often obnoxious NFL star, had been unfairly deactivated in violation of the league's collective bargaining agreement. Owens suspension was not for his play, but his off the field words and efforts to secure a new contract. I, like leagueoffans.org Ralph Nader, thought this was wrong.
Maradona and TO are two very different athletes. Comparing them is like comparing Muhammad Ali and Hulk Hogan. But Dr. Christensen conflates both columns, and by extension both athletes, saying I am uncritically celebrating two people who are grotesquely rich 'cogs in the global corporate sports machine' and deserve neither solidarity nor support.
This is certainly true. But surely Dr. Christensen doesn't believe we should go back to the days -- a mere 30 years ago -- when athletes worked in quarries in the off season to pay their bills; when health care wasn't part of a standard contract; when players were bound to their teams like chattel. The fact is that athletes make these sums of money because a generation ago people like Curt Flood sacrificed their careers and union struggles were waged to get a bigger piece of the sports pie. The fact is that sports is a bigger business than US Steel. If players made less, it wouldn't mean lower ticket prices; only that George Steinbrenner would have another gold mast on his yacht. Of course, salaries for top athletes are obscene, but certainly far less obscene than what's made in the owner's box.
Maradona himself was the first major soccer star to demand that international labor standards be applied to soccer and that teams should open the books. As for Owens, the typical NFL player plays for only four years and has a life expectancy of 69, seven years below the national average. And there is a lifetime of hideous injuries to go with it. Think about Johnny Unitas, the greatest quarterback who ever lived, dying at the age of 59, unable to even grip a ball. Owens, in the world of no guaranteed contracts, should have the right to do what every owner does every off season, and that's tear up his contract and demand more - no matter if he's a jerk or not (people weren't nearly so upset when NFL good guy Hines Ward did something similar this off season).
In fact, if high salaries somehow stain athletes, we should have shunned Muhammad Ali in the 1960s and Billie Jean King in the 70s. We should have questioned Martina Navratilova's commitment to Gay rights in the 80s (after all, she profited from a homophobic 'system') and NBA star Etan Thomas should have been kicked off the stage at the September 24th anti-war demonstrations.
I believe that this is a very basic question of 'which side are you on?' When Diego Maradona fights in the streets against Bush and the FTAA, I will link arms with him any day. Maradona, in Dr. Christensen's eyes, is the 'poster child of global capitalism'. This is true insofar as he rose from abject poverty to make money around the world. But I believe that this only makes his stance in Argentina more powerful. Would Dr. Christensen prefer that Maradona be like Pele, taking millions from mega national corporations, appearing in photo ops with dictators and being a mouthpiece for the system? I will take Maradona any day, someone who understands - as do the masses of Argentina from bitter experience - that an economic system with the power to create one soccer millionaire while impoverishing a nation is nothing to celebrate.
Admittedly, the TO question is far more complicated. As I wrote in my piece, no one should confuse him with Nelson Mandela. But if a trend begins where teams can suspend players not for their performance on the field, but for what they say off the field - I think we have a problem. You don't like TO's attitude, then bench him. You don't want him on the team, cut him. But to 'deactivate' him and flout the collective bargaining agreement in the process, is something that must be opposed. It's a slap in the face not to TO but every player who fought - and fights - in the NFLPA for a stronger union. For Dr. Christenson to write, 'It is an insult to working people (you know, the people who make as much in one year as Owens makes for 5 minutes of football) to discuss this situation as if it has anything to do with real working life' I think displays a profound misunderstanding of how sports and culture can influence our world. Anytime someone takes such a public hit, in clear violation of their union contract, it sends a message felt all too clearly in many union shops that labor exists to get slapped.
I appreciate Dr. Christensen looking at my work with a critical eye. I also understand how ugly the dance between big money and pro-sports can be. This is all the more reason to stand with players like Maradona when they get down from their hyper-exalted perch, and demand change.
Dave Zirin's new book 'What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States' is now in stores. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at dave@edgeofsports.com.
