Front Porch Football

Let Them Eat Cake: College Football’s Rising Racial and Political Layers

by Chief Etheridge 

Everybody likes cake. 

There are all kinds: marble, ice cream, birthday, wedding, cake by the ocean, the list goes on and everyone has their personal favorite. What you probably like most about cake is the final product – the icing, the richly baked bread on the inside, the cornucopia of sweet flavors.  

But we all know there is a process to making cake. Butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, etc., you know the drill, are mixed together to create the delicious dessert that you would much rather eat than help make. When you see cake, you simply want to dive right in rather than think about what went in to making it. 

Many people indulge in sports like a cake. Some enjoy sports because they are seemingly straightforward – athletes go out, play a game with an established goal, they win or lose (or tie), “it’s on to Cincinnati,” repeat.

For others, sports are used as an escape to past athletic achievements and participation; a distraction from trying times or obstacles going on in life; or maybe a disruption to the monotony of the work week. While we are all guilty of viewing sports through a simplistic lens or using them as a means of escape at one point or another, in doing so we ignore the underlying social, cultural, and political complexities of the games we are watching. To acknowledge these complexities is to leave the escape, to pay more attention to the ingredients and layers than to simply enjoying the cake.