The role of sport in helping solve global crisis – Irish Tech News
The role of sport in helping solve global crisis – guest post by John A. Davis
Poverty. Homelessness. War. Pandemics. Social injustice. Economic inequality. Gun violence. Climate change. Gender violence. These are substantial problems lacking easy solutions. Should sports get involved in major crises? Yes. Why? Because sport has a powerful hold over our emotions, imagination, hopes, and dreams.
Sport also has an enormous capacity to rally fans, bring people together, and inspire a sense of shared purpose. It confers bragging rights on those that prevail and while the heartbreak of loss is painful, it inspires athletes to learn and do better next time.
Poor performance rarely discourages fans from continuing their support; they recover from disappointment, looking toward the next season when their team’s fortunes might change for the better. Countries invest significant resources in developing national capabilities to compete with international competitors. But can sport alone solve a major crisis? Unlikely.
But even if a sport’s contribution does not directly resolve intractable problems it indirectly raises awareness and provokes discussion. Athletes and clubs may well draw the ire of some fans, media, and politicians because they support a given crisis, but so be it. Sport has a visible platform and, at its core, represents values that are vitally important and helpful to supporting a better society.
The 2018 Nelson Mandela Peace Summit adopted a political declaration that describes the role sport plays in the world,
“Sports and the arts, in particular, have the power to change perceptions, prejudices and behaviours, as well as to inspire people, break down racial and political barriers, combat discrimination and defuse conflict.”
At its best, sport promotes positive values, including health, social understanding, entertainment, and responsibility at both the individual and team levels. Sport elevates awareness of challenges and crises, despite occasional inconsistent role modelling such as occurred with professional athletes over vaccines for Covid-19. Tennis, basketball, soccer, and baseball all saw a handful of athletes that refused vaccinations.
While their protests usually led to their suspension, the accompanying media coverage helped keep the pandemic at the forefront of the public’s mind, especially as the evidence mounted about the overwhelming benefits the vaccines had in reducing the chances of severe illness and death.
I gave a speech at the recent Global Soft Power Summit in London on the role of sport in today’s world. At the time Russia’s horrifying invasion of Ukraine was 3 weeks old, and many of the world’s sports bodies banned Russia and Russian athletes from global competitions. We are now more than 3 months into that crisis and Russia has failed so far in its attempts to take over Ukraine. That’s not due to sport, per se, especially since the war rages on in the eastern part of Ukraine.
But sport is an important societal actor working in concert with governments and businesses to have a united front against Russia’s illegal aggression. As difficult as the decisions the world’s sports bodies have been on Russian athletes, the symbolic power of this coordinated effort is important if we are to build a society based on decency, respect for human life, and the rule of law.
In the summer of 2016, NFL player Colin Kaepernick made a series of protests during the national anthem before game time over police brutality and social injustice. He was booed by some fans and the NFL struggled in its response.
But President Obama expressed support for Kaepernick’s actions, saying “he cares about some real, legitimate issues that have to be talked about.” Unfortunately, just a few months later during the 2017 NFL season, there was a new US President who made incendiary statements against Kaepernick and protesters in general that fanned the flames of the controversy.
Kaepernick’s protests unfairly sidelined his career but as he said, “If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.” (Ibid) As we approach summer 2022, Kaepernick is trying out with the Las Vegas Raiders, hoping to gain a spot on the 2022 team. Irrespective of the outcome, his courage has helped keep the focus on social injustice and is a role model for others on how to stand up for what is right.
As of this writing, the US had witnessed several more tragic mass shootings in May, and more than 214 in 2022 to date. Lives filled with promise were wiped out in a matter of seconds. The US is unique in the world with respect to guns. The notion of ‘exceptionalism,’ so often trotted out by politicians to evoke a sense of the country’s uniqueness hubristically implies it’s better than other countries.
That exceptionalism is a myth, at least far as those politicians define it. But what is exceptional is the number of guns privately owned: more than 400 million. That’s more than 40% of the global total. Furthermore, the country has the dubious distinction of having the highest firearm homicide and suicide rates in the world.
The tragic murder of 19 school children and 2 teachers in Uvalde, Texas, along with mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Laguna Woods, California the preceding 2 weeks prompted prominent sports leaders to react. Steve Kerr, Coach of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, spoke angrily at a press briefing prior to a playoff game against the Dallas Mavericks, excoriating senators for doing nothing to fix mass shootings that continue unabated.
His own father was killed in 1984 by a gunman overseas. A New York Yankees-Tampa Bay Rays MLB game-used social media to show facts about gun violence in the US, in place of its usual real-time game updates.
These are just a few of the many examples where sport plays a vital role in major crises, provoking conversation, standing for what’s right, and motivating the public to create movements supporting important causes. Global sport has a voice that should never be silenced.
John A. Davis is an award-winning academic, business leader and author of Radical Business: How to Transform Your Organization in the Age of Global Crisis published by Emerald.
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