A Second Thought from the Nose Bleeds

I think I misspoke earlier, or rather, spoke before my thoughts had fully matured. In its simplest form, my argument is:

Sports fans have an unwarranted sense of intelligence and that sense of intelligence provides them with the confidence to (i) yell referees, (ii) second guess coaches, and (iii) make sometimes coherent arguments on sports radio. It also provides them the passion to follow the game and their teams with such high amounts of emotions. In politics Americans (myself included) have a better understanding of their relative ignorance and therefore do not participate in the running of their government. Sure they vote, but that is much more like choosing a slogan then bringing about change.

First, if we examine the fan yelling at a referee. The referee has been trained often times for more than a decade to become an expert in the rules of the game. If the referee is calling a game at the professional or high collegiate level, he/she is one of the most exceptional of the profession, and is likely in the top 1% of the most knowledgeable people in the world about his/her sport. The idea that some fan who may have played at the high school level, but more likely has only played at Nintendo Wii level or in Jr. High, should be making a call or correcting an official is simply ridiculous. It would be as if a doctor requested the scientific opinion of some random guy on the street. The random guy likely would have no qualifications to make the diagnosis.

The same is true for fans believing they know more than the coach. It is simply impossible that some fan, earning what ever he/she earns, knows more than the coach getting paid a few million dollars a year to direct the team. The fans do not know more, but for some reason, are confident that they do, and even more confident that they're right, even though the coach knows more about the sport in his/her pinkie.

It is this over confidence in the fan's sport intelligence that gives him the confidence to yell and otherwise tell much more knowledgeable people how to do their job.

For some reason the same has not translated to politics. Most Americans know nothing about how to fix financial institutions and implement meaningful financial regulation. Unlike sports, they admit this, and then wait for their representatives to "fix it." Sure among friends, Americans will bash politicians, but not many will go out and yell and make their ideas known, for their ideas are often unintelligible.

That is the beauty of the Tea Party. They are a bunch of idiots, but they think they are smart. They have the same over confidence in their intelligence that sports fan do. If you cannot describe what a CDO is or how a synthetic CDO works, you probably should not regulate them. If you cannot define socialism or capitalism and free markets, you probably should not continuously use such terms. The Tea Party Peeps are exceptional for exactly this. They are confident enough to prove their ignorance.

The rest of us just keep to ourselves while the ones who knowledgeable in specific areas of government and the economy are making sure that we pay for our ignorance.

Finally, Aaron Rodgers, Super Bowl MVP--who was that guy who played QB before him, I can't remember his name.

re: Thoughts from the nose bleeds

I'm not sure that follows. The people yelling at the refs may be more convinced of their ability to influence those refs than are those same people of their ability to influence their representatives. I'll give you that (though I think yelling at a ref may be more part of the ritual than actual attempt at influence).

However, I don't think that speaks to the ability of the citizen/fan to make arguments about any topic. Specifically, your observation explains why people rant at refs more than they rant at reps. That's a separate issue from whether they can formulate arguments about which to rant, be it to a ref or a rep.

It may be that fans visceral connection to sports motivates them to apply their faculties to sports. I can see that people do not have that connection to government, and there's plenty of outrage that's lacking. But I still think Chomsky is right: the ability is there. It's just unfocused.

But I don't want the issue to be: "how do we make politics more like sports." I think that's already happening. We have too many winners and losers in politics, and not enough Americans. How do we get people to care about things that matter to them, and not just about whether my regional and/or collegiate athletic group scores more points than yours?

Thoughts from the nose-bleeds

On January 20, 2011, Juhmeez wrote:

I had a thought during the game that related back to our conversation about the American voting public. You had made the point that Chomsky often makes regarding our ability to put together coherent well reasoned arguments about complex topics relating to sports, so it follows that we should be able to do the same with respect to politics. I had a revelation during the game about this. I think this ability to put together complex thoughts about sports has something to do with our ability to over-estimate our importance and ability to influence sporting events. That is, a number of times during the b-game, there were fans who were yelling at the refs and coaches, directing them to do something different (I am sure there were plenty of fans yelling at the tv as well). The thought that a fan in 20,000 seat arena could be heard is completely irrational, but nonetheless 100s if not 1000s of fans were doing so (now there could be something said about collectively yelling). There was one instance in which one fan just lost it, and he lost it on a play that no one else saw. He was waiving his arms, yelling, going crazy (he was right) but we're in the nose bleeds, so it is useless, but he nonetheless continued. I think it's this relationship with sports that allows the fan to think at such a high level and reason well, but the public has a more realistic view of their ability to influence politics. So I'll rephrase my argument to say that the public is not too intellectually limited to think at a high level about politics, but rather, too realistic to know thinking about anything will change the outcome. Not sure if this thought process is a conscious one, as there is enough marketing and emotional responses to sports that could account for the public's over estimation of their abilities.