He is a bit hysterical but what would our democracy look like if we paid as much attention to Congress as we do to the NFL

Not about banning professional football, or football in general, which he appears to endorsing at the end of his column.

Sport has always been around and always will be around. But once you turn it into money making entertainment spectacle, you have to ask why it is happening.

I like Chomsky's critique of the spectator sports:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz1nIHv6P6Q

Chomsky's point is that people are applying their intelligence to closely follow sports. Hence, the level of discourse on sports in the media is much higher than it is on politics.

There's nothing wrong about entertaining yourself by watching sports, but there is no reason why people can't devote the same amount of energy to political concerns that actually have a direct impact on their lives. At the end of the day a sporting event is just a game.

Too me football is a pretty barbaric sport. The closest thing we have to gladiatorial events. Football player live shorter lives and have a myriad of bad injuries that haunt them the rest of their lives. Earl Campbell is like a cripple and Wilber Marshall of the Bears and Redskins is also like a cripple.

Just my opinion but like I said football is not my cup of tea and if it was no longer played I think society would be better off without it. Plenty of other sports that don't involve beating the s*** out of each other...

I don't think we're reading the same piece. Eagleton acknowledges the beauty of sport but he's also suggesting that it serves an institutional function. If people took as much time reading Eagleton as they do memorizing sports facts, I do believe the world would be a little better.

Dave, I read your column regularly and I think the last couple have been reductive.

Being in the Guardian, this article would probably not find the average American, let alone the average American sports fan.

As for Eagleton's arguments, I'd give him credit inasmuch as football (or any spectator sport, team especially) does provide a vicarious, nonparticipatory diversion for people who might otherwise more focus their efforts more constructively--I can just imagine how he would view the fantasy sports cottage industry that has emerged on this side of the Pond. Unfortunately he falls into this point almost accidentally, for I do not get the sense that he differentiates spectator sports from participatory.

But he has other poorly constructed arguments, too, beginning with "Modern societies deny men and women the experience of solidarity..." As if the powerful just recently began trying to divide the less fortunate masses?

Part of what I find funny about this is that assorted right-wingers over the years have associated sports pasttimes as the tool of communist regimes, much as Eagleton views football as a Marxian opium. I suppose he is correct, that football, sport, religion, or any other pursuit in which people invest so much mental and emotional energy, can become the tool for the corrupt to use against the gullible, though there is nothing inherently capitalistic (nor socialistic, for that matter) about the game itself.

I disagree with eagleton's sweeping generalzation's about sport, and his draconian idea's of how to deal with it's hold over the minds of much of the populace. As if banning sport would some how lead people to political populism instead of other escapist practices. However you would have to be blind not to see the disproportionate role sporting event's play in the decision making of individuals and society at large. Sports in it's proper place, sports in context with the rest of life can be a great thing. Sports as panacea, sports as replacement for real relationships or a fully lived life is a tradgedy, sports as replacement for fixing or adressing social ills and injustice, is a monstrosity. However, it is only what we make of it, like all other human institutions it is ultimately under our control.

When I read that Comrade Eagleton wants to abolish the hold soccer and sports in general has on the public I think about the Greeks and the concept of moderation. Eagleton reminds me of a one-trick pony, he reduces everything to the political, and as Homer Simpson would say boring. Eagleton does not acknowledge sports as entertainment. He only wants it to serve a politcal role(and then only his politics would suffice). Just as I would be bored confining myself only to sports talk radio, I would be just as bored by only talking to political types. You can learn from Eagleton about the role of sports in our societies, I just don't want him to monopolize the conversation about sports being just opium of the uneducated masses. Just as there are sports addicts there are also political junkies. I try to avoid both.

While I acknowledge your points regarding figures like Ali, Robinson, King, Smith and Carlos you cannot deny the fact that sports have more often been used as a means of instilling patriotic fervor among the masses. From the Star Spangled Banner to the overt military recruitment on TV, sporting events have provided an outlet for jingoism that tends to drown out any progressive or dissenting voices.

Pacifica Radio's The People's Game discusses this very topic on almost every show. Jennifer Doyle, who has a great blog called From a Left Wing is one of the hosts. The show is produced daily and available at http://www.thepeoplesgame.org They hosts and guests have considered this matter from so many angles, and I'm convinced that soccer can be reclaimed as the people's sport, and that it's one of the easiest paths for building true internationalist, global solidarity.

The 'opiate of the people' of the people reference is as follows:

"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

The quote demands further inquiry from us Lefties who truly do believe in the power of the working class to know their own interests and to make their own history. People do not exist, especially among the working class, as tropes, träger of larger structures. In this particular discussion, religion and sports are actively navigated by all involved, be they worshippers of the good book or the sports pages, or preachers and players. The abolition of religion and sport is not at stake, nor even consequential, but rather the system under which practitioners of both find themselves. Eagleton's assumption, a rather inane and misanthropic blather full of condemnation for working people, details abstract man at his/her worst, and isolates himself in his crystal castle to dictate to 'the masses' their failures.

The 'opiate of the people' of the people reference is as follows:

"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

The quote demands further inquiry from us Lefties who truly do believe in the power of the working class to know their own interests and to make their own history. People do not exist, especially among the working class, as tropes, träger of larger structures. In this particular discussion, religion and sports are actively navigated by all involved, be they worshippers of the good book or the sports pages, or preachers and players. The abolition of religion and sport is not at stake, nor even consequential, but rather the system under which practitioners of both find themselves. Eagleton's assumption, a rather inane and misanthropic blather full of condemnation for working people, details abstract man at his/her worst, and isolates himself in his crystal castle to dictate to 'the masses' their failures.

I, myself, am not a big sports fan, but I must admit this World Cup has given me a first shot of this particular opiate of the masses, and I kinda like it! Nevertheless, I do find myself sympathetic to the point of view of Chomsky, Eagleton and others that sports can be seen as a distraction. Unfortunately, there is a flaw to the argument that I have not seen addressed: namely, how do we actually KNOW that folks no longer paying attention to sports would all of a sudden become leftist activists? The overwhelming majority of sports fans do nothing more with their fandom than sit and watch TV in their living room. Without sports, I know The Powers That Be could just as easily put something else on the tube for the people's amusement. Indeed, I have recently learned that twice as many people watched the Eurovision Song Contest final than the last Super Bowl.