Pigskin Flux Capacitor

I've often ruminated on why I hate sports. Occasionally, I've even put those thoughts into print. But I also have ideas about why I love sports, too.

Most notably, I've often thought that sports are perhaps the only source of tangible, objective reality we have available to us. Everything else is so subjective, so wrapped up opinion and perspective: music is good or bad, according to your taste; food is delicious or awful, depending upon what you like; even history and its facts are subject to interpretation. As noted many times before, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. We live in a universe built on quicksand.

Not so with sports. Sure, there are points of disagreement, especially when discussing all-time greats. But for the most part, sports present us with a simple, objective reality upon which we can all agree. One team or competitor wins, the other loses. A game that ends 6-3 is a game that ends 6-3. Not much argument there. In a world of shifting sands of perspective, the sports fan can read the final score and stand steadfastly anchored on solid ground. Sports, in this way, can be a reliable and comforting antidote to all of life's other uncertainties.

So much for that. Yesterday, a fresh, brand new idea--another reason to love sports--popped into my mind, courtesy of the San Francisco 49ers.

Time-travellers Vernon Davis and Jim Harbaugh
Photo courtesy oregonlive.com

Yesterday's dazzling win by the Niners over the Saints has stirred up a feeling that has not been seen around the Bay Area in a very long time. Many folks have drawn comparisons to 2002, the last season when the 49ers made it to the playoffs. The game-winning throw and catch by Alex Smith and Vernon Davis brought back many memories of a similar playoff-winning TD in 1999.

But for me, this run by the 49ers is reminiscent of their original Super Bowl team in the 1981 season. Like the 2011 model, Bill Walsh's first championship team came out of nowhere, after several years of abysmal failure. They too sported a 13-3 season record, yet went into the postseason as decided underdogs against traditional playoff heavyweights like the Cowboys, whom they beat in the conference title game. If the current edition of the Niners makes it to the Super Bowl, they will have dispatched not one but two recent champs to get there.

But even if they lose on Sunday, the 49ers will have accomplished something that has solidified in my mind another reason to love sports: time travel.

The only real form of time travel we have available to us is memory. The only way we can go back to yesterday--or yesteryear--in any sense is through our memories of those past times. And, as noted above, the 49ers' victory has proved that sports can provide a powerful vehicle for evoking those memories.

Maybe not as powerful as Doc Brown's suped-up Delorean in Back To The Future, but at least as powerful as any of the other sources of memory recall we can experience. Art can stir up those memories of the past and bring one a sense of days gone by. Food can do it too. Music may be the most powerful vehicle for evoking that sense of past times and places. And now, I can attest from these past 30 or so hours, sports can perform that same magic as well. The memory of what it was like when I was a kid, when Montana threw that ball to Clark, has been surprisingly strong this weekend. And someday, someone who is a kid today will be able to travel back to this time, when athletes not yet born will make a play with an uncanny resemblance to what Davis and Smith hath wrought on Saturday.

Small wonder then, given its power to evoke such feelings in its adherents, that sports can continue to thrive the way it does, even in the face of all that is so desperately wrong within its purview. Today it may be just a game, but in thirty years today's game, tied to another game in the future, will be a connection to our lost youth, and a window into a lost world.

Reel Reviews -- U

U2: Rattle And Hum (+) -- What to say? One of the all-time great rock bands at the top of its game. Watch this one in a room with a great sound system. Posted 7/18/05.

U-571 (~) -- Mostly, it's your standard WWII submarine flick (they are legion) until the story takes a turn for the interesting, and the movie really grabs your attention, until by the end it's finally...your standard WWII submarine flick. Got that? Nevertheless, I must admit that the action/battle sequences are top notch, and Matthew McConaughey gives a first rate performance as the would-be leader of men. If you can't get your hands on Das Boot, this will do. Posted 4/1/04.

Ulee's Gold (+) -- A tale that moves at a measured pace--to put it mildly--but still a pretty good movie. Peter Fonda's performance really makes it worth it--his Ulee practically defines world-weary (in this case, that's good).

Unbreakable (+) -- Something of a stealth movie--its quality sneaks up on you, and you realize how good it is when thinking about it later, after you've finished watching it. And I really dig director Shyamalan's willingness to hold a shot; it's a refreshing change from today's dominant 'quick-edit' style.

Under The Tuscan Sun (+) -- I suspect this movie did not get much love upon its release because it does not stick to comedy or drama but blends the two freely. (Most folks like their stories to color only within the lines these days.) That wasn't a problem for me. And there are other pluses: beautiful locations, good story (and sub-stories) and a real commitment to the heart. Top all that off with one of our favorite actresses, Diane Lane, and you've got a winner. (Lane being oh-so-easy on the eyes has been well documented, but she's really a fine actress; watch her here in the opening scenes, where she's conveying the pain of her character's break-up and divorce.) All in all, definitely worth a look. Posted 12/2/04.

Underworld (+) -- Mostly, I liked it. I'm not going to give it any awards, but it stayed watchable all the way through, and as long as you don't start poking around looking for logic in the back story, you'll do all right. It might have been better with someone other than Kate Beckinsale--don't get me wrong, a fine actress--in the lead role; maybe some gal with a little more action heft. Plus, you have to admire the cheek of the producers, setting up a sequel when there really is no reason to believe there will be one. Posted 2/27/04.

Unfaithful (~) -- As we all know, Diane Lane is a freak--she's actually getting better looking as she gets older. That's not merely a lascivious observation; it's integral to making this movie work. You would hardly believe the story if Lane, despite her (and her character's) age, was not the hottie she is. As for the acting, the real props go to Richard Gere, who plays so skillfully against type, laying on the nebbishness, that you can actually get past his own handsomeness. Plus there's some handsome and artful direction from Adrian Lyne. Put it all together and...well, it's OK, not great. It's probably better than I'm willing to say, but it still felt unsatisfying to me. Hard to say. Posted 9/12/04.

Unknown (+) -- That positive recommendation is tentative; it could have slipped into squiggle territory if there had been one more thing wrong with this movie. Because there do seem to be a lot of holes in the plot; and we've seen this sort of international intrigue play many times before. But what pulls it through is the work of Liam Neeson, who really shines in this sort of role: a mystery man who needs to fight against desperate odds in order to ultimately come out on top. As with the underrated Taken, Neeson's performance makes this thing go, though this time he gets help from a very good supporting cast. It may not be a necessary movie, but you won't regret watching it either. Posted 1/5/12.

The Upside of Anger (--) -- Alert! There's been a Kevin Costner sighting. Good work, too. Too bad it's in a bad movie. The story is simply not engaging, too weighed down by Joan Allen's flawed central character to make much headway with the viewer. (We're told at the beginning how good she is/was, but we see no evidence of that fact within the story. Kinda hard to generate much sympathy that way...) You can easily see why the movie failed with viewers. Posted 7/28/06

The Usual Suspects (+) -- A movie that set the tone for a generation of crime flicks to come. Cool, funny, smart, and steeped in good performances. You're not hip if you haven't seen this one.

Recently Read

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely

So it turns out that the invisible hand of the marketplace is palsied, weak, and apparently attached to a kleptomaniac.

That is the inevitable conclusion one must draw from Predictably Irrational, Professor Dan Ariely's light treatise on how we among the consuming public act as purchasers, choosers, and in some cases outright liars. In a light and breezy tone that makes for easy reading, Ariely serves up a succession of arguments about the nature of human beings as economic animals--backed up by examples from his own research experiments--all of which point to the same idea: that we do not always make the correct, rational choices in life circumstances both large and small. Instead, we carry with us biases that frequently thwart our best efforts to make the right choice, in situations as trivial as buying a piece of candy to those as momentous as deciding what house to buy or what career to follow.

Through his work and experiments, Ariely demonstrates that not only are we irrational choice-makers, but (as the book's title suggests) that we are predictably so--that there is, in fact, little mystery in the frequency with which we make our unwise decisions. All one needs is to know how to read the characteristic elements of any given situation--particularly commercial transactions; i.e., anything involving money--to make a safe bet on which way the typical person will go when making his choices. Such is the author's argument, and Ariely makes the case that, with a little self-awareness and a little more careful examination of the pieces in play, we can train ourselves to make better choices.

Such is the implications of Ariely's argument for our personal outcomes. More intriguing, from a broader perspective, is the implication of his work for the larger political sphere. In short, Ariely's demonstrations of our irrationality as economic actors strongly refutes the current received wisdom, touted so often by the Very Serious Persons, that market forces are always right, that Adam Smith's famed "invisible hand" will correct all economic mistakes and guide the world to better outcomes for all. The pundits' oft-invoked credo, that we must "let the market decide" what's best for our economy and politics, relies on a foundational concept that just isn't true. Ariely himself touches on this idea in his conclusion:

Standard economics assumes that we are rational--that we know all the pertinent information about our decisions, that we can calculate the value of the different options we face, and that we are cognitively unhindered in weighing the ramifications of each potential choice...wouldn't it make sense to modify standard economics and move away from naive psychology, which often fails the tests of reason, introspection, and--most important--empirical scrutiny? Wouldn't economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave?

Those questions ring loudly in the ears of anyone who has witnessed the conservative free-market mania that has enveloped much of the world in the last thirty years. We are living amid the debris scattered about by what has been, at best, an unswerving faith in the rational decision making of actors in free markets. (At worst, it's been little more than a cynical swindle, but that's another story.) Ariely's experiments--particularly those focused on the common human impulse to cheat for personal profit--put the lie to that misplaced faith. We can only hope that some policymakers pick up Predictably Irrational and learn not to listen the next time some think tank pundit tells them to let the market decide what's best for the country.

For our own part, we as individuals can read Ariely's book and try to make ourselves more aware of the biases we bring to the table in all walks of life, Maybe, if we keep Predictably Irrational in mind, we can all make better choices and come out ahead for ourselves, if not our society and our world.