Friday, November 21, 1997
Rivalry springs from patriotic fervor
USC: Competition between Trojans, Bruins should exist in spirit
of fun, not in mean dog-eat-dog world
By Mark Anderson
Beat USC. The line is hammered across your forehead like the
mark of the devil before the apocalypse. Sitting in class, wearing
your "Beat ‘SC" T-shirt, you write and rewrite the lines across the
margins of your notes on the structure of carbon dioxide. You love
football, you love UCLA, and you love painting yourself, getting
drunk and yelling yourself senseless. All these things combined are
enough to lift you into a transcendental fit of ecstasy. You are
like a berserker before a battle – tipsy with mead, enflamed with
battle cries, stoked with pride and honor. You are ready, in other
words, to rumble. You throw your darts at pictures of Tommy and
throw your Trojans in the toilet and piss on them before
flushing.
Reflect upon this behavior for a brief moment before you go out
into the night with your battle-hardened heart and intoxicated
perceptions. Reflect upon the generation of wars. Reflect upon
genocide, upon gang warfare, upon violence due to physical,
ideological or cultural differences. Reflect upon a pen of sheep,
transformed into bulls and fed flags of red (and gold). Directed
anger, en masse, has the potential to be a powerful thing.
Don’t buy into the game and allow yourself to be given objects
of anger and led about on the societal leash. Sure, I’m
exaggerating the minor, healthy rivalry of two sports teams. But
what I am pointing out to you is that this "patriotic" fervor, this
ardent pride and emotionalism, is what is played upon in other,
more universal and relevant issues. It’s the "buy this because
you’ve buying it all your life" or the "hate this group because
they don’t belong to the group you do" kind of thing.
Friendly rivalries, when taken onto the international, national,
regional or sometimes personal level, can become more serious. All
your life you have been told what to do – by your parents, by your
teachers, by the police, by advertisements – and you have always
been told who to compete against. This is, after all, a 20th
century capitalist society.
In elementary school, you would throw volleyballs in a game
called "dodgeball," where you try to beat another team. You’d play
soccer and baseball. You’d kick the alien ass out of Doom. You’d
root for your high school team. You’d get in a fight with people
from other areas in your city. You’d drive by and shoot people from
other gangs. You’d kill all the people of another race. This is the
progression of a programmed unit of society – the logical extension
of the dog-eat-dog world.
So thus, before you get all riled up and loaded for the game,
please keep in mind that it is just that – a game. And bear in mind
that it is a rivalry that exists only in the spirit of fun and for
the love of the sport, and that people who go to another school,
another country or another church all deserve to sit in the great
hall in the sky together and swap a joke or two.
That is my cheesy take on the ‘SC game.Anderson is a first year
English student.