Joyous Danger: Winter Olympics--Speed and Flying

The Winter Olympics offer more danger than the summer Olympics—not from terrorists, but from friction coefficients. This danger couples with the joy from speed and height that organically grows from the lowered kinetic friction enabled by ice, snow and inclines. All the unique danger and joy derives from the drag coefficients enabled by playing on ice and snow.

The danger to athletes does not come from explosive mass+force collisions as in American football; nor does it arise from torque that plagues knee or ACL destruction in soccer or basketball.

Cold and heights lie behind it all. Cold permits ice and snow while mountains permit incline and speed. Combine these with launches and jumps and the Winter Olympics provide spectacles of race an speed, and beauty and air borne distance and play. All the sports depend upon the low drag coefficients permitted by ice and air. Nothing close exists in the earth bound sports of the summer Olympics.

Let’s start with flying.

People fly in the winter Olympics.

How cool is that? People fly, sometimes it is only for .5 seconds in ice skating to 6-7 seconds in ski jump to a series of explosive aerobatic jumps and airborne gymnastics in the half pipe or slopestyle.

The combination of inclines plus the speed and power permitted by ice and snow enable men and women to launch themselves into the air. In ski jumps they push off and head down inclines reaching speeds of 60 miles per hour, then head into the air, battle the wind and cold and visibility and snow to find perfect aerodynamic positioning and soar. Airborne skiers project a serene beauty that hides the continuous micro-management of their body and core to adapt to the wind, snow and other winter surprises.

Then they land. The landing involves endless adjustments to avoid crashing into snow, spiraling out of control or destroying ankles and knees.

Skiers fly soar through the air getting as aerodynamic as possible to maximize distance. Every scintilla of friction is fought from weight to the ultra-sleek and space age materials of their uniforms. Everything is designed to maximize force and lift and flight.  Skiers concentrated upon achieving a perfect balance of power push, launch and aerodynamic position as well as weight shift to maximize the distance they could achieve in 2-4 seconds. It was magnificent and inspiring and sometimes felt a bit boring, although spectators did not see the endless accommodations to wind and sight and snow required to maintain that form in the air.

Snow boarders changed all this. Born on snow play grounds, they pushed and played and discovered how being freed from the ground coupled with the launch coefficients of snow released them to play in the air—three  dimensional play. Only for seconds, even microseconds, but they experimented with moving their bodies, flipping their bodies and boards, twisting turning. Much like dunks on a playground they challenged each other and tested the limits of their bodies in the air on slopes unfettered by rules and norms and forms. Friction and drag coefficients in the air are different and permit wide and wild variations as well as pushing board and ski developers to maximize launch speeds, aerodynamic and landing stability.

The boards maximize time in the air both with the advantages of momentum in the launch but also the distance travelled horizontally so the “hang time” far surpasses anything earth bound and earth launched athletes can achieve. The half pipe maximizes these advantages and permits multiple points of launch and landing to build momentum but also the new or innovate spins, flips and twirls. The sport feels like a cross between ballet and gymnastics driven by thrust and imagination.

Skiing now emulates snow boarding with free skiing and both sports permit the energy and lift of boards to serve as platforms for experiments in motion in space. All push boundaries and create much higher dangers for those who fall or land from a distance where a boarder is doing three full body rotations in the air. Crashes carry far more force and vulnerability given the three-dimensional poses struck as well as the sheer impact falling from height.

In addition the ice and incline on mountains permits a natural based, albeit groomed, challenge not available in non-winter sports. The speed permitted by snow and ice sking especially when coupled with thoughtful ski design and immense training regimes permits Alpine skiers to reach speeds of 70 to 90 miles per hour on the slaloms far surpassing anything possible with earth bound friction coefficients.

The courses are laid out with tight or wide curves and gates and moguls depending upon the slope, but they require immense discipline and speed. It is not unusual for one third of the field to not finish the race. The crashes and spills can lead to terrifying spirals out of control with horrible injuries for participants. It sometimes feels like a NASCAR run waiting for a crash.

Being in the air lowers friction and generates greater speed and height from which to move one’s body. It also creates a three-dimensional world in which to act. Unlike the very time limited world of gymnastics, the snow boarders perfected art of launching into the air and then spinning, touching, twisting and flipping as they moved forward. They deployed momentum and energy and low friction coefficients. In the air vertical and horizontal distance combine to maximize hang time. The combination of moving forward and kinetic energy but also movement, board construction and use of one’s body and ski or board for lift offers unique challenges and opportunities.

Even land-bound actions get huge lifts from the reduced drag of ice. A skater can experience up to 3 to 4 G force on his or her body during a spin. Angular momentum generated by ice speed permit ice skaters to press dangerous and beautify boundaries of shape and speed. Ice dancers possess the same capacity to integrate angular momentum with beauty and form combined with the speed and momentum of tosses and leaps.

The last reason I enjoy the winter Olympics is that they give nature a much strong say in the challenge. The quality of snow on trails and jumps differs from day to day and hour to hour given sun and temperature and wind. The wind at higher altitudes demands far greater thought and adaptation when a person is soaring at 60 miles per hour or moving in fog and snow at 90 miles per hour. Snow bedevils and blinds and dare athletes under all the conditions. Wind, snow, snow conditions and nature extract a cost and surprise from folks. 

As in the beginning nature has her say in winter Olympics like no where else. Yet the athletes defy and work with nature for speed, and danger and flight as in no other competitions.

Is Sports Just Entertainment?

Super Bowl mania descends on us, and the endless stories about the bowl clog sports and mainstream media outlets. I am always struck this time of year by how much of the coverage casually refers to the game as “entertainment.” A quick Google search culls over 934,000,000 references linking the two. It comes out in a different but telling way when athletes talk about themselves. Some athletes use to deflate the obsessive American hero worship that plagues by saying “I’m just an entertainer.” They don’t say, “I’m just an athlete”—being an athlete matters too much to them. They don’t say “It’s just a game”—the game really does matter. By refocusing on entertainment, the athlete like many commentators who dismiss things as “just” or “mere” entertainment downplay its worth by hinting it does not really matter too much.

I think this is a mistake. 

To entertain can involve activity worthy of respect and attention. Many domains of human excellence and achievement have their own inner logic and beauty and deserve respect, but they also entertain. This entertainment can bring joy and appreciation to us. The link between sports and entertainment matters.

James Carville famously remarked “Americans view politics and sports as entertainment.” I for one have no problem with being entertained by an activity. We use the word entertain to cover a huge range of experiences such as reading literature, attending concerts, conversing with a friend, playing or watching a game. Being entertained can involve appreciating an activity and its form, and beauty and structure. It can involve pleasure, but far more such as delight or being transported or learning.

Being entertained can arise from serious endeavor and being entertained does not reduce to pleasure. One can be entertained by tragedy or serious conversation or plays or endeavors like a political campaign. People can experience pain and sorrow as well as exhilaration or delight from entertainment.

The deep roots of the word entertain derive from two areas. The Indo-European root “ten” means “hold” or “grab.” These meanings continue through the French tenir to English. “Enter” suggests gathering together and inviting one inside to be together. The root of entertain points to people gathering together where they find their attention held by the actions or people or object they engage.

Being entertained does not just mean to be amused or charmed or even pleased. Entertainment does not require pleasure or happy endings. Art can entertain. People can entertain. Spectacle can entertain. Competition can entertain. But none guarantee that we made happy by it.

Being entertained means that we are grabbed; our attention is focused and we attend to what is before us. We can see, hear and experience in a visceral way. Good entertainment pulls us into the emotional, cognitive and perceptual possibilities of an experience. A book a play, a symphony, a class, a game, a conversation can entertain us.

All these experiences require is human attention and openness to experience. Entertainment can be a trifle for our amusement, but it can elicit profound emotions such as a symphony, rock song or a play, novel or inspiring lecture. All entertain but they capture our attention and interest at different levels. This engages us, and the level of engagement opens the possibility of learning or changing from the experience. At the least, entertainment can divert us and permit us to appreciate an experience, but it offers more. Entertainment can influence or change us. The key becomes the level of engagement from us that it captures from us.

I think that sports can be entertaining in all these ways because it can arrest out attention, engagement and influence our emotions. It can provide delight, sorrow, ecstasy, sadness or even boredom. It can call forth intellectual and emotional interest, study and attention. Almost any aspect of life can do this for people interested in a domain. The mimetic arts like dance, theater, and music evoke this reality with extreme clarity and power. Sports live in that same family.

What makes the entertainment of sports so compelling is that sports competition is open ended—we do not know and cannot predict the outcome. This means that every sport competition possesses an edge of uncertainty and risk—it is why I cannot watch when my team is trying to make a free throw with one second left or a field goal kicker is kicking a game winner with two seconds left.

The sheer uncertainty can compel attention and heighten interest and passionate engagement. I do not want to deny the capacity of scripted and predictable outcomes to entertain and educate us. Rereading a book, re-listening to a record or re-watching a movie can provide endless satisfaction and appreciation as well as being a Rorschach test of who we are at different times. But the possibility of the unexpected and the new adds luster and interest to entertainment. Sports possesses a reality and real time component that scripted life and works can never provide.

Art introduces competition all the time. Ancient Greece from which we inherit both our art and our sport connected them both with beauty— they conducted competitions for plays, dance and sculpture. They played war games from which western sports developed. Today we regularly stage juried art shows and competitions in all areas of art and production. Products and artists boast of winning awards at shows. These competitions with winners and losers supplement the competitive market place where over time products but also artists discover if people will spend money and time to appreciate, use and be entertained by their creations.

Sports can carry this uncertainty and competition to logical extremes, but we experience it in many areas of life. Every time a symphony or drama is performed, the script interacts with the unique interpretive power of the performers. In classical music credenzas permitted and encouraged improvisation and virtuosity among performers. In jazz the basic themes and structures open up to improvisation that defines the art. Live performance even of scripted art entertains in a unique and powerful way with the edge of risk and creativity that accompanies each new performance even of well-known classics.

Entertainment is quite consistent with powerful purpose and commitment. We see this in drama and performance art and in live human performances such as courts or war or politics or market competition. We can see it when painters or dancers or composers push established boundaries and rules to create new forms or reinvigorate old forms. None of these has guaranteed outcomes and all can entertain and engage by virtue of the uncertainty and risk and unpredictability of the competition.

Sport games synchronize a powerful narrative in a controlled way. Human life is rife with ambiguity and unknown outcomes. We constantly embark on risk ventures at work and at home. Competitive athletics both regulates and intensifies this driven contrast through games with rules that determine winners and losers within limited space and time. Winners and losers are clear and celebrated. But then the next game, the next competition, the next season begins again, just like life. Coach Nick Saban won his third national championship in four years in football and put it well, “I will have one day to enjoy this, then it begins again.”

John Rocker, one of the true knucklehead of recent baseball history, offers a different take. Defending the use of steroids in baseball he suggested that baseball and all sport really are just entertainment. "When people are paying their $80 to $120 whatever it may be to buy their ticket and come watch that game, it;s almost like the circus is in town."..."They wanna see some clown throw a fastball 101 mph and some other guy hit is 500 feet. That's entertainment."  It may be, but it is not athletics, just look at the World Wrestling Federation.

We can be entertained by sports in so many ways just as we can by art, people, politics, markets and the rest. I want to insist that being viewed as just entertainment does not denigrate sport just as it does not denigrate movies or drama or dance.

The ancient Greeks understood that each human practice involves skill and a unique form of beauty. Competition in sport or playwriting or inventing can breed excellence in achievement. It can push masters beyond themselves and motivate young artists and athletes and entrepreneurs to innovate, adapt and produce greater accomplishments. The Greeks also insisted that each practice possessed a unique dynamic and virtues and beauty that can earn our appreciation and respect.

Sports entertain us; just don't call it just entertainment.

The Agony and Ecstasy of High School Football: Review of Varsity Blues

I have always loved Varsity Blues, a surprisingly good and great guilty pleasure sports movie. To celebrate football season, I want return to the essence of football, Texas high school football. I discussed this in my essay of the great Friday Night Lights also set the land of Texas football. Varsity Blues presents the homunculus that contains all of football’s glory and pathology but illustrated in the lurid emotional and physical theater of high school melodrama. This is NOT Friday Night Lights, but on its own terms, Varsity Blues mixes comedy and drama while xrays the appeal and perils of football fetishism.

The movie is set in the barren forgotten town of New Canaan Texas, the almost promised land. Like Friday Night lights, it delves into a culture where football anchors community, identity and intergenerational authority. It emerges from the land where Allen High School outside of Dallas just finished a 60 million dollar 18,000 person high school stadium that is only the third largest high school stadium in Texas.

The movie centers on the last six games of the quest of legendary coach Bud Kilmer, a slick and mean Jon Voight, to win “my” 23^rd district championship and “my” third Texas state championship. With the unwavering support of the adult fathers of his players, all ex-players, he cajoles, screams and abuses his players who respond with worshipful resentment. Like Joe Paterno his bronze statue looms over New Canaan stadium, remember in the Bible Canaanites worshipped false gods. The team is built around all Texas quarterback Lance Harbor (a golden Paul Walker) with a scholarship to Florida State. Of course he dates the hot cheerleader (a young whip cream covered Ali Larter—you have to see the movie to understand). Lance plays with four buddies who have been with him since peewee ball.

We know Lance’s status because his father, an old wide receiver for Kilmer, has built a huge billboard in his front yard celebrating his son. The team, parents and town rabidly follow each play and truck out in vans across the endless dead prairie for game after game. At the center of this spider’s web of loyalty and power, Kilmer is building his own legacy and the town cooperates. Lance has accumulated knee injuries and cannot play without pain injections before each game, injections witnessed by his best friend and perpetual backup quarterback John Moxon.

In a critical game Billy Bob, overweight, slow but big-hearted lineman, suffers an obvious concussion but is sent back out on the field by Coach Kilmer who screams at the player for malingering. We first meet Billy Bob careening down the road in a large truck drinking maple syrup direct from the bottle with his pet pig. Staggering on the field, he misses his block and a blind side hit tears the Lance’s knee and ends the his season and scholarship. 

Jonathon Moxon who has happily sat on the sidelines for four years reading J.D. Salinger while pretending to master the playbook, is thrust into the game. To everyone’s surprise, including his parents, he throws a touchdown pass and saves the game. Suddenly he becomes the new idol of New Canaanites. 

The movie plays out in a battle of wills between Moxon and Kilmer. Moxon has always seen through Kilmer’s abuse and egoism. The movie and season reaches its highlight at half time of the district championship. The black running back, Wendell Brown, pulls up injured and the coach tries to convince him to inject a pain killer and play even though the pain. Charley Tweeter, the endlessly profane and horny the wide out, has heard a “pop” and worries about Brown. The compliant trainer has warned the coach it is a serious injury. Moxon, Lance and Tweeter confront the coach and warn Brown not to take the injection. Moxon states that if Brown takes shot injection he refuses to play. The coach dismisses him and turns to Tweeter to play QB, but Tweeter refuses. Lance warns Brown not to do it and Kilmer turns on his all state quarterback calling him a “gimp” and physically assaults Moxon in front of the team. The team refuses to follow Kilmer onto the field. Stunned by their own audacity and paralyzed without the coach, the team rallies behind Moxon and Lance Harbor. The team wins the championship on a trick play involving Billy Bob catching a pass.

The movie depends heavily on a didactic voice over commentary of Jonathon Moxon (James Vanderbeek,) the permanent backup quarterback. Moxon represents what my nephew calls the classic “guy who plays football.” Mox has the grades to escape New Canaan and dreams of being accepted to Brown. He is putting in time supporting his friends and satisfying his football obsessed dad who was a mediocre but reverential player under Kilmer. To sum up his attitude, “fuck Kilmer.” Yet his sudden fame as well protecting his friends like trying to get Wendell some touchdowns for recruiting purposes put him in constant conflict with Kilmer who even threatens to sabotage Moxon’s scholarship to Brown.

The power of football culture and the towering coach reaches deep into the town through the fathers of the sons who now play. The sport reinforces the patriarchy of the town and the fathers push, cajole and force their sons to play for the man who shaped them, Coach Kilmer. He’s the kind of coach who says and believes, “Never show weakness, the only pain that matters is the pain you inflict.”

The fathers live through their son’s success on the field while the supine wives run the household and go along with the football fantasy, except for Wendell Brown whose mom must do his recruiting because Kilmer will not help his sole black player. Lance’s father throws his son’s success into the faces of all his old friends especially Mox’s father. When Lance writhes in injury after blowing his knew, his dad mutters, “Lord, how can you do this to me.” At the hospital Lance’s father does not ask hear about the depth of Lance’s injury or how Lance has been able to play without any tissue for the last year, all he wants to know is how soon before Lance can “play” and get his scholarship. When Moxon receives his acceptance letter to Brown, his father ignores it and demands to talk about the next football game. This ends with Moxon telling his dad, “I don’t want your life.”

When Coach Kilmer grabs helmets to scream at players and endlessly abuses them to achieve “my” championships,” the fathers lounge chairs watching the practice. “It’s good for them,” they mutter as they celebrate rosy memories of their own humiliation. This summer at least three high school players died in practice while similar parents watched and celebrated the cruelty that coaches and dads think shape players and men. The fathers celebrate their own baptism under Kilmer’s abuse by claiming he is “making” their sons “men.”

I think a couple lessons come through the entertainment that remain true at all levels of football.

Football Glory is Fleeting and Hollow—Bruce Springsteen’s song Glory Days reminisces about the fate of us who see all life as shadow play compared to our Technicolor athletic memories. The reality is worse. Lance sees everyone abandon him including his scholarship when he injures himself. Even his girl friend Ali Larter tries to seduce John Moxon as her way out of New Canaan. Lance’s coach simultaneously uses his injury to insult and motivate his team but turns viciously on Lance and calls him a “gimp.” Lance sits in agony in his room listening to everyone forget him when Jon Moxon wins a game and displaces him as the new “hero.”

Football is not reality. It exists for a moment, a brief transient moment, like all sports. Kilmer and the patriarchy heighten that moment to the highest point of life to motivate young men desperate to get their father’s and Kilmer’s approval. Kilmer relies upon the father’s collaboration to abuse and exploit their children. Mox sees through it all and knows that if Kilmer continues to win, his young and quite weird younger brother will be forced to play for the tyrant.

At the end when Moxon rallies the team, he rejects the glory for a life myth that sustains football’s dominant narrative. He stumbles upon what the best athletes know—focus upon the moment, only the moment and not the glory or the future. He pleads with his teammates don’t make memories, don’t play for the future or creating a past. Summoning the great Greek myths of western sport he yells,

“Before this game started, Kilmer said "48 minutes for the next 48 years of your life". I say, "Fuck that". All right? Fuck that. Let's go out there, and we play the next 24 minutes for the next 24 minutes, and we leave it all out on the field. We have the rest of our lives to be mediocre, but we have the opportunity to play like gods for the next half of football.”

Guys Do Stupid Stuff—kind of goes with the game, but we often forget that our college heroes are 19-year-old guys. Mox, who should know better, gathers his four friends Tweeter, Billy Bob and the straight-laced Wendell and rescues Lance Harbor from self-imposed exile, to spend the night at a strip club. Leaving aside the fantastical moment when they find their PE teacher at the strip club—I never said this was reality! —The guys have a great and wonderful time and stumble out dazed and hung over. Kind of like when this year perennial high school power Catholic high school De Matha was playing a game in North Carolina and the five players snuck prostitutes into the hotel past 18 parents and coaches. Of course the team loses the next game as the four play still hung over and encounter Kilmer’s wrath because the “disrespect of a few” cost him “my” undefeated season.

We understand again how closely aligned power, violence, sex and friendship merge in football culture. It also becomes clear that friendship matters because Mox is the only guy to visit Lance Harbor. Lance has learned how quickly not only glory but also all the fake friends disappear. It’s a life lesson anyone with position or fame learns; football just etches it more clearly. We learn friendship lasts past fame and glory.

The Abuses are Deep Rooted—this should be no surprise. High school really is the homunculus of the college and professional world, all the joys and pathologies exist in smaller form. They will just scale up as the level of visibility and stakes rise. Special treatment from police who are intimidated by the coach to ignore drunkenness and theft—check; special gifts of illegal beer at no cost to the players—check; driving injured players to play through peer pressure and appeals to their manhood—check; players living out the fantasies of their fathers—check.  Getting captured in the hype even when you see through it—check.

The seduction of football fame hits everyone. The usually levelheaded Mox cannot believe his luck and the fun and rush of being treated like a celebrity with free beer, seductive cheerleaders and swarms of girls as well as media spotlight. After one game, a newscaster traps him and asks him if he plans to play QB in the Ivy League. A flustered Mox shucks and  “thanks God” and talks of himself in the third person, “Jonathon Moxon is only one man.” Lance listens in agony in his lonely room. Lance’s sister and Mox’s levelheaded girlfriend (a type cast Amy Smart) all but leaves him after telling Mox how he just behaved.

And yet we can almost understand why star athletes refer to themselves in the third person. It may be the only way they can separate their own humanity from the bigger than life persona that the media and their fans thrust upon them.

Despite its cutting critique of the tyranny of coaches and collaboration of fathers and towns in exploiting their sons, the core of the movie delivers a different message of football and guys. It begins with guttering footage of four young kids playing peewee ball.

Late a night a despairing Billy Bob is blowing up all his trophies, he tears he cries,, “we were just kids,” but coaches and fathers screamed and pushed and demanded of them even then.  Nothing they did could satisfy the lust of parents and coaches for using them as pawns in their need for status.

But the four kids held together. They held each other up. Different as planets, they shared the same orbit and protected themselves from their parents and coaches. We move from that shadowing memory to Billy Bob’s careening truck to the end of the game.

They have stood up for each other and protected Wendell, helped Billy Bob through his concussion, stayed with Lance when everyone else abandoned him. At the end, the moment of victory was “ours.” It belonged not to bronzed coaches, not to incomplete dads, but to them. None of them would play football ever again, but that did not matter.

In the end the value arises not from the game, not from love of the game, not from the community’s misuse of the sport, but the small and real love of the guys for each other—four kids, four friends playing an adult game with each other.