Silence Over the Stadium

I have been listening with mild interest to the boos and cheers relative to the sports program at Cal State Northridge.

The expressions of disgust and then hope have had nothing to do with team play in the classic sense of body contact but are due, in a larger sense, to the ascendance of sports in today’s fickle culture.

What we have, at last, is the ultimate triumph of sweat in academia, the athlete astride us like the Colossus of Rhodes, a bat over his shoulder, a basketball under his arm, a soccer ball at his feet.

I reach this conclusion after witnessing the emotional outpouring that accompanied CSUN’s decision to drop four sports from its athletic program and the tears of joy wept at the apparent reversal of that decision.

As you might recall, the university announced on June 11 that it was eliminating baseball, volleyball, swimming and soccer from its, er, lineup due to budget considerations and gender-equity requirements.

In other words, it had an $800,000 deficit in its athletic department and was facing a deadline to raise its ratio of female athletes by 11% to comply with a court decision. Dropping four men’s sports seemed the easy thing to do.

Had CSUN dumped its English department or eliminated history from its curriculum, the response would have been limited to a few huffy letters to the editor and 15 minutes of debate on talk radio and that would have been that.

But tamper with sports, by God, and yer gonna hear from spit, scratch, us.

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The outcry was fierce when CSUN announced its plans. I heard from people I hadn’t heard from in years, one of whom threatened me with physical damage unless I joined the fight to, as he put it, save our young people.

Even when I explained that our young people were not at stake and in fact might even benefit by the lack of being smashed around on a playing field, he would not be appeased.

“Save them!” was his admonition, followed by the awful clicking sound a telephone makes when one disconnects in a rage.

However, I do not take well to intimidation and held loftily to a journalistic silence, thereby avoiding the whole subject. It is probably not necessary to say, but I’m not a sports person. My interest ended with stickball at about age 12 and I’ve been observing, rather than participating, ever since.

As it turned out, my participation wasn’t necessary in this case. The entire San Fernando Valley, from Woodland Hills to Burbank, rose as one to demand restoration of the Good Old American Games at CSUN. Well, I guess soccer isn’t American, but you get the idea. Think of it as a violent stepchild.

Subsequently, two of the doomed sports, swimming and the aforementioned stepkid, were reinstated for one season through private fund-raising. A state bailout plan is likely to save baseball and volleyball for the same period.

And then it will be up to a committee to find ways that will assure the guys and gals at Northridge that, unlike dull classes in government and philosophy, there will always be something to cheer for at Cal State.

I mean did Thomas Jefferson ever hit a home run? Did Plato ever make a diving catch? I rest my case.

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What intrigues me is not so much whether, for instance, CSUN has a volleyball team, but why so many people give a damn.

It’s a game best played by dudes and dudesses in bikinis on a beach lined with spectators swilling beer or, in a worst-case scenario, by Marines isolated on an island during a war with nothing else to do.

Horseshoes falls into the same category and, I’m certain, would be equally supported under conditions similar to volleyball. A cry of “Save horseshoes!” would resound like gongs of war down the corridors of academia if the administration would be so bold as to end it.

Why, I ask again? Why do we continue to celebrate that which requires little more than an ability to coordinate hand and eye in a manner that propels a ball through a hoop or into the bleachers? Why do we deify those who, their egos fattened by their incomes, damn us by their behavior?

I don’t want sports eliminated. I want them placed in a perspective which, along with movies and band concerts, would require them to be viewed as a form of mild enjoyment, not as an addiction we cannot live without.

I suggest we can do without them if we have to and indeed should do without them if it comes to a choice between an empty classroom and an empty stadium. At best, sports has come to represent a form of controlled violence and one can’t help but wonder how much of that we need anywhere in America.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com