The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
⏩ JEFF JACOBS:
As the nation mourns another mass shooting, sports needs to push for the change no one else has.
Stand up, Sports. Stand up and scream, “Do Something!”
Stand up, LeBron James. Stand up, Tom Brady. Stand up, Megan Rapinoe. Stand up Colin Kaepernick.
Stand up, Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich, Bill Belichick and Geno Auriemma.
Stand up, professional franchises and college athletics. Stand up, ESPN and Nike. Not only as individual voices. Stand as one. Stand at the same time.
Do something!
Sports is the escape, yet there is no escape.
The killers track us down, bullet by unceasing bullet, and those of us who are not killed or maimed are left increasingly terrorized. Terrorized not from those outside our borders, but from within.
With nine murdered in Dayton only hours after 22 were murdered in El Paso, we have reached a point where we can schedule mass shootings like we schedule separateadmission baseball doubleheaders.
Sports is our relief, yet there is no relief. We are a frightened, mourning country. After Columbine in 1999 or even Virginia Tech in 2007, we could shake off the horror to somehow find refuge in a touchdown or 3pointer or a home run. Not anymore and, honestly, not since Sandy Hook in 2012 when so many of our state’s children were slaughtered.
Yet if Sandy Hook could not change us, what can? It is a question, haunting as it is damning, yet it cannot be an excuse to stop trying.
There are those who, for their own selfish and egotistical reasons, will tell those in athletics to, “Stick to sports. Stay in your lane.” It scares some into silence.
Exactly what lane is that? When human lives are at stake, whether doctor or lawyer or politician or sports star or construction worker, we are all of one lane.
There is great power and great money in sports. There is great influence. And while there certainly are differing views ranging the political spectrum, no one is rooting for murder. And neither is anyone immune.
All four major sports leagues demand fans pass through metal detectors, and while that initially was the product of the Islamic terrorist attack of 9/11, it has become more a precaution to save ourselves from ourselves. Athletes earning multimillions may feel a degree of safety on the field of play. With a small number of exceptions, however, there are no metal detectors where their children attend school, where their wives shop or where they unwind at nightclubs.
Until we find answers, everyone is vulnerable.
No, that’s the wrong way to say it.
Even after we find every answer, there will remain a degree of vulnerability. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t employ immediate answers we know can help diminish the horror.
One of the most powerful scenes in cinema history is in “Schindler’s List.” As Oskar Schindler laments he could have saved more Jewish lives from the Nazis, Itzhak Stern answers with a quote from the Talmud: “He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.”
Let’s save one life first. And then two.
And then three.
We toss words like “hero” and “courage” around in sports and, if they must be used, always they must be understood in sports terms. Real courage is risking your life the way the police did in subduing the murderers in El Paso and Dayton. Yet courage, too, is to be found in the biggest names in sports risking money, risking endorsements, risking their status in speaking out for a social cause. And a hero in this case is the determined voice to evoke change without falling into the pathetic abyss of divisiveness of our elected leaders and the Beltway Intelligentsia.
This can’t be a blackwhite issue. This can’t be a ChristianIslamic issue. This can’t be an immigration issue. This can’t be a ban all gunsban no guns brawl. If it becomes one, it would be as useless as everything else.
This is a popular, influential segment of American society leading a grassroots charge for change, because no one else has the guts to do it.
There is strength in numbers. That is why all sports must stand up.
One day out of all the days sports should stop for an hour, fall silent, in respect for the dead. And after that hour speak out for all those who will be dead.
Put it on shirts. “Do Something!”
Yes, the day sports did something.
There has been some push to link video games to mental illness and evil in recent days. I’m no fan of young people playing games of gore. Video game sales are also huge in the U.K. and Japan and all over the world and there aren’t mass shootings like in the U.S. And clearly any lost soul who would aim at innocent people and pull the trigger is troubled. Yet the vast amount of folks who are treated for mental illness are far more likely to harm themselves than others.
There are no easy solutions here. The answers may be found in a web of alternatives. Yet there are entirely reasonable avenues that everyone in the sports community can rally around.
⏩ Universal background checks.
⏩ Prohibit those who have committed a violent offense from owning a handgun.
⏩ Ban semiautomatic weapons and restrict highcapacity magazines. Good Lord, the Dayton killer got off 41 shots in 30 seconds before he was stopped. Lawabiding citizens protecting their home and legitimate hunters — of which there are many in the sports world — know they don’t need weapons that have no use other than war.
⏩ And better funding for mentalhealth treatment, certainly not diminished funding.
Do I believe sports voices alone can stop the endless string of mass killings? I do not. After Orlando, Las Vegas, Stoneman Douglas High and on and on, have we become immune? We cannot be. As a civilized nation, we must not be.
So let the entire sports world fall silent for one hour.
And then have it rise up as one and demand something to be done. How powerful would it be if the top members of the sports world, owners, athletes, coaches, stood together outside the Lincoln Memorial and shouted from the mountain tops? Or even inside Madison Square Garden. Those who can’t make it in person can be shown on giant video screens.
ESPN is torn in its role between sports and society. What better middle ground than this? All day ESPN can lead with experts providing knowledge and with debate, civil debate, not the screaming matches or onesided propaganda of the news channels. All day it can tell stories of lives changed by mass shootings.
Maybe it leads nowhere. Maybe it starts a movement that fills the hearts and minds of millions of our college and high school athletes. Maybe it helps push Mitch McConnell to do something in the Senate. Maybe the Democrats stop blaming the Republicans and the Republicans stop blaming the Democrats long enough to get off their ass and do something.
Sports, if it stands as one, is a powerful tool in American society.
And nothing else has worked.