I’ve spent more Super Bowl Sundays than I can count standing at the back of the room, trying to figure out what the hell I was missing.
Every Thanksgiving, every long weekend, every so-called holiday of American ritual came with a side of football. Whether it was the Super Bowl, Thanksgiving Day games, or Labor Day weekend kickoff, it was tradition—loud, expected, and everywhere. The kind of thing that defined the room whether you were into it or not. It was just assumed: the game would be on, and we would care. But I didn’t. Not really. Not until, briefly, I almost did.
When my dad worked with the LA Clippers—during the so-called Lob City era—I got to go to a lot of games. That was Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, JJ Redick, Doc Rivers. The team had a personality. Swagger. Chaos. It felt like something was building. I started to recognize the players. I paid attention to the stats. I picked up on the storylines. And for a minute, it all made sense. I started to believe in "my team."
And more than that, for the first time, I was able to connect with my people—friends, family, coworkers—in a language I’d always felt shut out of. I finally had something to say. I could talk about plays, argue over trades, share that “inside-baseball” energy. For once, I wasn’t watching from the edge. I was in. It felt good.
Then they were gone. A string of trades—after scandal, ownership drama, and front office shakeups—wiped the roster clean. The whole team was reshuffled into something unrecognizable. It felt cheap. Like a magic trick you weren't supposed to see from the wrong angle—new floors, different walls, no trace of what once mattered.
Call it dramatic, but it hit hard. I’d finally started to buy in, to strain toward the magic everyone else seemed to absorb effortlessly—and the whole thing turned out to be paper-thin. I wasn’t watching family. I wasn’t watching culture. I was watching a business doing business.
I didn’t forget it. In fact, it lingered. And the more I paid attention to how culture works—how it gets packaged, sold, and weaponized—the more that moment started to make sense. Especially as I watch the country drift closer to something meaner, colder. As I study how culture gets co-opted, how ritual becomes spectacle, how meaning gets turned into merchandise.
The Spectacle and the Substitution
Sports isn’t just entertainment. It’s a delivery system for identity. For story. For belonging. It’s one of the last mass rituals we have. Especially for men, who are taught not to grieve, not to cry, not to lose control—sports becomes a safe zone. You can scream. You can sob. You can hug a stranger and call it passion. (Though in my house, my mom was often the loudest one yelling at the screen—or from the bleachers at my sister’s games.)
A win can feel like redemption. A loss, like something personal broke. Players become extensions of you, your city, your father’s favorite team. The jersey becomes a memory, a ritual, a flag you didn’t know you’d die on.
But peel back the surface and it’s commerce. Branding. Monetized mythology.
Every part of it is for sale. Jerseys, sneakers, posters, bobbleheads, holographic trading cards, NFTs. Even the pauses are monetized: “This Home Depot halftime report is brought to you by Samsung, here at the Smoothie King Center.” It’s absurd, but it’s also the point. Every moment is packaged, every beat of silence sold off. You’re never allowed to forget who owns the moment—or what it’s meant to make you buy. Like reality TV, it simulates intimacy. You follow lives, pick favorites, root against villains. But at the end of the day, it belongs to someone else.
And the tradeoff mostly goes unnoticed. We don’t really ask what we’re getting out of this—what need it’s feeding—or what’s being left out. Genuine connection? Vulnerability? A sense of purpose? Sports gives us the performance of those things, but not the real versions. It scratches the itch just enough that we stop looking elsewhere. That’s the cost no one tallies. The team, the storylines, the loyalty itself—none of it is yours.
In our culture, power comes from attention and spending—consumption, basically. But we rarely stop to consider who or what we’re endorsing with that power. We cheer. We wear the merch. We keep showing up, week after week, almost without thinking. We participate, but passively, almost on autopilot. And all that participation gets converted—into data, into dollars, into justification for systems we barely question.
And when your guy gets traded, or kneels during the anthem, or speaks up and suddenly disappears from highlight reels, gets benched, or becomes a PR liability—you’re reminded: this whole thing was completely conditional.
What Sports Used to Be
It wasn’t always so polished. Or so hollow. Sports came from the dirt. From working-class energy. Pick-up games, streetball, union leagues, boxing rings in smoky basements. Athletes weren’t brands—they were bodies in motion, sweating it out for real stakes.
Muhammad Ali lost everything—his title, his passport, his prime years—because he refused to fight in a war he didn’t believe in. Jackie Robinson integrated baseball while getting hate mail, death threats, and bench-cleating from the very people he shared a field with. Billie Jean King went to war with the tennis establishment, fought for equal pay, and beat Bobby Riggs in front of 90 million people while navigating being publicly outed. They were risking their careers, their safety, their sanity.
These weren’t endorsements. They were risks. These people had everything to lose. And they were still close enough to the people in the cheap seats to speak out for them.
What Changed
Now? Players are assets. Teams are portfolio holdings. Games are properties. And fan loyalty is treated like a permanent subscription, no refunds.
Donald Trump is mulling a UFC fight night on White House grounds. Actual billionaires are becoming the centerpiece of American sports storylines, standing cage-side while athletes get bloodied for $50k a bout. Meanwhile, WNBA players are being painted as greedy for asking for more than 9% of league revenue during contract negotiations. That’s not contrast—it’s a portrait. It’s who we’re told deserves power, and who should be grateful just to play.
The market doesn’t want truth. It wants predictability. Compliance. Bland, apolitical content that can be packaged, licensed, monetized.
At the same time, the owners are funding politicians, lobbying cities for new stadium deals, and quietly propping up systems that keep them in power and everyone else scrambling for crumbs.
This isn’t just about games. It’s infrastructure. Narrative management. Empire maintenance.
Where the Spark Still Lives
But you can still find it—if you know where to look.
You see it in WNBA players walking out during the anthem—not just as athletes, but as Black, brown, queer women navigating a world that rarely centers them. Maybe that’s why they’re often the most vocal. They don’t just play with less spotlight—they live with less cushion. When you have less to lose, sometimes you’re freer to speak the truth.
You see it in Marcus Rashford feeding working-class kids during COVID. In fans organizing to stop ticket hikes, to fight team relocations. In local leagues run by and for the community. In pick-up games at the park—nothing for sale, everything’s earned.
You see it in labor fights (for concession stand workers), or in contract disputes (between players and owners). In the moments where athletes (or we) remember they’re workers first.
It’s still there. Beneath the ads, behind the logos. The spark is stubborn.
What I’m Starting to Realize
This isn’t really about sports. It’s about what we do with our attention. It’s about how we ritualize meaning. It’s about how power uses spectacle to distract, pacify, divide.
And for a second—a real second—I thought I’d found something worth rooting for. I got to feel what everyone else seemed to take for granted. I got to belong. Until I didn’t.
That doesn’t mean it was worthless. There’s something real in the way people love this stuff. The joy, the heartbreak, the rituals — none of that is fake. Whole families bond over it, friendships are built on it, cities carry it like pride in their bones. For a lot of people, those moments are enough. They’re worth holding onto.
It just means I saw the wires. And once you see them, you can’t unsee them.
You don’t have to be a sports fan to understand what it’s doing. You just have to ask who owns the game. Who benefits. Who gets benched. And what we’re missing while the lights are on and the anthem is playing.
Because if the game is rigged—what the hell are we cheering for?
Ace Estwick
Ace Estwick is a staff writer at KPFK, covering the collisions between people, culture, and power.
