STILL SEARCHING FOR UNITY
Despite patriotic displays, Americans need more than power of sports to ease division
At the gate, a security guard examined the reporter’s press credential, then asked to look inside his bag. Over the next 20 years, that same sports writer would submit to at least a couple thousand similar inspections, eventually by reflex.
This, though, was the first time, and it was anything but routine. A mere four days had passed since the buildings fell. Nobody could be too careful, especially not at what was one of the largest public gatherings in the country that night.
Eighteen hundred miles from Ground Zero.
At a modest Division II football stadium.
In the metropolis of Kingsville.
The truth is, almost nobody aside from the 9,500 people in Javelina Stadium that night had even the slightest clue the game was happening. Just because the NFL, Major League Baseball and major college football went on hiatus for the week didn’t mean anyone was going to care about a relatively meaningless Lone Star Conference contest in South Texas.
Still, on Sept. 15, 2001, fans wearing red, white and blue ribbons poured into the bleachers, and players from Texas A&M-Kingsville and Southeastern Oklahoma took the field holding miniature American flags, and when the game ended they were convinced it meant something.
“This was a chance to show the world that America is still strong and our kids are still strong,” George Hauser, who served as A&M-Kingsville’s interim coach, said that night. “The people who wanted to shut this country down couldn’t do it.”
In the weeks and months that followed, this would become a common refrain, and we at least were tempted to believe in the symbolism. There were emotional NFL ovations, and rousing seventh-inning stretch renditions of “God Bless America,” and a rousing presidential World Series first pitch, and at times it was enough to think the games really were bringing us together.
If it was an illusion, it was an effective one. But two decades later, it’s a much harder sell, and last year sure didn’t help.
See, we understand now more than ever that the simple act of playing sports doesn’t bring back a sense of normalcy. It didn’t in the fall of 2020. It didn’t last spring. It won’t Sunday.
We sure as heck know that taking the field or walking into an arena doesn’t necessarily mean people are ready to set their differences aside for the common good.
Twenty years ago, a coach in Kingsville was sure his team exemplified America’s strengths. What he neglected to mention was that the sport can expose a few weaknesses, too.
A football game isn’t an escape from reality. It’s a reminder of it. Tune into any game Sunday afternoon and you’ll see a team featuring players who choose to blow off science and place their own ill-founded idea of freedom over the welfare and aspirations of those around them. In the stands above them, they’ll be cheered by others who do the same thing.
No matter how many touchdown passes Patrick Mahomes throws, it won’t unite the country. Too many people have zero interest in being united, and the NFL received another reminder of that fact on its opening night Thursday.
In a benign nod to inclusiveness before Tampa Bay and Dallas kicked off the season, Alicia Keys sang a version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the Black national anthem, before the “Star-Spangled Banner.” And, predictably, the faux outrage flowed from all of the predictable places.
“Bringing us together,” it seems, only is a worthwhile objective when it happens on certain people’s terms with certain people’s traditions.
We had many of these same issues 20 years ago, of course. But in the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy, when there was enough fear to start searching bags for explosives at stadiums from coast to coast, there was hope, too.
The games, beginning with the one in Kingsville, would go on. To some, it felt like an obligation.
“It was real solemn all week,” Nick Jaques, an A&M-Kingsville defensive back from San Antonio Taft, said that night. “But we were ready to play.”
And the country was ready to watch.
But ready to unite?
Now, as in 2001, America needs more than sports for that.