Sports Illustrated dedicated its issue last week to the concept of speed. De’Anthony Thomas’ fleet feet flew by as you flipped the cover; they reappeared — blurred, as if print could not capture their quickness — 46 pages later. The section’s introduction ended with this claim: “Faster is better.”
Such a thesis mirrors our life today. One hundred forty characters serve as a benchmark for thoughtful communication while newscasters bloviate the instant events occur. The apogee of this phenomenon occurred last February, when the New York Times called Mitt Romney the winner of Arizona’s primary poll with exactly zero percent of the votes counted.
But is ephemerality really the standard we should strive for? Is it better that we push for the future such that we compress the present?
This need for speed is doing nothing if not destroying our world. We consume at such speeds that we shorten our mental process. Implicit in quick thinking is short-term thought, through which we often fail to consider the future effects of our decisions.
Such vision is not restricted to the Twitterverse or the political realm. As SI’s focus shows, the sports world — that haven for escape, in which fans can relax and enjoy a few shining hours of repose as the real world speeds by — has over the years increasingly pulled us to the edge of our seats.
Convinced that their games played too slowly, NBA and NHL officials have often instituted rule changes to speed them up. In came shorter and shorter shot clocks, out went the center line restriction on long range passing. Scouts in the NFL have pushed for quicker and quicker players: Now, a fast 40-yard dash time is a player’s ticket to a top 10 pick.
On a national scale, America’s attention has shifted from baseball to football. Instead of action between pauses viewers now prefer pauses between the action, as if seven seconds of mashing set to the rhythm of a 40-second play clock are better than the slow waltz of balls and strikes.
Occasionally, we slip off that seat’s edge. So caught up in the marvel, we allow athleticism to exceed the bounds of rational thought by warping reality to speed instead of the other way around.
Just this summer, one second of an Olympic fencing bout encompassed three distinct thrusts and parries. Think about that while pondering human reaction time. Or, rather, don’t, and complacently enjoy the spectacle.
“Faster is better” influences players, too. Pitchers keep throwing harder and harder, to the point where the most successful reliever in baseball (Aroldis Chapman) relies on brute strength more than efficiency and guile. So many bad plays in football — cough cough, Mr. Maynard — come from forcing a quick strike play rather than biding time for a better option.
Some let the search for speed drive them to cheat. Cycling’s recent dark history reveals the corruptive destruction of this incessant pursuit. Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador, Tyler Hamilton, and so many others have scammed their way to success, instead of achieving faster times by virtue of their bodies alone.
Thankfully, there are still those who cherish leisure. A knuckleballer who rarely breaks 80 on the radar gun stands in the top five of many of pitching’s major statistical categories — including strikeouts, almost always the domain of the triple digit fastball. In the SEC, which has produced the last six national football champions, methodically paced play is as much a part of the game as athletic and quick defensive ends.
As Phil Taylor wrote in his coda to SI’s ode to speed: “There’s nothing wrong, every now and then, with taking your time.”
Contact Jordan Bach-Lombardo at [email protected].
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