sidelined

There was an interesting bit of conjecture posed by David Horton in the Huffington Post about national/international sport having a very dim future due to the twin problems of peak oil and climate change.

I reckon, in the next few years, as a result of caps on emissions and peak oil being reached, that we can say goodbye to international sports and most national sports. The idea that you could fly people and teams all over America, all over the globe, all the time, just to play sport, is so late twentieth century. Fifty years ago it was still something of a novelty to see people flying to play sport. Now it is taken for granted.

But not for long. Get ready to say goodbye to international tennis, golf, motor racing, Olympic Games. Won’t be viable much longer. Nor will it be viable to send baseball, football, basketball, ice hockey teams criss-crossing the US every day.

Hyperbolic? Misplaced? Wrong? I think so. So are his comments about sport that is closer to home.

Sad news? Well, on the plus side it should see the death of the excess commercialization of sport and a return to local leagues and local teams, community based, travelling at most by bus, and probably mainly amateur. Like our great-grandparents and even grandparents once knew and loved. Going to lead to increased community spirit I think – hard to get interested in teams full of strangers owned, bought and sold, by businessmen, and mainly interested in advertising revenue. Much better to be involved in a home grown local team. Better for the kids too.

Here too though I think Horton is spinning a misconception. At the elite level, sport has always been commercial in some way. Wasn’t the World Series named after a newspaper? Didn’t Avery Brundage spend his entire tenure as IOC supremo attempting to stomp out professionalism wherever he found it? Noted tennis hustler Bobby Riggs bet on himself at the Wimbledon Championships in 1939 and won over $100,000 – professionalism and commercialism has always been with us in some form or another.

And in reality, most sport is still played at our local fields of dreams against our mates and training partners, watched and supported by friends and family. The grassroots is still there and it’s still about the participation, bragging rights and the competition. Is there a club rider out there who doesn’t enjoy out sprinting their close training mate to the next stop sign or dropping them on that nasty climb?

That Pro Cycling is now an energy gobbling global traveling circus doesn’t mean grass roots (local) cycling isn’t happening anymore. In fact it’s stronger and bigger than ever. You can’t return to something that never went away. A Yogi Berraish phrase I know, but you know what I mean.

Even if big time sport was affected by these issues, most elite sportsmen would still find a way to participate on the world stage in the natural and historical homes of many international sports. For example, Basketball, Baseball and Hockey, in North America. Football (soccer), Track and Field and Cycling in Europe. We’d still play New Zealand in Rugby and England at Cricket, though they might have to take a boat and a train – just like the old days – and we’d still get to see the events on our screens or listen in on our radios.

Even the poorest of the global energy poor have televisions and radios with which to listen to and watch their national teams. Everyone in the Cameroon stopped to hear or watch the Indomitable Lions play in the World Cup, just as everyone in Germany stopped to hear, via radio, Max Schmeling get thumped by Joe Louis in Yankee Stadium in 1938.

In an age without high powered energy resources and travel options, Hubert Opperman found a way to travel the world in pursuit of competition and greatness, as did many Australians and Americans of an earlier less well connected age. Maybe because of the time lag there was a bit less hype, but folks still followed their line scores and admired them for their exploits – national and international sport was still played and legends still made.