Not an “Extraordinary Event”: NFL Games and Militarized Civic Ritual1

Abstract

In this article, which was delivered as the Alan G. Ingham Memorial Lecture to the 37th annual conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, I extend Ingham’s ideas regarding sport as civic ritual and combine it with my own work on the relationship between sport and the increasing militarization of US cities in the post 9/11 era. I suggest that militarized civic rituals have now become an ever-present feature of urban life and represent a troubling new conflation between military and civilian discourses and practices employed through sport, specifically the NFL and the Super Bowl. The term “citizen soldier” is used here to provoke thought about the role of “ordinary” citizens in this context where domestic security telescopes down from the highest levels of the US Department of Defense to the micropersonal. Legally equated with a soldier at war, the NFL fan’s call of duty is received through a mobile phone application, everyday citizens recruited to assist, in the name of patriotism, in terrorism prevention. This blurs legal and operational separations between intelligence-gathering and citizenship and further collapses civilian-military boundaries suggesting a changed notion of duty for all of us.Dans cet article, qui a été présenté en tant que Conférence Commémorative Alan G. Ingham au 37ème Congrès Annuel de la Société Nord-Américaine de Sociologie du Sport, je prolonge les idées d’Ingham sur le sport vu comme un rituel civique et je les combine avec mon propre travail sur la relation entre le sport et l’augmentation de la militarisation des villes américaines dans la période post 11 septembre. Je suggère que des rituels civiques militarisés sont maintenant devenus des composants omniprésents de la vie urbaine et qu’ils représentent un nouvel amalgame troublant entre les discours civils et militaires et les pratiques employées dans le sport, plus spécifiquement dans la NFL et au Super Bowl. Le terme de « soldat citoyen » est utilisé ici pour provoquer une réflexion sur le rôle des citoyens « ordinaires » dans ce contexte où la sécurité intérieure s’interpénètre des plus hauts niveaux du Département Américain de la Défense au niveau micro-individuel. Légalement assimilé à un soldat en guerre, l’appel du devoir du fan de la NFL est reçu sur une application de téléphone portable, les citoyens ordinaires sont recrutés pour aider, au nom du patriotisme, à la prévention du terrorisme. Cela brouille la séparation légale et opérationnelle entre les services de renseignements et la citoyenneté, et, en outre, anéantie les frontières entre le civil et le militaire, suggérant une nouvelle notion du devoir pour nous tous.

Ethics of patriotism: NFL players’ protests against police violence

“…Sport and sport media played an important pedagogical role in the hyper-patriotic, racialized backlash following the events of 11 September 2001 in the United States (Silk, 2013). This was especially true for the NFL that branded itself as patriotic and militaristic (King, 2008;Schimmel, 2017). The result was an image of the nation as under attack from both within and without by irrational, dark-skinned "evil doers".…”

Tools of the game. Qualitative digital methodologies for the e-sports research

“…I do not wish to repeat the authors' argument, Tools of the game. Qualitative digital methodologies for the e-sports research but I found it close to the studies of rituals in regular sports in terms of their politics (Schimmel 2017) and ideologies (Kossakowski et al 2020). Similar avenue is surfacing in e-sports studies (Szablewicz 2016) as well as in analyses of Twitch streaming (Uva 2018).…”

Beyoncé's Super Bowl Spectacles and Choreographies of Black Power in the Movement 4 Black Lives

“…American football embodies both definitions of spectacle. As sport theorist Kimberly Schimmel (2017) observes, when millions of people around the United States gather to watch the game with friends and family, we are participating in a civic ritual that, like sacred or mundane rituals, performs the values and belief systems that govern a community. American football illuminates our competitive nature and our willingness to employ violence and aggression to win.…”