The Sportsball Question

Race Differences in Athletics, Responding to Simon Laird

Back in the day, there was a semi-lolcow on iPolitics named ProCap. He was kind of a libtard centrist, and he really hated Football, and wanted it to get banned in America. We would all make fun of him for it, and it was extremely funny.

Credit to Zaoist for this one

This one was all my own doing, from back when John Madden died.

He left years ago, but when I saw some of Simon Laird’s anti-sports notes, I was suddenly reminded of him, and laughed again, thinking about those ancient days. But for the record, I like Simon Laird. I like his content, he’s a good account, I was surprised to find out I wasn’t subbed to him before writing this. But his opinions on sports echo a certain touchy subject on the political right that I have long been wanting to talk about. Because I think he does make compelling points, but ultimately I disagree with the universality of his anti-sports beliefs.

Should Sports Be Illegal?

I have noticed that some anti-sports people on the political right are very much like the anti-Anime people. Despite hating on professional sports, they’re clearly knowledgable in it and at least at some point in their lives were immersed in that world. Scott Greer faces heavy flack for previously having “I will NOT watch the NFL” in his Greerhead Pledge, but if you are a regular viewer of his podcasts you will hear him talk about sports with a fair degree of knowledge, and mention how he watched sports in his childhood. I’ve never been hugely into sports. I like watching the NFL, but when my team isn’t on I usually don’t watch and I don’t bother remembering all but the most important and noteworthy players. Other than that, I only watch international soccer competitions. The World Cup, the Euros, maybe the Olympics. I was ecstatic when the mostly White Argentine team won against the mostly non-French, non-European French team. I think, racial sentiments aside, it’s bullshit that larger and more developed countries can simply recruit people who weren’t even born there, but instead were born in old colonies, to beat small countries. I think in order to play in the World Cup, both of your parents have to have been born in that country.

As Simon points out, professional sports are historically uncommon. The best example of anything resembling “sports entertainment” before 1700 was the Greco-Roman Circus. No, not the one where you watch 40 clowns get out of a car, or people walk on tightropes. The Circus was the elliptical track which chariots rode on, it was where chariot races took place. So, when you hear someone say “bread and circuses”, they really mean “bread and chariot-racing”. According to some historians, the Roman Charioteer Gaius Appuleius Diocles should be considered the most financially successful athlete of all time based on his adjusted winnings.

By the Byzantine period, City-folk would become extremely loyal to certain factions of chariot-racers, called demes (no, not etymologically related to teams), and there were four major ones. The Reds, the Blues, The Greens, and The Whites. It wasn’t “travel sports”, the teams didn’t really represent locations across the empire. It did sometimes index other things though, like social class or political views.

Although the circuses were meant to placate the masses, sports hooliganism was just as prevalent then as it is now. The passions of the game almost led to Justinian’s downfall, in fact. The Nika Riots of 532 AD led to the destruction of 1/4 to 1/2 of Constantinople’s buildings, caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, and nearly forced Justinian out of the Imperial Throne. They started at a Chariot Race, where the Blue and Green demes united in anger over Justinian, who began suppressing the power of the unruly demes and punishing some of their bad actors.

In the modern day, we occasionally see sports riots get out of hand like this as well, albeit not so much in America. We see it in Philly every time the super bowl is won by the Eagles at this point, but it’s small-scale. Nika was more like the Floyd Riots, but multiply that by 100. There was a possibility for regime change during the Floyd Riots, when Trump’s generals refused to provide military support to American cities (including defense of the White House) to quell the violence (under completely illegitimate pretenses). Not to get on too much of a tangent here, but people don’t usually consider how bad the Military Elite is in America. They were totally opposed to Trump and arguably still are, which makes it impossible to consolidate power. In other countries the military elite are very conservative.

Anyways… I fully agree with Simon that modern Americans are utterly obsessed with Professional Sports, to the point where it is one of our great vices. The situation is arguably even worse in Europe, but Soccer fanaticism is a little more right-coded over there. Teams aren’t just subdivisions of a larger organization there, they’re part of the local community. They aren’t bound to the league, they are independent parties that can migrate between leagues. Often times they were originally just a group of guys who would get together and play soccer after church, or a day at the factory, and it’s reflected in their names. But in America, it’s much more corporate. American sports usually uses the franchise system. American teams are bound to the league, but not to their location of origin. They can move anytime and often do, depending on what area is most profitable. For this reason, team identity is much less authentic in the franchise system. Furthermore, in modern pro sports, athletes don’t have much loyalty to their fans or their team. They go wherever offers the best contracts. I feel like this might actually be worse in Soccer than it is in American sports, but I’m not educated enough to know. It is generally frowned upon for an athlete to leave a team that was loyal to him, unless it is because that athlete is entering his older years and a depreciating asset for the home team. Alt Hype made a great video about this back in the day. Some athletes genuinely do love and care about their fans, but others are in it for their own money and their own glory.

Despite this, despite the connection between teams and fans being very superficial, people still devote their lives to this. So many people around you will literally fall into a state of agony not just after a big loss, but after literally every time their team loses. It’s an unwholesome attachment, as the Buddhists would say. You have absolutely zero influence over it, and given that dozens of teams exist in each league, you will likely only see your team win it all a few times in your entire life. And yet, you emotionally cling yourself to the results. In this regard (but not others) it is like rooting for balls of identical shape, size, and density but different color, roll down a hill. I’m always anxious during the playoffs. You never know when a team’s “golden age” is due for a turnover. Every time my favorite team, the Bills, lose in the Playoffs, I wonder if that was the closest season we would ever have in getting a Super Bowl victory.

Sports Betting is even worse. It exacerbates the already existing trend in domestic violence rates increasing when a favored team loses, and it is a huge money sink for most of the people who practice it. Gambling used to be seen as immoral in America, but today the anti-gambling movement is basically nonexistent.

Pro Sports are kind of woke. The Black National Anthem plays at the super bowl. “End Racism” was put on everyone’s helmets. Team name changes after BLM etc etc. even in Europe this is true. English players being forced to wear LGBT armbands. Obviously the NHL is caught in this stuff too due to the Canadian influence, with many teams wearing LGBT jerseys during pride month. The only pro sport actually run by conservatives is the UFC. This is in spite of sports being stereotypically a conservative hobby, although the validity of this stereotype is something I’ll get into later. The primary reason is probably due to the overrepresentation of Black people in sports. A lot of team owners are also Jewish. In 2019, Jews owned around a third of American major sports franchises, and Jews are very liberal. The presence of Black people in pro sports is one of the leading causes of Afrolatry in America. Young men associate Blackness with masculinity, due to their favorite athletes being black. This is probably how Rap music became such a popular genre among men. Historically this association didn’t exist so much, even though it was known that Blacks were athletic. I don’t doubt that Black people are naturally gifted at certain sports, or elements of sports. They have more fast-twitch muscle fibers than other races due to the prevalence of sickle cell anemia in Africa, which itself is due to the prevalence of Malaria in Africa. I wouldn’t be surprised if fast-twitch muscle fibers were more prevalent in ancient Eurasians too, I have seen studies of ancient Greeks and saw a lot of fast-twitch oriented people. However, the athletic differences between races on a population-wide level are not as severe as what we see in professional sports. Tail effect exaggerates slight differences at the extremes.

Take these distributions, for example. I scaled them up by a factor of 3 just o make them more easier on the eyes. The blue one has a greater mean by only 1/5 of a standard deviation. You can see, at 1 SD there are barely more Blues than Reds.

However, at 3.5 SDs out…

There are twice as many Blues as Reds! So basically, slight differences in average score on something can lead to large differences in groups comprised of the cream of the crop of that score.

In the NFL, you do see that certain roles which rely on intense bursts of energy, or incredibly fast sprints, are black-dominated. This graphic is a bit outdated obviously, before Cooper DeJean was in the league.

Quarterbacks and Centers are very white. A lot of Black people insist that this is because of discrimination, that athletic Blacks who were good QBs were assumed to have more potential in high school as cornerbacks or runningbacks and put in those roles instead. However, I doubt this. A good QB is the most valuable position on the offense, and because a Center also functions as a member of the offensive line he still requires a high degree of athleticism.

I think if you argue with razors, you should spare the HBD explanation. Centers and QBs are White because White people have higher general intelligence, and these roles are the most mental in the game. Centers are responsible for analyzing the defensive formation and making adjusting calls to the rest of the offensive line before a play, while quarterbacks are responsible for judging pass availability and on some occasions altering calls based on the defense’s layout. If you ever watch interviews of players, it seems like most of them agree that QB is the hardest position in the NFL, because you have a lot of choices to make as QB directly after the play.

According to Paul Zimmerman's The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football, Quarterbacks, O-Linemen, and Centers have the highest Wonderlic scores of every position (Wonderlic is a short cognitive test). It’s worth remembering that this book was written in 1984, a time when 75% of O-Linemen were White. It is probably no longer accurate. Even today though, the O-line is far whiter than the D-Line.

All of that being said, I don’t think that Black athleticism is responsible for Black athletic eminence. The most Black professional sports league, the NBA, is not one that Black people are especially well-fit for. It is less reliant on sprinting than Football, having a small court and slowing down sprints by forcing people to… You know, dribble. The big benefit Black people have in basketball is a larger femur-to-tibia ratio, which helps with jumping. But jumping is highly trainable, and probably the more important factor in the NBA is height. White people are taller than Black people, and we can see the importance of height when we look at how overrepresented very tall White groups like Balts and Serbo-Croats are in the NBA. Tall guys in Scandinavia and Netherlands probably go to play goalie in Soccer, so that’s why they’re less represented despite being similarly tall. White people also have more slow-twitch muscle fibers and a larger aerobic capacity, which are very important in Basketball and Soccer as they provide muscular power over longer periods. Having muscular endurance, being able to operate at a consistent level of output over the course of an entire game (or at least, as long as you’re in for). You remember the FitnessGram PACER test, right? An aerobic capacity fitness test? That is literally running across a Basketball court. Kind of like what Basketball players do in game.

Meanwhile, the most fast-twitch sport other than sprinting is Powerlifting, which is dominated by Northern Europeans. And it is the Chinese who do especially well in Olympic-style Weightlfting. Albeit, in both of these cases there are other factors at play. Powerlifters are often extremely tall — the bigger the frame, the more muscle you can put on, and Europeans are the tallest race. Olympic Weightlifters, on the other hand, have a more varied range of heights, and are often very short as this shortness helps them balance. The Chinese, like the Russians before them, dominate weightlifting because their government puts a lot of investment into it. And I think this is part of the reason why Black people are so overrepresented in American pro sports. Athletic whites more often drift away from sports to opt for “real” careers, they focus more on school, college, work, but for a lot of Black people being a pro athlete is their way to make it to the top. White parents are also more overprotective, they’re worried their kids will hurt themselves playing sports. I think this is probably the case for boxing, which is obviously very dangerous, causes your body to be broken, and is just as CTE-inducive as the most dangerous positions in Football. Fast-twitch does benefit you in boxing but I think endurance is equally important. Fights usually end when somebody starts to gas out, and early knockouts are the exception. It’s an exhausting sport. Most people could barely even go eight rounds with a shadow of themselves.

It is possible that Black people are good at Basketball and football because they are more aggressive. Aggression is very important in sports, and especially in modern basketball you *have* to foul when you can. Even wearing more aggressive colors can help a team. Professional Sports in general have largely accepted fouling as something to be done optimally, as much as you can before it gets caught, even though this goes against the spirit of the game. Meanwhile, in powerlifting, aggression doesn’t help you at all.

The final alternative cause for Black domination in athletics has to do with ages of puberty. Black children tend to hit puberty earlier than White children. For most athletes, their career starts as a teenager. They have to get spotted by a coach for their ability, afterwards they will be focused on in training more to develop their talent. For a lot of White people with athletic potential, it only comes out later so they are not focused on by coaches as much or encouraged as much as the Black students. It’s quite well-known in college sports that walk-ons tend to be White, albeit this is probably mostly just due to college students who didn’t get a sports scholarship already being much whiter than the average college athlete. Racial integration probably severely dampened White prospects in college or pro sports by forcing them to compete with more developed Black teenagers, and maybe this is why great White athletes tend to be of rural backgrounds, or from white areas like the Midwest and Great Plains.

White athletes are usually pretty conservative. Religiosity is common in athletes regardless of race. Checkmate atheists, prayer works! Fans of sports, on the other hand… Well, I think 20 years ago everyone viewed watching sports as a conservative hobby, and as a “manly” hobby. Only gay guys didn’t watch sports. Today, this view has been shattered. I have noticed this bizarre phenomenon, where accounts whose entire bio, profile picture, and background is sports, pretty much only post TDS shitlib content. Sports accounts are left-wing on Twitter. I am not the only person who has experienced this, it is something several people have corroborated who I know. Meanwhile, gym/bodybuilding accounts are very right-wing and anti-woke, but the gymrat crowd is not very aligned with pro sports.

I think eventually people realized that watching sports does not make you an athlete, and there are plenty of fat losers and skinny statcast-addicted norwooding autists who spend all day debating about sports like it’s a powerscaling argument. Not to mention all of the dilapidated boomers. Most athletic people you meet in real life do like pro sports, but it is no longer seen as an integral part of male culture in America among the youth. The nail in the coffin of this old representation of sports fans was when Kylie “Sketch” Cox (yes, his last name really is cocks) was outed as having done gay sissy porn in the past. Some even say he took bibisi, I wouldn’t know, but it’s possible. Sketch was one of the most popular goyball posters in the world, you could go interview NFL players and say “What’s up brother?” and they would respond “Special teams, special plays, special players”. He played football in his youth, but you wouldn’t guess it from looking at him today. I thought it was funny when someone called him “Stretch” in public and he started crying, as if he didn’t make the conscious choice to dress up as a maid and get assfucked on the internet.

I don’t think the negative societal impacts of pro sports are a sign that you individually need to stop watching sports. It’s still useful to have in your social repertoire, and it is entertaining. Furthermore, I strongly disagree with Laird’s claim that athletes are “pathetic grown men who spend all day throwing a ball around” who are “participating in a vice”. Athletes are, and always have been worth looking up to, and to minimize them to “men throwing ball around” is a very modernist outlook.

According to the Greeks, the athlete was inferior only to the heroic warrior in his quest for Arete. When there was no war, soldiers went to the games in order to prove their virtues. Funeral games were a big component of Indo-European funerals. Wars were even postponed so that soldiers could participate in the games. I talk more on this in my post on the Olympic games:

This warrior-athlete tradition continued in the Middle Ages, with the games being replaced by the Tournament. Knight-Errants, when there was no enemy to be vanquished, would go to local tournaments to prove their bravery and their skill in battle. In Iron Age Europe, war itself was something of a game, especially to barbarian tribes who were not typically “locked in” in wartime. The Romans talk about Celts riding in on chariots, throwing their javelins at the Romans, and then riding away to tell their buddies about it.

Simon is not a fan of sports because they’re unproductive. Men should spend that time with their family, or at their job, or whatever. While I agree that men should not direct their emotional energy or sense of identity towards a glorified brand, the actual practice of playing sports or appreciating the skill and exceptional ability of athletes is good. This is what is best in life. And frankly, I don’t appreciate his implied disdain for Video Games too. Getting up in the world is usually the product of good decision making rather than hard work… You know, “work smarter not harder”. Ultimately, there is no “real business in life”. Kinsmen die, cattle die, but what never dies is the fame of a dead man’s deeds… To focus on the attainment of excellency, which is immortal, instead of material goods, which are ephemeral, is the Traditional way! Even if you will never be as good as the best in the world, it is still worth spending your time on. When you are in “the zone”, in these sorts of things, it is a deeply special experience, a state of spiritual purity. I’ve felt it before in some games, maybe a few times at the gym. Perhaps read “Zen in the Art of Archery” by Eugen Herrigel. It doesn’t have to be sports, it can be anything. Arts, crafts, vidya, chess, whatever… Even writing substonks can in certain circumstances fall under this umbrella. But find something to devote yourself to, not merely for some sort of future benefit.

Athletes don’t get to where they are on inborn ability alone. It is necessary but not sufficient. There are plenty of people with such ability, they also have to devote thousands of hours and very particular habits to their sport. I’m not saying that athletes are all saints, in fact a lot of them are criminals. But this criminality is probably caused by racial demographics + higher testosterone. Otherwise the qualities of athletes are positive. As I said earlier, White athletes are usually Christian and Conservative. I don’t buy the “Jock” stereotype. Intelligence loosely correlates with height and shoulder width. Athletes in my experience are usually from many different intelligence levels, but there is a limit on how stupid they can be due to schools restricting athletic extracurriculars to students with passing grades. I think in my high school you had to average at least a C.

Speaking of school athletics, I have no clue why Laird is calling it a waste of time. It’s healthy for kids, it helps you gain friends, and it’s fun. I have fond memories of playing on sports teams, and I have never talked to anyone who doesn’t. Pretty much every major sport is a decent measure of “how good would this man be in warfare” (or at least pre-modern warfare) just like how play and wrestling arises in animals (including humans) because it is a relatively harmless way to measure physical dominance. The world is struggling because men do not have enough status to court wamen. If we lived in “pokemon world” or “rise of kingdoms advertisement world” where some sort of game proficiency determined your social standing, I think things would be much better. Yes, people would waste time, but the large minority if not an outright majority of jobs are useless nowadays anyways and possibly even counterproductive. I envision, maybe 5 or 6 sports, and your proficiency in them all contributes to your social credit. Two of them will be real sports, two of them will be e-sports, and two of them will be some other pursuit… You can minmax or you can try to get decently good at them all. If you get 10,000 power level you can buy wife. Is this ok? Obviously high power level people will be analyzed for any sort of dysgenic traits like mental illness, ugliness, etc etc in order to avoid mutant strivers from gaming the system.

The whole idea of life being about doing “practical stuff”, it’s exactly the sort of thing Wamens say when they are angry that men are spending more times playing video games than giving them compliments or doing boring things they like to do. Have you ever been playing a board game with people and it’s obvious you are the only one taking it seriously? It’s the most irritating thing ever, and they’ll get mad at you if you bring it up. They all know that the board game is just an excuse to socialize…