>My own, equally fallible translation:
>
>"Sade carried out, a hundred years before sports, what Kant grounded
>transcendentally, namely the affinity of the cognition and the plan which
>stamps the most minute details of rationalized bourgeois existence,
>even in its occasional moments of rest, with the character of being
>inescapable businesslike. The modern sports teams [Riege also means
>squads], where teamplay is so organized that no member has any doubt over
>their role and a substitute stands ready for everyone, has its
>precise model in Juliette's sexual teams, wherein no moment is wasted, no
>body-opening left unused, no function left unexercised. In sports as in
>all branches of mass-culture, a suspenseful, businesslike [zweckvolle]
>engagement predominates, such that spectators not completely familiar with
>the arbitrarily-constructed rules cannot tell the difference between the
>combinations of play and the meaning of the various moments."
Nice job! But I don't think I can wear it.
Spectators generally have a pretty good idea of what they see. Team sport is obviously about one team cooperating in their competition with another (an apparent metaphor for naturalised social life du juour). But the rules are pretty reliably enforced by a third party (much more reliably than is the case when it comes to the 'competition' we see at work in the stocks pages) - when spectators criticise referees en masse, they do so - in the (not unrealistic) hope they might be affecting future refereeing decisions (sometimes seen as an 'unhealthy' home ground advantage in sport, but wouldn't we love this popular spirit levelled in such concert outside the stadia, eh?); - in the belief there ARE rules, and that these rules may reasonably be expected to be enforced uniformly (they don't demonstrate in the streets simply because they don't believe this of the world they fleetingly escaped when they bought their tickets); - that they DO know the rules (which, again, they don't think they do when it comes to mergers, redundancies, lockouts, directors' 'compensation', contracts, even industrial relations); - that, unlike the world outside, there IS suspense. For eighty or ninety minutes (and, in good test cricket match, for five days) they actually don't know what's gonna happen next (very unlike their experience outside the gates).
Sure, the teams line up in zweckvolle fashion, but (and this is why I oppose instant radio contact between your quarterbacks and their coaches) the whole story at any given moment is about UPSETTING the smoothly oiled corporate order of the moment. In sport you have to CREATE the 'body openings' (I like to think not even deSade considered this ghastly option in his envelope-pushing erotic pursuits) and slip through 'em before they're closed again - you have to UNDO the apparent equilibrium - violate the apparently hole-free body, if you like - expose the seemingly optimal and raze it to the ground. Sport is in equilibrium at the starter's whistle, and then never again. This might be considered a good model for business by the lights of a Marx, Veblen or Schumpeter - and I firmly agree with 'em - but it is generally NOT the model they drive down your neck in Economics 101.
So I reckon it'd be no bad thing if the punters saw sport as economic life in microcosm. You wanna WATCH spectacles that promise complete triumph and its corollary, complete disaster. You wanna WATCH people's carefully planned strategies for equilibrious inviolability torn asunder and plundered by the superior predator on the day. It's all very intriguing.
But our eyes are drawn to car accidents, too. And we don't see them as models for how we'd like things to be for ourselves, do we?
And, come to that, I wonder how much a Yeovil Town would appreciate a 'level playing field' against a Manchester United. In sport, the organisation makes sure such teams are kept to their own leagues (there's not much suspense for the spectator in it otherwise, and not much fun for either side - so voluntary submission to a regulation desired by player and punter alike is the go).
But in life outside the gates, we're all in the same league. Billions of Yeovils face a Man United at 9.00am every morning for life. Lots of violation and plunder, but no suspense or fun.
Cheers, Rob.