Page 21 - Sport Culture and the Media

2 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

bus queues, traffic jams and Internet chat rooms) for people to discuss what
has happened and has been communicated about it in a spiralling and self-
amplifying discourse.
To an inter-planetary visitor, this movement by a few people and interest in
it by many more would seem like some kind of viral contagion, a collective
insanity (or at least irrationality) perhaps brought back in the dust attached to
moon rocks. For earthlings, however, it is an omnipresent part of their lives
whether they like it or not. It is so pervasive that, like water or electricity, it is
really acknowledged only when its supply is interrupted by natural disasters
or industrial disputation. We on earth call it sport. As we have seen, however,
this phenomenon is only partially about its actual practice. In fact, the activities
on fields, courts, courses and other prescribed venues are at the bottom of an
inverted pyramid of sports watching, selling, marketing, sponsorship, presenta-
tion and discourse. Sport is a contemporary medium for performing many tasks
and carrying multiple messages and, as such, is increasingly indistinguishable
from the sports media. This constellation of institutions and practices that
supplies the means by which messages involving sport are communicated is not
restricted to the print and electronic forms as they are conventionally conceived.
‘Data’ about sport are all around, with seemingly every animate and inanimate
object capable of functioning as a medium of sports culture.
This point becomes clear as we resume the routine daily tasks commenced
above and observe the extent to which sport has insinuated itself into the warp
and weft of everyday life. At the breakfast table there is plenty to read. Not
only does the morning paper carry many pages of sports results and analysis
(usually conveniently placed on the back page or in a ‘pull out’ supplement),
but the cereal boxes may be covered with the bright endorsements of prominent
sportspeople. Befuddled breakfast conversation can stay on safe ground if it
covers only the results of the previous night’s games or the latest engagement
between a ‘sexy’ female pop singer and a ‘hunky’ footballer. As the breakfast
dishes are stacked for washing, regular sports news updates are given by the
radio or by breakfast television. The visit to the bathroom may well involve
contact with the range of soaps, deodorants and colognes promoted by runners,
tennis players, boxers and the like. Patches of tattooed skin proclaiming
undying love for Manchester United or the Chicago Bulls could be in need of
cleansing. Next comes the big decision about what to wear, often meaning a
difficult choice over which company’s sports logo will emblazon T-shirts, shoes,
hats, socks and jackets. The Nike ‘swoosh’, perhaps, or the Reebok flag insignia
or, then again, maybe the three stripes of adidas?
Once out over the threshold, public space is suffused with signs of sport –
much to the chagrin of dedicated sports haters and to the mild irritation of
the merely indifferent. Billboards, hoardings, the sides of buses and numerous