The Valley of Darkness (Allegiance in Sports and Politics)

The ground of an addiction to sports is an archaic spiritual constitution--the possession of the predatory emulative propensity in a relative high potency. A strong proclivity to adventuresome exploit and to the infliction of damage is especially pronounced in those employments which are in colloquial usage specifically called sportsmanship.
The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development of the man's moral nature.
---Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Chapter X.

Sports Institutions, especially popular revenue garnering NCAA Football programs, are the beneficiaries of mass adulation. Sports Merchandise worn by fans become emblems of pride. Many invest great amounts of time and revenue in "their" team. Fans participate vicariously in the triumphs and failures of a sports franchise. This identification is analogous to the nationalism of citizens enjoying the victories of its war machine by unfurling the flag. In short, they are facets of the same Barbarism.

The Penn State scandal starkly represents the absurd lengths such identification can go. A group of students riot to protest the ouster of a revered head coach. A man who participated in a decade long effort to cover up the serial sexual abuse of minors by a colleague at the campus on multiple occasions. Odd that students aren't protesting the ring leaders of the cover up and instead riot for one ring leader to be treated with "dignity".

NCAA Football thrives on exploiting student athletes, revenue hording by schools, and the vicarious triumphalism of its students, alumni, and fan base. Like Nationalism, it is a Cult. The callous barbarism sings the epos of invested allegiance. Who cares about raped children when "JoePa" has won the most games in Division I history and earned the school millions? A corollary in politics: many still "support" Obama despite the fact he's ordered the murder of thousands of women and children with extra-judicial drone strikes because he has a "D" after his name.

Allegiance conveniently accepts evil it'd otherwise condemn. One can easily find a million comments from widely respected thinkers and "good people" celebrating such evil as "pragmatic", "worth the cost", "for the greater good", or, the most common, "Who am I to question? They know what they're doing.".

The rioting of Penn State fans after Joe Paterno's firing was inspired by the same barbarism that had thousands taking to the streets in joy after President Obama announced the US assassinated Osama Bin Laden.

Throughout history allegiance to leaders of powerful institutions has ever darkened valleys with evil.