>>Where I grew up *everyone* had a football team. For schools that had, say,
>>eight people in their graduating classes, Nebraska
>
>type no more! nebraska. lord, eric, how can you even pretend to
>generalize about anything whatsoever--save, perhaps, for the superiority of
>nebraska sweet corn.
Sweet corn it is then. Oh, I could probably spew some accurate cow-related generalizations, if'n yr intrested.
But I swear that was soccer's image, an image probably only held in the hinterlands, or maybe just my little corner of it.
>off the cuff, i'd say this: the importance of football and basketball
>teams for the parents and kids in school districts rested, at one time,
>fairly heavily on their perception that football and basketball offer kids
>a way out--scholarships and possibly a chance at the big leagues.
For society, or at least the capitalist version thereof, it seems that the importance of high school f- and b-ball teams is that they condition the participants for the "real world"--the team as a sort of microcosm of the factory or the office. The players (workers) compete against both their teammates (fellow workers), to determine the internal heirarchy, and other teams (workers in other factories or other countries)--which has got to be a pretty dizzying balance to maintain. Though the players and workers seem to have some degree of autonomy (neither the linemen nor the coach can do the running back's job, just as neither the pipe-fitter nor the foreman can do the welder's job), their actions, even their fate, are ultimately controlled by outside forces: basic, day-to-day activities are monitored and shaped by the the coach and foreman, while the unseen school board and corporate board of directors control their working conditions and social/career mobility.
By now my analogy is getting awfully tired, and I'm sure it would break down somewhere along the line, but I think its still relevant: Sports, certainly the high school variety, teach people to obey authority and sacrifice themselves for the good of the team, which are excellent skills to learn, if school courses haven't properly enforced them already.
>hey! i sure didn't grow up anything but working class but we played golf
>and tennis.
Me too. Alright, some common cultural ground!
>golf interests me insofar as, while once a sport associated with the rich,
>it is increasingly accessible to yer avg joe with the rise of public golf
>courses and club houses. of course, the status markers remain clear
>because there are still the private clubs with outrageous membership fees
>and a requirement to spend X amt at the bar/restaurant/pro shop.
Plus it's a huge waste of land. And it's much preferable to "own" a piece of that land than to share it with the public.
I'm also interested in that sort of social catch-up. A version of it that struck me a few days ago deals with weight. There was an article in the Boston Globe recently that quoted a woman from a wealthy enclave of Beantown as saying that there were no "fat people" in that area, an observation that, I think correctly, the writer applied to the upper-class in general. A hundred years ago, however, the stereotype of the wealthy man and woman was of a round, obese person who loved to gorge themselves with all manner of decadent foods. Nowadays, obesity is recognized as a common thing (too common, even, for people's well-being). This means that the great unwashed masses have finally caught up with the zeitgeist, only now the ruling class has gone and changed the symbols; now the way to social prestige and kingly status is to be thin. But the poor lower classes are still striving to reach the old standards.
Kind of a half-baked theory, but perhaps the start of one nonetheless.
Eric