{"id":51219,"date":"2025-01-30T15:50:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T23:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=51219"},"modified":"2025-01-30T15:50:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T23:50:29","slug":"sports-and-militarism-shouldnt-mix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/30\/sports-and-militarism-shouldnt-mix\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports and Militarism Shouldn’t Mix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a sports fan. And last weekend I caught the epic clash between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, once again won by the Chiefs and the magical Patrick Mahomes. Yet seemingly no big NFL game is complete without a military flyover, in this instance by a B-2 nuclear stealth bomber. There\u2019s nothing like mixing potential nuclear Armageddon with football \u2014 it\u2019s uniquely American.<\/p>\n

It put me to mind of this article that I wrote in 2018 for TomDispatch<\/a>. We just can\u2019t seem to be able to play ball nowadays without the event turning into a celebration of the U.S. military and its most deadly weaponry. There\u2019s a place for everything, and the place for combat jets, military camouflage and the like is not at sporting events. Sports is supposed to bring us together in a thrilling celebration of competition that isn\u2019t deadly. When the game ends, after all, opponents shake hands, even hug; they walk away together, knowing there\u2019ll always be another game. Another chance at victory. Life, even in defeat, goes on.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

War, to state the obvious, isn\u2019t like that \u2014 at all. Make sports not war, America.<\/p>\n

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For the Super Bowl in 2021, the Air Force featured its three nuclear strategic bombers, the B-1, the B-2, and the B-52. Hooray America!<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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The Militarization of Sports and the Redefinition of Patriotism<\/strong><\/h2>\n

BY WILLIAM J. ASTORE<\/a><\/strong> (ORIGINAL POST: 8\/19\/2018)<\/p>\n

As long as I can remember, I\u2019ve been a sports fan. As long as I can remember, I\u2019ve been interested in the military. Until recently, I experienced those as two separate and distinct worlds. While I was in the military \u2014 I served for 20 years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force \u2014 I did, of course, play sports. As a young lieutenant, I was in a racquetball tournament at my base in Colorado. At Squadron Officer School in Alabama, I took part in volleyball and flickerball (a bizarre Air Force sport). At the Air Force Academy, I was on a softball team and when we finally won a game, all of us signed the ball. I also enjoyed being in a military bowling league. I even had my own ball with my name engraved on it.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t misunderstand me. I was never particularly skilled at any sport, but I did thoroughly enjoy playing partly because it was such a welcome break from work \u2014 a reprieve from wearing a uniform, saluting, following orders, and all the rest. Sports were sports. Military service was military service. And never the twain shall meet.<\/p>\n

Since 9\/11, however, sports and the military have become increasingly fused in this country. Professional athletes now consider it perfectly natural to don uniforms that feature camouflage patterns<\/a><\/strong>. (They do this, teams say, as a form of \u201cmilitary appreciation.\u201d) Indeed, for only $39.99 you, too, can buy<\/a><\/strong> your own Major League Baseball-sanctioned camo cap at MLB\u2019s official site. And then, of course, you can use that cap in any stadium to shade your eyes as you watch flyovers, parades, reunions<\/a><\/strong> of service members returning from our country\u2019s war zones and their families, and a multitude of other increasingly militarized ceremonies that celebrate both veterans and troops in uniform at sports stadiums across what, in the post-9\/11 years, has come to be known as \u201cthe homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, you can hardly miss moments when, for instance, playing fields are covered with gigantic American flags<\/a><\/strong>, often unfurled and held either by scores of military personnel or civilian defense contractors. Such ceremonies are invariably touted as natural expressions of patriotism, part of a continual public expression of gratitude for America\u2019s \u201cwarfighters<\/a><\/strong>\u201d and \u201cheroes<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d These are, in other words, uncontroversial displays of pride, even though a study ordered by Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake revealed that the U.S. taxpayer, via the Pentagon, has regularly forked over tens of millions<\/a><\/strong> of dollars ($53 million<\/a><\/strong> between 2012 and 2015 alone) to corporate-owned teams to put on just such displays.<\/p>\n

Paid patriotism should, of course, be an oxymoron. These days, however, it\u2019s anything but and even when the American taxpayer isn\u2019t covering displays like these, the melding of sports and the military should be seen as inappropriate, if not insidious. And I say that as both a lover of sports and a veteran.<\/p>\n

I Went to a Military Parade and a Tennis Match Broke Out<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019ve heard the joke: I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out. It was meant to poke fun at the fisticuffs in National Hockey League games, though these days there are fewer of them than in the \u201cglory days\u201d of the 1970s. An updated version would, however, fit today\u2019s increasingly militarized sports events to a T: I went to a military parade and a baseball (football, hockey) game broke out.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, it seems as if professional sports simply couldn\u2019t occur without some notice of and celebration of the U.S. military, each game being transformed in some way into yet another Memorial Day or Veterans Day lite.<\/p>\n

Consider the pro-military hype that surrounded this year\u2019s Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Not so very long ago, when I watched such games I would be transported to my childhood and my fantasies of becoming the next Nolan Ryan or Carl Yastrzemski.<\/p>\n

When I watched this year\u2019s version of the game, however, I didn\u2019t relive my youth; I relived my military career. As a start, the previous night featured a televised home-run derby. Before it even began, about 50 airmen paraded out in camouflage uniforms, setting the stage for everything that would follow. (As they weren\u2019t on duty, I couldn\u2019t help wondering why they found it appropriate to don such outfits.) Part of T-Mobile\u2019s \u201cHatsOff4Heroes\u201d campaign<\/a><\/strong>, this mini-parade was justified in the name of raising money to support veterans, but T-Mobile could have simply given the money to charity without any of the militarized hoopla that this involved.<\/p>\n

Highlighting the other pre-game ceremonies the next night was a celebration of Medal of Honor recipients. I have deep respect for such heroes, but what were they doing on a baseball diamond? The ceremony would have been appropriate on, say, Veterans Day in November.<\/p>\n

Those same pre-game festivities included a militaristic montage narrated by Bradley Cooper (star of \u201cAmerican Sniper<\/a><\/strong>\u201c), featuring war scenes and war monuments while highlighting the popular catchphrase \u201cfreedom isn\u2019t free.\u201d Martial music accompanied the montage along with a bevy of flag-waving images. It felt like watching a twisted version of the film Field of Dreams<\/a><\/strong><\/em> reshot so that soldiers, not baseball players, emerged<\/a><\/strong> early on from those rows of Iowa corn stalks and stepped onto the playing field.<\/p>\n

What followed was a \u201csurprise\u201d reunion<\/a><\/strong> of an airman, Staff Sergeant Cole Condiff, and his wife and family. Such staged reunions have become a regular aspect of major sporting events \u2014 consider this \u201cheart-melting<\/a><\/strong>\u201d example from a Milwaukee Brewers game \u2014 and are obviously meant to tug at the heartstrings. They are, as retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich wrote at TomDispatch<\/em> back in 2011, propagandistic versions of \u201ccheap grace<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, Budweiser used this year\u2019s game to promote \u201cfreedom\u201d beer<\/a><\/strong>, again to raise money for veterans and, of course, to burnish its own rep. (Last year, the company was hyping \u201cAmerica\u201d beer.)<\/p>\n

And the All-Star game is hardly alone in its militarized celebrations and hoopla. Take the 2017 U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York City, which I happened to watch. With John McEnroe in retirement, tennis is, generally speaking, a quieter sport. Yet before the men\u2019s final, a Marine Corps color guard joined a contingent of West Point cadets in a ceremony to remember the victims of 9\/11. Naturally, a by-now-obligatory oversized American flag set the scene \u2014 here\u2019s a comparable ceremony from 2016<\/a><\/strong> \u2014 capped by a performance of \u201cGod Bless America\u201d and a loud flyover by four combat jets. Admittedly, it was a dramatic way to begin anything, but why exactly an international tennis match that happened to feature finalists from Spain and South Africa?<\/p>\n

Blending Sports With the Military Weakens Democracy<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m hardly the first to warn about the dangers<\/a> of mixing sports with the military, especially in corporate-controlled blenders. Early in 2003, prior to the kick off for the Iraq War (sports metaphor intended), the writer Norman Mailer issued<\/a> this warning:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dire prospect that opens, therefore, is that America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have more and more importance in Americans\u2019 lives\u2026 [D]emocracy is the special condition \u2014 a condition we will be called upon to defend in the coming years. That will be enormously difficult because the combination of the corporation, the military, and the complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator sports has set up a pre-fascistic atmosphere in America already.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 14 years later, that combination \u2014 corporations, the military, and mass spectator sports, all wrapped in a gigantic version of the stars and stripes \u2014 has increasingly come to define what it means to be an American. Now that the country also has its own self-styled strongman president, enabled by a spineless Congress and an increasingly reactionary judiciary, Mailer\u2019s mention of a \u201cpre-fascistic atmosphere\u201d seems prescient.<\/p>\n

What started as a post-9\/11 drive to get an American public to \u201cthank<\/a>\u201d the troops endlessly for their service in distant conflicts \u2014 stifling criticism of those wars by linking it to ingratitude \u2014 has morphed into a new form of national reverence. And much credit goes to professional sports for that transformation. In conjunction with the military and marketed by corporations, they have reshaped the very practice of patriotism in America.<\/p>\n

Today, thanks in part to taxpayer funding, Americans regularly salute grossly oversized flags, celebrate or otherwise \u201cappreciate\u201d the troops (without making the slightest meaningful sacrifice themselves), and applaud the corporate sponsors that pull it all together (and profit from it). Meanwhile, taking a stand (or a knee<\/a>), being an agent of dissent, protesting against injustice, is increasingly seen as the very definition of what it means to be unpatriotic. Indeed, players with the guts to protest American life as it is are regularly castigated as SOBs<\/a> by our sports- and military-loving president.<\/p>\n

Professional sports owners certainly know that this militarized brand of patriotism sells, while the version embodied in the kinds of controversial stances taken by athletes like former National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick (cashiered<\/a> by his own league) angers and alienates many fans, ultimately threatening profits.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the military\u2019s bottom line is recruiting new bodies for that all-volunteer force while keeping those taxpayer dollars flowing into the Pentagon at increasingly staggering<\/a> levels. For corporations, you won\u2019t be surprised to learn, it\u2019s all about profits and reputation.<\/p>\n

In the end, it comes down to one thing: who controls the national narrative.<\/p>\n

Think about it. A set of corporate-military partnerships or, if you prefer, some version of President Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s old military-industrial complex has enlisted sports to make militarism look good and normal and even cool. In other words, sports teams now have a powerful set of incentives to appear patriotic, which increasingly means slavishly pro-military. It\u2019s getting hard to remember that this country ever had a citizen-soldier<\/a> tradition as well as sports teams whose athletes actually went<\/a> almost en masse <\/em>to serve in war. Consider it paradoxical that militarism<\/a> is today becoming as American as baseball and apple pie, even as, like so many other citizens, today\u2019s athletes vote with their feet to stay out of the military. (The NFL\u2019s Pat Tillman<\/a> was a noble post-9\/11 exception.) Indeed, the widespread (if shallow) support of the military by so many athletes may, in some cases, be driven by a kind of guilt.<\/p>\n

\u201cCollusion\u201d is a key word in this Trumpian moment. Even though Robert Mueller isn\u2019t investigating them, corporate-owned sports teams are now actively colluding with the military to redefine patriotism in ways that work to their mutual advantage. They are complicit in taking a select, jingoistic form of patriotism and weaponizing it to suppress dissent, including against the military-industrial complex and America\u2019s never-ending wars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Driven by corporate agendas and featuring exaggerated military displays, mass-spectator sports are helping to shape what Americans perceive and believe. In stadiums across the nation, on screens held in our hands or dominating our living rooms, we witness fine young men and women in uniform unfurling massive flags on football fields and baseball diamonds, even on tennis courts, as combat jets scream overhead. What we don\u2019t see<\/a> \u2014 what is largely kept from us \u2014 are the murderous costs of empire: the dead and maimed soldiers, the innocents<\/a> slaughtered by those same combat jets.<\/p>\n

The images we do absorb and the narrative we\u2019re encouraged to embrace, immersed as we are in an endless round of militarized sporting events, support the idea that massive \u201cnational security\u201d investments (to the tune of roughly a trillion dollars<\/a> annually) are good and right and patriotic. Questioning the same \u2014 indeed, questioning authority in any form \u2014 is, of course, bad and wrong and unpatriotic.<\/p>\n

For all the appreciation of the military at sporting events, here\u2019s what you\u2019re not supposed to appreciate: why we\u2019re in our forever wars; the extent to which they\u2019ve been mismanaged for the last 17 years; how much people, especially in distant lands, have suffered thanks to them; and who\u2019s really profiting from them.<\/p>\n

Sports should be about having fun; about joy, passion, and sharing; about the thrill of competition, the splendor of the human condition; and so much more. I still remember the few home runs I hit in softball. I still remember breaking 200 for the first time in bowling. I still remember the faces of my teammates in softball and the fun times I had with good people.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s be clear: this is not what war is all about. War is horrific. War features the worst of the human condition. When we blur sports and the military, adding corporate agendas into the mix, we\u2019re not just doing a disservice to our troops and our athletes; we\u2019re doing a disservice to ourselves. We\u2019re weakening the integrity of democracy in America.<\/p>\n

We can afford to lose a ballgame. We can\u2019t afford to lose our country.<\/p>\n

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. I\u2019m a sports fan. And last weekend I caught the epic clash between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, once again won by the Chiefs and the magical Patrick Mahomes. Yet seemingly no big NFL game is complete without a military flyover, in this instance by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-51219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"top flying nuclear bombers over stadiums"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51219"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51225,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51219\/revisions\/51225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51219"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=51219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}