Sports Can Teach Tolerance in Arizona

Filed under: NCAA Football, college-sports

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - When the national college football championship game finally kicks off Monday night at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., it will do so with an unfortunate twist: a moment of silence.

It will be to remember a horrific mass shooting late Saturday morning that left six people, including a 9-year-old girl and federal judge, dead in a Tucson strip mall by a gunman investigators believed targeted U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords was critically wounded, as were 13 other people, and was said to be fighting for her life after surgery in a Tucson hospital.

Giffords was attacked, many observers speculated, because she dared to be different. She voiced a different opinion as a moderate Democrat in a Republican state, like supporting President Obama's health care reform and criticizing Arizona's popular but controversial anti-immigration law that requires police to check the immigration status of people they detain and walk the fine line of racial profiling.

The introduction of Arizona's law last spring sparked protests across the country. A number of organizations that scheduled conventions here pulled out rather than risk insulting some of their constituents. Some Latin major-leaguers said they wouldn't play in the 2011 All-Star Game here if the law wasn't amended or rescinded. I wrote that sporting events like baseball's All-Star Game and this BCS title game should move to venues elsewhere rather than reward an apparently intolerant locale. I called for sports to boycott Arizona like the NCAA did South Carolina over the state's continuing to fly the Confederate flag or the NFL did to Arizona once before, when it pulled the Super Bowl after Arizona refused to recognize Martin Luther King Day.

But in the wake of the tragedy in Tucson, I'm glad the rest of the country on Monday night will see Arizona as a backdrop to the teams and the crowd that will be inside the University of Phoenix Stadium. I'm glad so much wrongheadedness and vitriol will be juxtaposed against groups of young men of all backgrounds from two corners of the country who can find common ground for a common goal.

Source: http://kevin-blackistone.fanhouse.com/2011/01/09/sports-can-teach-tolerance-in-arizona/

Olivia Munn Olivia Wilde Padma Lakshmi Paige Butcher Pamela Anderson