Usually I try to focus this biweekly column on our own reporting, but this week I'm going to talk about someone else's.
There is no justice to be found in sports. Watching sports does not bind us together as a nation, or heal political wounds. Any reporter, talking head or other who tells you anything else is lying to you.
Sports are coming back, regardless of whether that's correct or not. They can even be a force for social good. I am not so embittered by the current state of the world that I can't see why it might be important to have some of the most famous people in the country use a platform normally reserved for talking about random plays being used to talk about police brutality or the need for education reform.
But sports do not unite us. Not in a way that really matters. If they did, you wouldn't have Tom Herman of Texas saying that fans need to love the players off the field, as well as on it. You wouldn't have people playing bad-faith politics about the Big Ten reversing its decision to postpone football, chalking it up as a "win" for those who spread lies and misinformation about the seriousness of COVID-19.
If sports had some magical ability to make all people see their fellow fans — and the players they root for — as people, it would have happened decades ago. College football has been a major part of American life since the late 19th century, and most teams have been desegregated for the past 50 years or so, yet we still have players today speaking about the various racist abuses they have suffered from either fans or coaches.
Boston had one of the great athlete activists in Bill Russell, and instead of seeing his humanity, people broke into his home in the city and defecated on his bed. All because he had the audacity, as a Black man playing in a white-dominated city, to be unhappy about the place of Black Americans in society.
