Counter-Currents
1,399 words
I greatly enjoyed reading Travis LeBlanc’s article “On Sports” published on Counter-Currents last Thursday. It hit very close to home, so much so that I felt as though the beginning of the article was about me– or at least, the way I used to be. When LeBlanc described the “all-consuming” sports fandom of his father and brother, I recalled my own obsession with college and professional sports that persisted throughout my childhood and teen years.
My Sports Obsession
It is not uncommon for children and adolescents, especially boys, to be hardcore sports fans. In addition to watching sports, I also played sports myself. In addition to practices and games, I spent untold hours practicing free throws, layups, and jump shots at the basketball hoop in my driveway. I also participated in countless backyard baseball, football, and soccer games with other kids in my neighborhood.
Sports also provided me with an easy way to make friends. When it was lunchtime in the school cafeteria, or when I had friends over on the weekends, sports were the main topic of conversation more times than not. Many, if not most, of my favorite childhood memories involve either playing sports or watching my favorite college or professional teams.
However, I will be the first to admit that I took things a bit too far. I was emotionally invested, to an unhealthy degree, in the athletic fortunes of the state university and the pro teams located in a nearby major city. A loss could ruin the rest of my day, if not the rest of the week, which was totally irrational considering I didn’t know any of the players on “my” teams or even live in the city that they represented. Another symptom of my obsession was the hours of study I put into memorizing the histories of the different teams and leagues that I followed. For example, I can name the champion and runner-up from every season of the National Basketball Association from 1957 onward. Who did the Baltimore Bullets defeat to win the 1978 NBA championship? The Seattle SuperSonics, of course. As you might assume, there has not been a single situation where this knowledge has proved in any way helpful.
As a general rule, enthusiasm for learning is a good thing. Yet, I do wish that I had spent some of that free time learning something more useful. My knowledge of the history of professional basketball is much more extensive than my knowledge of subjects like philosophy, literature or European history. I am doing my best to close that gap, but I still have quite a ways to go.
The Subversion of Sports
I appreciated LeBlanc’s refusal to denounce sports fandom outright. I have on several occasions come across posts by White Nationalists that mock “sportsball” and insist that whites who care about the survival of their race must stop caring about sports. I’ve always felt that this attitude was misguided. Each of us has several interests and hobbies outside of politics, which is a good thing because no mentally healthy person can spend all their free time focused on politics. I certainly couldn’t do it. We all need a hobby or two to stay sane. Some of you are very passionate about film, some of you are music lovers, and some of you might take an interest in video games, hunting, cars, cooking, woodworking, or any number of other pursuits. And then there are others (like me) who are lifelong sports fans. We should also keep in mind that many of the people we want to win over to White Nationalism are sports fans. Blanket statements attacking “sportsball” are indeed “bad optics”, and LeBlanc is also correct to point out that “there is a tendency for white nationalists to overlook the pro-social aspects of sports.” The way that a shared love of sports can strengthen familial bonds and community pride should not be overlooked.
Unfortunately, the unhealthy behavior of some fans is not the only negative aspect of sports fandom. Another problem is that very few of the players on American professional sports teams have any personal connection to the cities they are supposed to represent. Players routinely leave their teams if they can earn more elsewhere, and it is not unusual for owners to move entire franchises to different cities. Billionaire owners often use the threat of relocation as leverage to secure public funding to build new stadiums. Everything about pro sports is purely transactional. While many sports fans have a quasi-tribal attachment to “their teams” this loyalty is not reciprocated.
Then, of course, there is the racial angle. Both the National Football League and the National Basketball Association are majority black, and Major League Baseball is disproportionately Hispanic. In all three leagues, Jews are extremely overrepresented among franchise owners. As for college sports, we know that universities tend to be hotbeds of anti-white agitation, and that the administrators in charge of many schools will look for any possible means, legal or illegal, to minimize the white percentage of their student bodies. Thus, neither professional sports teams nor college teams are deserving of the financial patronage of White Nationalists. To the greatest extent possible, we should seek to avoid investing our time, money, and energy into institutions and organizations that despise us, and this principle certainly applies to sports.
What is to be Done?
Sports can and should be a vehicle for the promotion of health, social capital, and community pride. Yet, at the same time, popular sporting institutions have been subverted and now function as a way to further deracinate whites and provide us with fake, meaningless “tribal” identities that distract us from the task of defending our genuine racial interests. [1] This leaves fans like me with quite the dilemma: What can be done to reap the benefits of sports fandom while avoiding its negative aspects?
My advice to White Nationalist sports fans is to pay less attention to college and professional athletics, and to instead redirect your passion toward supporting your local high school teams. The New York Yankees and Alabama Crimson Tide do not need your support. They have more than enough fans already. On the other hand, your neighbor’s son who wakes up an extra hour before school three times a week to lift weights in preparation for the upcoming football season absolutely deserves your support on Friday night’s this autumn. What’s more, he would surely appreciate it far more than would the new point guard for the nearest NBA team. Where I live, the crowds at high school games have been getting smaller and smaller by the year. I think COVID has had a lot to do with that, but the trend had already begun long before 2020. Ironically, my high school has seen more athletic success over the last few years than it ever did when I was there, but attendance was noticeably higher in the past when we were bad. Community support for high school teams is becoming a dying tradition in many locales, including my own, and I’d like to see it experience a revival.
While it is true that you won’t be watching world-class athletes at high school games, there is something to be said for rooting for a team that actually represents your community. When I watch a game at my school, several of the players are relatives of my former classmates, and some of the coaches are my former teachers. They are “my team” in a way that no college or professional team ever could be.
Finally, there is something special about watching the boys from your hometown win an important game against a rival school or going on an unexpected winning streak in the state tournament. The season’s first football game underneath the Friday night lights or the atmosphere of a packed gym on a snowy evening in the dead of winter possess an almost magical quality that can never be matched by a squad of mercenaries playing for a multibillion-dollar corporation. These traditions matter and should be preserved. We can do our part to preserve them, and all it costs is the price of a ticket.
There’s a big game coming up next Friday. I hope to see you there.
Notes
[1] For those interested in reading more about how sports has functioned as a vehicle for weakening white racial consciousness, I recommend reading Opiate of America by Paul Kersey.
Enjoyed this article?
Be the first to leave a tip in the jar!
23 comments
Great points. I remember Jim Goad saying he would tune into the Super Bowl when the Philadelphia Eagles were in it. I suppose I would watch if the Cleveland Browns were to ever make the Super Bowl. I did pay attention when the Indians blew three World Series’ opportunities. It’s a sort of emotional attachment to the place you grew up in.
I don’t think there’s much of a chance of the Browns winning a championship as long as the current owner is running the show. Another franchise that seems to always have bad look is the Buffalo Bills. My college roommate is a huge Bills fan, so I’ve seen a couple of their playoff games. Their QB Josh Allen is an absolute monster and so fun to watch, but he turns it over way too much. I think he and Joe Burrow are the best White players in the league now that Tom Brady has retired.
I didn’t watch the Super Bowl this year, but I did see the video of White cornerback Cooper DeJean scoring a defensive touchdown for Philadelphia. I was expecting Jim Goad to write something about that.
One aspect of sports that your article doesn’t mention is team owners demanding new stadiums at taxpayer expense. The Browns are going through that now despite their current stadium being only 25 years old.
I believe he mentioned it briefly. I bet the author know who Bud Adams is!
Wasn’t he the man who moved the Houston Oilers to Tennessee?
So if I heard the story right about the Oilers thing, Bud Adams wanted to have the existing stadium retrofitted to include more luxury boxes, which would’ve benefitted his pocketbook. He threatened to leave if his demands weren’t met. That would’ve cost a tremendous amount of money, which had to be put up to a public referendum, but the line was that it wouldn’t have cost the taxpayers anything. (I smell BS with that.) The public referendum failed, so Bud Adams took his toys and went to Tennessee, as threatened.
I happened to be in Nashville when the deal went down, thinking to myself, “Does anyone know what they’re getting themselves into with Bud Adams?” What a greedy shmuck! He died about 15 years later, and in some corner of the afterlife, surely he’s enjoying all the money he took with him to the grave.
And so it came to pass that Houston was without an NFL team. Woe, great woe pertaineth therefrom! They even became Dallas Cowboys fans, something that would’ve been heresy earlier. Some years later, Houston did get an expansion team. Also, another stadium was put up right next to the Astrodome, after which the historic stadium became a second-rate venue. The new stadium was tremendously costly, like nearly a billion smackeroos or something – much more than Bud Adams’ demanded retrofits would’ve been – and it was paid for at public expense. Those guys are some hardcore NFL addicts.
This article is a good balance to Travis LeBlanc’s article “On Sports”. Perhaps, I should clarify a few things. Some of us that aren’t quite into sports aren’t against sports. We do get surprised from time to time with the things that black athletes get away with, that the owners get away with, and some of the things that members of their fan base put up with. You are right, people do need hobbies outside of politics. Like you pointed out, I have a similar level of passion towards my hobbies that many sports fans do. This includes hunting, the outdoors, and heavy metal. We as whites need to make sure that a certain group doesn’t have any influence on our pastimes and hobbies.
All good points in the article. The local high school my son attended has pretty strong support. I liked going to the games when there was a chance my son would play. Once he tired of it I never went back. I’ve played more than my share of men’s league basketball and softball and it’s a great way to meet like minded people and stay more fit. Even bowling and golf work for these reasons. Pro and college athletics is getting blurred now with the money flowing to college athletes. Not sure why they try to keep up the charade of being institutions of higher learning. It’s definitely an unhealthy development. I do enjoy watching my old college alma mater compete in division 3. It’s college basketball without the madness.
Well said and this was one of my points in my comments on the first article. I’ve also found high school sports actually subvert the mainstream racial narratives on occasion. My senior year of high school football, my rural, 95% white small town opened the season against a school from the inner city of the state capital. There were all these narratives about how we were going to lose badly, explicitly because of the racial differences. Instead, we scored on the first play from scrimmage, lead 21-0 at halftime, and won 34-13. I was not racially aware at that point, but I had enough innate white pride to understand the significance of that moment. My dad commented that I ran off the field after the game like we had won the Super Bowl.
Similar things happen throughout high school sports.
I love taking my kids to high school football games. I usually research the nearby suburban schools at Greatschools.org to make sure it’s a majority White matchup. Sometimes it’s a majority black visiting team and we get our kicks contrasting the routines and esthetics of the cheerleader squads.
Great sense of community at these games. Lots of little kids running around, booster squads, bands, etc. Homecoming is especially fun. The food at the concessions are reasonably priced and good quality, served up by kindly older volunteers. Even the merch they sell with the school’s colors and logo are nice and well priced, all for a good cause, the school’s expenses. When the DJ avoids the current dreck and instead plays classic songs, even better. I once even heard the old Kinks song, Come Dancing which made my night.
I watch the NHL. I’m currently following the Russian Star Alex Ovechkin’s race to break Gretzky’s all time goals record. The two things I hate about the sport is the trades and the betting ads. I find it perverse that the league and it’s networks have taken what is perhaps the most objectionable part of the game (trades) and made a huge event out of the trade deadline. I miss the days when you can buy a jersey of your favorite star and he’d play his whole career on the same team, not rendering the sweater an anachronism.
I completely understand what you mean about the cheerleaders. The routines of the majority-Black schools are certainly… different. I remember my school playing one of those schools in football and our whole student section being absolutely disgusted by it when they were dancing around at halftime.
I’ve also noticed that football games against Black schools are usually longer because they commit so many pre-snap penalties.
You are right, the difference in discipline and composure between the teams is stark.
Some of the schools have bleachers on the opposite side of the field for the fans of the visitors and the visiting cheerleaders do their routines there.
Ah, I almost can’t wait for the fall to take in the Friday night lights again.
You have tugged on my heart strings. Nobody is deprecating the value of sports in a homogenous mono-racial society on this website from the replies I have read. It is the damage that the inclusion of one non-white on the team does to our race, it always gets a white female in “heat” chasing after that non-white athlete. It is an insidious evil, that is exponential in growth. It is a tough call, how can you not support your children! 😵💫
Indeed, those gold diggers make for quite an ugly sight.
Beau i think he was referring more to hormonal adolescent lust and hypergamous status chasing behavior by high school and college girls, not “adult” women looking for a payday w a pro athlete.
It seems to me that the former is far more insidious than the latter. A high school girl who is still a virgin or has had at most one or two white boyfriends is still untainted by the stain of race mixing or an unacceptably high body count. A 25/yo kardashian-aping cleat chaser is far beyond redemption. He most certainly wont be the first (or 10th) sub saharan shes spread her legs for by the time shes moving in circles that allow her access to pro athletes.
Indeed, that’s a big problem too. Some of them will turn out like Nicole Brown Simpson.
We can only hope, we need more cautionary tales! 😄
Thanks for the good article. I personally hate team sports and consider fans to be fools. The only fans worth anything are organizing hooligans. Out of Dynamo Kiev fans the Azov regiment was formed. As Famine, the lead singer of black metal band Peste Noire, says: “Hooligans are the new Ardity.” Hooligans and the world of organized crime are the only places where a normal white man can get real violence, besides the army and the police. Enough whites need training, discipline, and a the way of gang to survive in an ultra-violent multicultural world.
Caitlin Clark and Cooper Flagg are hated for the most obvious reasons and Jason Whitlock of all people, is the one who has pointed this out and rightly excoriated trash like angel reese and that quadrooned irritant dawn staley, albeit from a christian anti-woke angle. Instead of customarily dismissing N-ball as a irredeemable waste of time as many 14 militants do, I do see amerikan sports as a potential hotbed of racial agitation and cleverly sown division that proWhites can exploit (jews certainly would if they were us) to their benefit by reminding ungrateful blacks that basketball and football were invented by James Naismith and Walter Camp, two White men without whom LaQwandra’e would be dunking severed heads in toilet lids. Test and push them by doubting the fortitude of their stones to name the owners, or “being a pussy-ass bitch” as they would say by goading them into naming the disproportionate jewish ownership of sports teams. Would michael jordan dare criticize Bulls owner jerry reinsdorf? Or lebron james have choice words for jewish commissioner adam silver? They wouldn’t dare. I’ve actually had some luck in getting thru to lugheads by describing White amerika as starting every play on 4th and forever inside their own 5 yard line-your team has better talent but gets no time outs, the enemy’s are unlimited, they get every call, they get home field, and are overpaid to play while Whites are forced to overpay to play. Spread hoaxes and outlandish rumors in the social media sportscape that White athletes are starting their own league and encourage all White sports fans to boycott attending games and buying jerseys of privileged blacks (they won’t but they should, and blacks and their enablers would absolutely bite the bait). We’ll call it the WFL, they could keep the NFL. I’m sure even a dope like kendrick perkins or pk subban can make the “racist” connexion between the letters. I’ve long advocated Whites claiming Michael Jackson and Steph Curry as two of theirs as well. Whatever makes jemele hill and steve kerr’s heads explode is a good thing. Such tactics should be considered as effective agitprop and will certainly shock the masses as desired into rumbling about it. Doing something that’s never been done and few would dare to do. Why not? Walter Fussbudget republicans are too cowardly and creative-deficient to even imagine such things; zog forbid it might disturb their portfolio. We should fill that vacuum now that football season is over. The world awaits.
What I am doing with my relatives…
emphasis on combat sports … may be be needed future skill ; helps with T levels
emphasis on shooting sports … may be needed future skill ; emphasis on technical and analytical skills
emphasis on traditional sports events like Celtic Games etc … practical to some extent; bolster T levels; connection to heritage.
@ elastic meitner
Excellent points.
Also id encourage focus on other non-mainstream “white” sports which have barriers to entry for the brown masses, be they social, financial, or geographical.
Watersports: competitve slalom skiing, trick ski, ski jumping, wakeboarding, sailing, (rich kids’ sports unfortunately, but financially accessible at the collegiate level for a poor kid, even if by then its too late to become anywhere near elite. At least he will get a taste)
Cheaper (but highly geographically dependent): kiteboarding/surfing/boogie boarding
Snow sports: skiing/snowboarding. Much more financially accessible than watersports.
Motorsports: BMX, motocross, etc
Strength sports: olympic lifts, functional bodybuilding…when the boy comes of age
Outdoor: hunting/Camping/hiking/backpacking/mountaineering, fishing, mountain biking. As the son of an eagle scout id be remiss to not mention the boy scouts, but maybe that ship has sailed down the river of woke.
NO VIDEO GAMES!: ive wasted thousands of hours of my youth through early 30s addicted to a few games. Had i put that time into ANYTHING else, if be much wealthier, have an elite level skill (guitar?), and would have become socially adjusted much, much sooner.
Also competitve swimming and water polo. Springboard diving.
Rodeo sports
I might add that, in keeping with my earlier reply to Beau Albrecht, encouraging ones sons or young male relatives to pursue nom traditional “white” sports will benefit him greatly in finding a quality mate at a young age.
Why? Because, even though they are primarily individualized athletic pursuits, most have their own subset of female “groupies”. These (overwhelmingly white) girls have already self selected by accepting Chad’s invitation to join he and his friends at the lake for a wakeboard trip instead of Tyrone’s offer to “turn up” at da club/house party following the big game.
Instead of being influenced by the adulation of the crowd and school newspaper that Tyrone is the highest status male for her to chase, she and her girlfriends on the boat will get to choose between chad, ryan and travis. Chad might not be world class, but among his peer group his skill and thus relative status could easily rise to the top of the heap (as it relates to female hypergamy, status is mostly relative, not absolute)
In short, Becky is showing an innate pro-white preference in choosing to be around white boys instead of blacks, amd she will gravitate to the best of them (a small subset of athletes) instead of the best of a MUCH larger pool represented in the major sports, even at the HS level
Devon Stack in particular has had vicious things to say about anyone who takes any interest in sportsball, stating anyone who pays attention to or has an interest in sportsball, even if conflicted, is an NPC.
I will confide I support a certain old school, historical team in the NFL, but I do begrudginly for a variety of reasons. I cannot support that team in isolation. That team is in league with the NFL and everything it does—it is called the National Football LEAGUE, after all. Supporting that team supports how our American university system has whored itself out as the minor league to the NBA and NFL.
I know that professional sports are an incredibly negative influence on modern society. But it is not as if the NFL and sportsball will disappear if I boycott watching that team. So it is a conflict I have. I will say I do not support the team with anything close to the sort of fanaticism I once did. But part of that is because I no longer think they are winning a Super Bowl anytime soon as they wasted wasted what should have been a Super Bowl dynasty.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.