The American One Way Essay

America: a “Two-Way” Road

The American One Way influenced sport greatly in the decades leading up to the 1960’s. The ideals of strength, teamwork, masculinity, and honor were hallmarks of those eras. Athletes were almost always strong, masculine men, and the sports they played emphasized strength and sometimes teamwork. Sports such as football, wrestling, and boxing were the main sports of the World War II era V-5 Program, whose primary focus was developing strong young men that could fight for their country, and would also be trained physically and mentally for warfare by participating in these sports. Players were expected to train and obey their coaches, as a sign of respect for the authority of the coaches as well as to become as strong as possible. Players were not the only people influenced by the American One Way, as a particular style of football coach came as a result of these One Way ideals. Coaches in the forties and fifties were hard-nosed, tough, and
expected absolute conformation and obedience from their players. Names like Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, and Bear Bryant are just a few of these One Way-style coaches. The idea of individuality was erased completely once you joined the team, and in the sixties this idea was the one most challenged.

During this decade, athletes began to show signs of expressing individuality, and this was often shown through personal appearance.
Rick Sanders was one of those athletes. A wrestler from Portland State, Sanders sported a beard, long hair, and a hand-carved wooden bead necklace. While his style was certainly not orthodox, his wrestling was a sight to see. He consistently toyed with his opponents and was always experimenting with new takedowns and throws to try out in the ring. Sanders presented a picture of arrogance and brashness, one that rubbed many sports fans the wrong way as he did not fit the clean-cut, crew-cut American One Way image. Meanwhile, his rival and friend Dan Gable presented an ideal American athlete. He wrestled in a more traditional manner that was fueled by his insane workout regimen, and his shaven face and not quite as long hair gave him much more appeal to the average American sports fan. The two wrestlers were just one of many pictures of the culture clash of the
sixties.

The tumultuous decade also saw a falling away from the emphasis on physical prowess as well as the potentially violent nature of sport. The violence happening at protests, concerts, and other demonstration-type events drove the American counterculture to find more therapeutic physical activity, such as jogging. The emphasis on the mental and spiritual state of the athlete became more pronounced, and coaches from all kinds of sports began searching for ways to give their players a mental edge over the other team. The coaches for California’s swim and crew team began integrating this into their coaching. Mike Livingston, the California crew coach, envisioned the athlete as “a warrior ‘who wins the battle over his inner self.’ “(Zang, p. 84). This search for a mental edge often resulted in the practice of Eastern religion, a mastering of one’s own mind. This attitude towards developing players was adopted due in large part to the violence at the Minnesota-Ohio State basketball game and the dismantling of Shea Stadium and Connie Mack stadium. The sixties had brought to light the ugly underbelly of sport, the side that showed not victory and heroes to be honored, but the violence and aggression pent up in all players, coaches, and even fans, that came as a result of the competitive nature of sport.

One final challenge to the One Way was the rise of antiauthority sentiment among baby boomers. This culminated notably in the firing of Bob Ward, football coach at the University of Maryland, in 1969. His firing did not come from the Athletic Director or any higher-ups. No, it came from his own players. They disliked his violent and hardline coaching methods, and so one hundred and twenty of his players joined together and succeeded in getting him fired from his job, with cited reasons being “abusive behavior, inability to relate, and technical ineptitude.” (Zang, p. 119). This is just one of many examples of the rise of the antiauthority movements in the sporting world, showing that players were no longer the type to shut up and take it from cruel and abusive coaches. This event, among others, showed that players were no longer inferior to the coach but were almost as equally important as them.

Lastly, no discussion of the “Sports Wars” of the sixties is complete without discussion of the contrast of Vince Lombardi and Joe Namath. Namath was a flashy, flamboyant quarterback known for his outrageous sense of style and even more outrageous athletic ability. His attitude is summed up in his guarantee that he would win Super Bowl III. He was the poster child for everything that was “wrong” with American. Meanwhile, Vince Lombardi was the complete opposite. A hardened disciplinarian, Lombardi’s coaching style was very consistent with the One Way. He expected total obedience, devotion, and most likely perfection from his players. However, his coaching yielded impressive results and gave his team win after win, championship after championship.

The differences between these two figures in sports history is itself an example of how the sixties revealed that there is no “one way” in sports. Older tactics and methods may still be effective, but the clashing with the One Way proved to be equally successful in many respects. Just looking at men like Sanders, Namath, and Ali shows that much change had come to the landscape of sport. Athletes were more vocal, bolder, showier, and abler to express their individuality and opinions. However, the challenges the sixties brought galvanized two things: the importance of hard work to success and the American love for sport. All the counterculture athletes discussed did not obtain success in any different way, but rather earned it with hard work and self-discipline. As much as they would hate to admit it, their talent and ability did not come as effortlessly as they would want you to think. And the sixties counterculture did not spurn sport in the least. They did condemn the violence and aggression in sport, but in the spurning of these aggressive sports they found a love for individual and recreational sports like jogging and Frisbee. In closing, the sixties were a time of change in sports, and would drastically shape the world of sport even up to the present day. But the change did not come as the result of the country going the One Way or the counterculture way. Rather, the influence of the two different American ways culminated in the sporting world we know and love today.