Community Building: Sports and Super Bowls in Seattle

When sports works, I believe teams can foster community and identity in regions and across time. Living in Seattle through the Seahawk’s exciting and uneven climb to the 2014 Super Bowl reminds me of how forging community bonds through sport can work.

A good friend of my son’s captured this on a post on her Facebook last week. It captures the feelings that create connection and solidarilty across the generations, races, genders and geographic patchwork of the region:

“The city is on fire. I have never been so excited, never had so much hope. WE as a COMMUNITY, whatever the struggle, we are here as one! It takes a certain type of human to survive here; the weather itself is a staple to our namesake. Let's show the country and fuck it, the world what the possibilities are when you BELIEVE.”

Walking through my neighborhood downtown Ballard yesterday I waded through a sea of blue and green (lime green of all things). The Starbucks baristas eyes were lined with blue paint and the letter 12. Numbers 11 and 3 adorned half the people sitting on the street—Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson  respectively. Businesses were festooned with blue banners emblazoned with the 12 for the 12^th man.

Neighborhood houses replaced Christmas light with blue and green Seahawk lights—this is a good thing to fight against the winter grey. Giant banners with the Seahawks wonderful logo, born of Northwest Indian art, or 12 pop up in yards, busses, cars and random street corners., People yell “go hawks” to random strangers who respond in kind.

People like me always write about the “soft power” benefits of athletic teams for building a sense of community. These last five weeks of Seahawk mania spread a remarkable tide of good will and festive hope and fear across the region. It confirms my own beliefs. People smile at each other as they wear silly colors. Race, age, class seem to meld across the “go hawks” signs and gestures people salute each other with.

I don’t want to sound too romantic—I know only too well about the profit and marketing and violence that is woven through the reality of modern professional football. I know sports is ephemeral, as is art and love and even toothpaste.

But I don’t care and I believe it matters. Watching and rooting for fine athletic competitors gives people a chance to appreciate the power, beauty and intelligence that humans can display. This experience encourages people to unite together and share a common set of emotions and dreams and language. These opportunities are rare.

This long crazy march to a championship game covers six months of increasing intensity and attention from people. It can go the other way, I know as a Mariners fan people just ignore or pretend the Mariner’s don’t exist by the second month. However, here are the ways that sports teams and success can help build community and identity.

1.    It creates a shared memory for people that people in the region and families and friends and school kids live through and recall. They remember it and refer to it in conversation. It marks a time of shared hope or despair. It marks a period where people focused on the same goal regardless of their other differences. It becomes a reference point to remember fondly and remind each other that we share a common place and memory and that we can have a future together.

2.   The forging of the memory itself creates a social bridge, language and common reference that invites people to speak across boundaries. It can diffuse hostility and distrust or just uneasiness. A social space where a safe and engaging language and content exists is rare—“how about this weather?”—these connections are precious and need to be bolstered wherever we can find them. I realize that part of the population will never “get” sports and this language can exclude them. Given how few and polarizing many other languages can be—think religion—I am happy for this limited but real social space and bridge.

3.   Sports teams manifest symbolic unity in ways seldom offered. People can share “their true colors.” They wear uniforms and jerseys and paraphernalia  that creates a symbolic connect and unity across divisions. These symbols tell you that no matter how different the other person looks or seems or where they live, you share this one point of emotional reference and attention in common. It bridges the differences, opens a conversation and diffuses distance.

4.   This solidariy invites people to express their support in so many ways. People become active participants to express their social commitment—how is that for an academic mouthful? Think about all the variations of costumes and body paint of the fans. People see themselves as participants in the process. The fans scream and yell and create minor earthquakes here in Seattle. They impact the game. Others pray or sit backwards or wear their winning jersey; we participate in this process and not just passively watch it. Social media amplifies the intensity and craziness of the participation for good or bad.

5.   People devote time, energy, effort, ingenuity and intelligence to express their support. This can go deep. I can find twenty Seahawk inspired cocktails in one bar walk through Ballard. Seahawk inspired meals are served, merchandise occurs on street corners and Nordstrom’s, who knew you could have a Seahawks nutcracker?  We turn this into a sacrament that we live, wear or eat.

On a personal note the Top Pot Seahawk donuts with blue and green sprinkles are really important.

American culture can fracture into micro-communities and segregate in so many ways, that opportunities to build shared experience and shared goals and emotions across these ever splintering groups should be treasured and enjoyed. Following a sports team offers a good if sometime silly way to experience and build bonds that may seem ephemeral but establish memories and connections that can last for long periods of time. I still can remember when my Kansas City Chiefs beat the Minnesota twins to win a Super Bowl and of the Kansas City Royals won the World Series. I can tell you where I was and how I watched the games. My family and regional friends all share the same moment, the same experience, the same references as we age and grow apart in so many other ways.

After consultation with friends I will be wearing my same jersey in all its blue and lime green glory unwashed for the Super Bowl. All the supporters will all be at one with our shares aspirations and shared feelings of joy and sorrow—Whatever the outcome, we have chosen to share a common emotional bond and connect in conversation and symbol with this team and “our” team. It has helped forge the “we” that modern life so easily forgets.

Pink Football - Sports and Cancer

 I was watching the Seahawks and Patriots the other day, and I know I should have been yelling about the Seahawks’ pathetic passing game, but all I could notice were pink flashes of color from the pink shoes, gloves and towels worn by many of the players. To be honest the pink did not really go with the Seahawks blue, yellow and green color schemes, but the color did its job, it etched into the spectators the importance of fighting breast cancer and all cancers. I remembered this was breast cancer awareness month. Those streaks of pink changed the game for me.

Color plays a huge role in sports culture. Many colors, like Michigan’s maize and blue or the St. Louis Cardinals’ red, grow from tradition. Color provides a uniform for teams and a unifying symbol of identity and community for fans. College and professional stadiums and field houses present restless seas of a team’s color. People signal their loyalties and commonalities as well as antipathies with their color-coded jerseys and paraphernalia. People on the street nod to a fellow supporter and may frown at someone wearingenemy colors.

Professional and college teams carry this to astounding depths. The NFL presents the epitome of a profession that demands uniformity of color in marketing and team activities. Professional and collegiate athletics color code everything from pens to socks to jocks to uniforms to stationary. Cheerleaders, bands, coaches, players and senior staff all wear mandated colors.

Walking into an operations center of a successful college of professional sports franchise you will walk on color coordinated carpets past color coordinated walls with decorations, awards and color coordinated logos lining the walls. Coaches’ and administrator’s offices will sparkle with official sanctioned logos and mascot likenesses. My favorites are the Top Pot Seahawk donuts with green and blue sprinkles you can get at the games.

Color binds together the sport’s communities and nurtures an emblematic connection. It joins players, fans and coaches together as a common army, oops, I mean community, bound together to support, celebrate and sorrow together.

 I was so used to the multi-level attention to color schemes that the incongruous pink shoes, neon pink gloves or chin straps or wagging pink towels shocked me. But then that was the point, wasn't’ it?

The color pink has become linked to an idea of femininity in modern America. A cascade of pink covered us when our daughter was born! Yet pink it not a primary color. It is watered down red—the color of blood and life. This dilute red caught some of the power of red but thinned the color into something delicate and fragile, compare a pink rose to a blood rose. Shrouding women and female babies in pink could begin the process of inculcating a particular vision of how to be a woman. This pink vision never included being an athlete or competing in sports. So the paradoxical connection of pink and sports carries even more power.

Yet female athletes have coopted pink and turned it not into a camp color, but a vibrant sign of celebrating feminine possibility. Their pinks tend to be brash and neon and pop out rather than fade into a gauzy background.

Young women and the women’s movement have elevated pink to a symbol to unite all people to remember the victims of breast cancer and to promise to engage the fight against it. Breast cancer had grown into a silent epidemic. The silence manifests a tendency of American medicine to be blind to certain diseases of women and the poor. Now worldwide breast cancer alliances fight cancer using pink as their rallying point to raise awareness, raise money and raise common allies across gender lines.

The marketing genius of aligning pink with sport not only defies the past, but it channels the color into a new vision. This pink expands the realm where women can succeed as well as highlighting a once hidden disease, a disease so hidden many women were not aware of its danger nor how to search for and act upon it. Now groups and events from races for the cure to pink biker groups celebrate the color and cause.

Linking pink to athletics works because professional and college sports embody youth, physicality and health. These athletes personify the strength, risk-taking and immortality only the young and healthy can exhibit. Many of us watch them and admire and celebrate them as well as root for our teams. Inserting pink to remind us of cancer carries a special potency given the audience who seeks out sports.

Linking pink with sports turns stereotypes inside out. Yesterday I saw pink boxing gloves in the window of a store both pointing to boxing as a realm women have entered but also reminding people to take breast cancer and all cancer seriously.  The UW pink basketball uniforms are actually quite cool. The athletes enjoy wearing them not just as a symbolic statement but because they look good in pink.

I attended a UW volleyball game last weekend that celebrated breast cancer awareness month and got the full immersive power of this alignment. Both teams wore pink warm ups. Coaches wore pink shirts with the mandatory purple W logo. Ushers wore pink. Student athletes in the student athlete section wore robust pink T-shirts with big W on them. The cheerleaders, of course, sported pink pompoms. The crowd cheered the messages on cancer awareness flashing on the huge scoreboard. All the breast cancer survivors and later all cancer survivors as well as those connected to cancer victims and survivors stood to be recognized. All the visceral power of sport, community and pink came together to recognize the threat and celebrate the struggle.

The NFL players provide another type of jolt. Here are some of the strongest toughest and most macho symbols of American culture. Yet the NFL gave permission to individuals to violate the league’s obsession with uniformity and wear pink during this month to show solidarity with the cause and with women. Just seeing these robust men wear pink, proudly and clearly, and proclaim their support with a pink chinstrap or shoe or towel sends a message of support to the 40 million people watching the games. But more deeply, it demonstrates that archetypical athletic males can connect to pink and not fear it or the women it symbolizes. I may be blowing in the wind here, but I believe these symbolic actions matter over time to erode the boundaries of gender identity that football can sometimes seem to enshrine more than any other sport.

Pink uniforms, pompoms, cleats, chin straps, gloves, warm ups appropriate and expand the possibilities of the feminine; but it also awakens, reminds and unites us all that we share a common enemy in breast cancer and all cancers. 

Pink football: bring it on.