Everything about Buff Stadium felt totally honest to us Post WWII kids.
Yesterday morning I had a chance in the car to hear Mark Vandermeer and John Lopez on SportsRadio 610 discussing a little program time-filler subject: “The Biggest Lie in Sports.” Today I cannot even recall their two favorite candidates, but that’s the way it goes with popcorn thoughts passed along by radio waves into the mind-numbing heat of another Houston August day.
No lie.
The subject still intrigues, raising question about the nature of lying itself. When politicians tell us what they think we need to hear, simply to get our votes, we seem to accept that behavior as normal to the process of electing public officials. Then, unless we are left detectably unaffected by the same public officials on the basis of their actual later performances in office, or better yet, unless we perceive some direct benefit to us from the politician’s actions, we turn on these “liars” as traitors that need to be tarred, feathered, and run out-of-town.
Where was the lie in that? Was it in the specific words of the politician? Was it in a system in which power, money, and votes go to candidates who do the best job of kissing the public derriere with their promises? Or is it simply embedded in a culture which thrives on these paraphrased words of advice that Joseph P. Kennedy once passed on to his Massachusetts sons: “It’s not who you are that matters. It’s who people think you are that counts.”
To my way of thinking, it is that kind of Kennedy political philosophy that eventually makes liars out of 99% of us in a culture that has thrived from the start on the notion of “putting your best foot forward.” At what point does that homemade little bromide transform from “here’s something good about me that I’d like you to know” into “here’s something good that I want you to think is true about me.”
Examples of the difference: The promises of fidelity are easy during the wedding ceremony. The delivery of fidelity has to take place in the daily trenches of marriage, day in, day out; year in, year out.
So it is in sports.
Every new club owner in professional baseball, football, or basketball says something at the start like: “Our team will work hard to deliver a superior product and a great experience for the fans. I believe in running a first class franchise, and everything we do will be built around building a championship team.”
When an owner says something like that to us fans, (1) is it true? (2) Is it a lie? (3) Or is it just one of those completely predictable “best foot forward” statements that will have to play itself out over time in proof of its worth? Only the most gullible and most paranoid among us could go with either of the first two picks suggested here. The rest of us will have to play out the string of demonstrated behavior over time to find the truest answer.
As for the shortest biggest lie in sports, we need look no further than the NCAA. My vote goes to the phrase “student athlete.”
Tags: sports, the culture of lying
The Pecan Park Eagle 
August 24, 2011 at 1:56 pm |
One ingredient in lying is that the liar needs to be aware that what he is saying is not true and intentionally tells a mistruth anyway. When critics say Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq, I claim he was going on the best international intelligence we had at the time. That’s not lying. That’s acting on incorrect information.
When Drayton McLane was giving his daily talk about “becoming a champion”, I believed he was sincere even as he sold off key players and failed to sign draft choices over slot.
As to whether there is “lying” in sports, there’s certainly misdirection which is used all the time on and off the field. You want the opposition to think you’re going to do one thing so it is easier to do another. Personally, if it’s within the rules, it’s fair game. Just as in real life, let the buyer beware – whether it is trusting a GM to give you the truth on a player he wants to trade you or trusting a car salesman about the car he wants to sell you.
A bit of skepticism is healthy trait for survival because there will be liars in all walks of life, whether willful or unintentional.
August 24, 2011 at 2:38 pm |
Yes………………….I mean, no.
August 25, 2011 at 12:39 pm |
Roger Clemens? Barry Bonds? Rafael Palmeiro? to name a few. & OJ….but that did not involve a sport.
August 25, 2011 at 1:50 pm |
Don’t forget the travails of Big Time College Football, and internatiional soccer..
When Frenchy Bordagaray was thrown out trying to steal second base, the story goes that one baseball writer remarked that “his heart was full of larceny, but his feet were honest”.