An open letter to Bomani Jones
Maybe someday I'll like sports, or whatever.
Dear Bomani,
When my brother, James, heard that I got to see you speak live on a panel [at] The Intersection in the Apollo Theater, he said, “That’s my dude.” James is a white-passing Indigenous man from the Grand Traverse Band in northern Michigan, Anishinaabe and proud. We share the same mom.
I, on the other hand, had no idea who you were, but I deeply resonated with your contributions to the conversation at the summit. Please, try not to take offense from what I’m about to say, but:
I hate sports. A lot.
There’s nothing that makes sense to me about watching a game I’m not participating in or taking on a team’s wins or losses as my own. This happens constantly among sports lovers. From my outside perspective—it’s like an insecure attachment.
At the summit, you spoke about the resistance you experience when trying to connect sports to the larger culture it exists within and actively influences in many ways. That’s something I find missing in the appeal of sports. Sports culture seems like an institution grounded in white, cis-hetero maleness, reaching back to the Colosseum of early Italy, where brutality as entertainment set the course for today’s industry. If sports truly acknowledged the cultural context they come into conflict with, they might have to show empathy and support for those whom their structure often profits from and oppresses. That might affect how the average sports consumer receives their content. This disenchants me from the world of sports, as well.
Sure, I could go out of my way to learn the rules of the games that the men in my family watch constantly but never explain. I could identify with a team’s brand, obsess over their lives, and how their labor or physical abilities serve just me and others’ perceived superiority, symbolically “joining” a team. But why? The players for Chicago are from Boston, the players for Miami are from Atlanta, and the guy playing for Los Angeles was supposed to play for Miami but is really from Ohio. What is the point of linking any game or team to a place? And why are we still auctioning off young Black men to different states at high price points in televised drafts, all to uphold people and systems that exploit young athletes, who are often Black or Brown?
As a non-sports lover, it seems to me that the more sports entertainment denies its connection to arts and culture—the very things it influences and shapes—the more it excludes, fetishizes, and marginalizes women, Indigenous people, and LGBTQIAP+ communities who might want to understand what’s happening. We don’t just want this to get closer to our loved ones; we want the context to support athletes like us, like Brittney Griner and other queer Black people we rarely see represented on ESPN. On the panel, you said that “jargon is gatekeeping,” and gatekeeping is always intentional. If Colin Kaepernick was punished and silenced for acknowledging the political impact of the NFL and the sports industry as a whole, who wouldn’t be?
If we connected U.S. politics and culture to our sports culture and media as inherently part of our social structures—not just as money-making machines—the Northwestern hazing scandal and the Donald Sterling housing discrimination case would lead to accountability in sports media, just as the cases against Harvey Weinstein (eleven counts of rape, oral rape, and sexual battery between 2004-2013) eventually impacted Hollywood. Suddenly, maybe, we would care more about the epidemic of injuries and traumas associated with the sports we consume as though there’s no human cost. Maybe when athletes can no longer perform at their peak, we’d revere and support them instead of discarding them. Like you said at the summit:
“All the artistry and humanity of the players get lost when we only speak to the game itself.”
Take this as an opportunity to continue speaking to me and others who don’t love sports when you write and create content about sports, athletes, and sports media. Give us a reason to care about it, even though it doesn’t care about us—if for no other reason– because I’m curious to understand the appeal of something that excludes so many people.
That said, thank you so much for taking up the space that you do. We are all very proud of you—those familiar with your work and those who aren’t. Watching you speak was the first time I’ve felt seen by someone in your field, and I hope this letter sparks some inspiration for dialogue that could lead us to new sides of ourselves.
Maybe someday I'll like sports, or whatever.
Your new fan who is not there quite yet,
Maya James