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Football Manager and Hypermasculinity
By BABYMEISTERGENERAL BABY
01 September 2006
It’s Tuesday afternoon and I’m doing what I normally do on a Tuesday afternoon; or any other afternoon for that matter, and I’m lounging on my couch playing Football Manager 2006. Concerned that my strikers aren’t scoring enough goals (despite the acquisition of Peter Crouch for a mere twenty-one million pounds) I log onto a website dedicated to such ‘fantasy games’ and start browsing the site. At a glance in the forum, the first post, entitled ‘tell me about your game’ already has 57,876 views as-well as 10,354 replies. This message was posted 50 minutes ago. Whilst searching through the ‘tactics’ section, for the latest game, one of the tactics which had been posted, has now been downloaded over 70,000 times. The total downloads for tactics, purely for Football Manager 2006, released less than a year ago, stands at 2,369,482. Thirteen years ago, no-one could have predicted that a small, basic game called Championship Manager would escalate to such a multi-million pound industry, engulfing the vast majority of the male gender. It’s whilst contemplating these statistics that my mind started wandering.
Sociological studies have frequently presented the sport domain as a method for reinforcing hyper-masculinity. In Michael Messner’s book Power at Play, Sports and the Problem of Masculinity, he confronts the social problem which occurs when primary school boys are taught ‘masculinity skills.’ Any boys not expressing these ‘skills’ are often marginalised, teased, called gay, sissy or girly. He proposes that there are five key teachings that boys learn in these early competitive exchanges, ensuring female subordination is maintained. These are:
Defining and reinforcing traditional concepts of masculinity.
Providing an acceptable and safe context for male bonding and intimacy.
Reinforcing male privilege and female subordination.
Establishing status amongst other males.
Reinforcing heterosexuality.
When women started infiltrating the men’s world however, these ideas were challenged. Mariah Nelson managed to convey these feelings in her book, “The Stronger Women get, the more Men Love Football.” American Football, or proper English Football over here, is the ‘masculine’ domain. She argues that as women get stronger, more independent, as they start to rise through the ranks of multi-national corporations, men simply find solace in the fact that ‘women aren’t physically strong enough to play American football.’ As more and more men therefore, start to throw themselves, and their sons into the world of sport spectatorship, television companies are more than happy to oblige with shows that emphasize hegemonic masculinity – the increase of cheerleaders during live premiership telecasts is a prime example. With the increase of television coverage comes another important factor – the empowerment men can get, from specialised sports knowledge. That is, as Messner said, establishing status amongst other males, which is now just as easily done, down the pub watching Match of the Day, as it was 30 years ago in the English public school system. In the last ten years however, technological advances now offer online interactivity through chat rooms, discussion groups, exercise and sports team web-sites, network and multiplayer sports gaming and online sports gambling. It is reasonable therefore to assume that this nature of sports media thus creates another means by which males can exercise their dominance and masculinity.
Through the rise of this domain therefore, it is no surprise that the Championship Manager series has become so popular. A message left in the forum telling people about their game said
“Thomas Sorensen was playing really bad, so I dropped him, and put in my Under 18’s ‘Keeper. He’s now kept 5 clean sheets in 6 games. I managed to sell Patrick Berger for 3 million, even though he is constantly injured, and with the money bought Sanli Tuncay, who won player of the month. This is my first season, but I just love how you can control the sport, the team and everything”
This response (and the 10,000 similar to it), illustrate how players of the game can manipulate the athletes who, in a sense, play for them. Through the game they can gain a sense of control, allowing men to experience the social power that the male, white middle classes used to be able to exert on a society which no longer belongs solely to them. Tomorrow afternoon therefore, instead of simply exerting my frustrations at no longer being the top dog in society. I’m going to do something productive, and call up my under 18’s Keeper.