BY JAMES MAO

In print | Published January 29, 2009 — Updated February 04, 2009 21:19

With much ado and fanfare (and sighs of relief), last week marked the transition from Bush’s presidency to Barack Obama’s. The momentousness of this change was especially apparent when a number of students slowly got up to leave in the middle of my Astronomy lecture last Tuesday, hoping to seem inconspicuous as the clock reached the approximate time of Obama’s inaugural address. And with the hubbub surrounding the beaten-to-death issues that our nation’s newest president must tackle, there really only remained one promised change that remained untarnished by the wearying 2008 campaign.

He’s building a basketball court in the White House.

Obviously, Obama’s well-chronicled love for the game of basketball is hardly more important than his oft-repeated economic and social goals for America. At the same time, various media outlets such as “Sports Illustrated” and “USA Today” have been quick to note the impact that sports have had on Obama’s politics. They point to the meritocracy of basketball pick-up games; how in a basketball environment leadership is earned only through solid play. It pleases me, as an avid fan of sports, to see this aspect of leadership gaining some level of legitimacy as Obama ascends to the highest rungs of American politics.

Sports have always been taken less seriously in media coverage and public opinion when compared to other current events. Though sports coverage gets the coveted back page of most newspapers, this one included, it is often lumped with other items that make it seem like something less than “legitimate” news. For example, “The International Herald Tribune” likes to put its daily comics and word scramble on the same page as Roger Federer’s latest victory and baseball’s latest steroid user.

Baseball’s latest steroid user, in fact, also helps build the case against sports as something ultimately powerful in our lives. With so many high-profile athletes embroiled in controversies ranging from shooting themselves in the leg (football player Plaxico Burress) to being paid $20 million not to go to work (basketball player Stephon Marbury), athletes are often generalized as spoiled, ignorant babies who have little to offer society besides their skills at a game. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we can admit that this generalization extends not just to the professional level but to amateur athletics as well.

To me, this lack of goodwill is sad, because it mars what really should be more acknowledged as a dominant force in human existence. Even for my high school newspaper, the sports section housed the fewest number of journalists because no one took the sports world seriously. The journalists all wanted to cover “real” news.

But sports news is real news. It is real because there are few other things in the world that can so directly affect us. A person doesn’t even need to enjoy playing sports to at least recognize the impact it has on people. Only sports can make a nation torn apart from war come together, if only momentarily—how else can the upwelling of support for an Iraqi national soccer team on its way to the 2007 Asian Cup be explained? Only sports can turn otherwise perfectly sane humans turn into incoherent fragments of illogic—try telling a Kobe Bryant fan that LeBron James has surpassed Kobe as the best player in the NBA.

The power of sports is such that the fortunes of the incumbents in Brazilian presidential elections have correlations with the success of the nation’s soccer team. The power of sports is such that a certain former senator of New York found herself appearing at Yankees games with her N.Y. cap on whenever election time rolled around again. It is a power that makes complete strangers brothers as they cheer for the same sorry hockey team, and it is a power that also creates deep divisions where they might not have existed.

And even after I say all this, many will dismiss it as over-dramatizing a trivial aspect of life. But while I certainly don’t want to suggest that the Eagles’ latest playoff collapse should stir more attention than the renewed fighting on the Gaza Strip, there are certain undeniable aspects of the world of sports that make it worthy of our appreciation.

The competition, the unity, the endurance, the euphoria—all of these are driving forces that athletes, fans, commentators and naysayers alike should recognize. The fact that the game of basketball is being attributed as a part—no matter how small—of Barack Obama’s seemingly impossible success story, and being done so without a trace of irony, is a victory for those who still have faith in the compelling power of sports.

For despite how petty and trivial the world of sports may sometimes seem, in the end it can be much more than just a break from the “real world.” The world of sports is a real world in and of itself, and President Obama helps strengthen the notion that this world indomitably affects the traditional idea of a real world. Ultimately, to paraphrase renowned sportswriter Frank Deford, sports embraces us all.

James Mao is a first-year. He can be reached at jmao4@swarthmore.edu.

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