Dead Heat

THEY MAY sometimes unite us, but sports always divide us, first into two teams: me against you, shirts against skins, Dodgers against Giants. There are no games until we literally choose sides, and the same holds true with sports opinions. You either love or hate Colin Kaepernick, buy or don't buy Deflategate, go all-in or all-out on Pete Rose's suitability for the Hall of Fame. Only weaklings do nuance, a word derived (it hardly needs saying) from the French.

And so that sizzling sound you hear in the distance is not an order of fajitas being delivered to your table but an opinion column so hot you should be holding this page with oven mitts. There's no place in 2016 for considering the other guy's point of view, unless you want to be called a wishy-washy, namby-pamby flip-flopper, and lots of other baby-talk words. Empathy? To paraphrase many a great NBA center: "Get that weak [stuff] out of here."

What America really wants in its red-versus-blue heart isn't common ground but binary hot takes on all matters great and small. Just as physicists seek a unified theory of everything to explain the subatomic and the cosmological, sports fans need a Universal Hot Take to scorch every subject from the infinite to the infinitesimal. At a time when the third rail is the only rail and people are drawn to its coursing electricity—A-Rod equals Lightning Rod in this calculus—it is always better to be Strong and Wrong than Sleight but Right.

The most explosive opinions are inane, ill-considered and in-your-and-my-face. Iowa congressman Steve King last week said Kaepernick's refusal to stand for the national anthem makes the 49ers' backup quarterback "sympathetic to ISIS." Now that's a molten take, served in a cast-iron skillet, about an athlete whose stated sympathies are with the oppressed.

Thank goodness that these issues are not complex and human beings are seldom complicated. The only thing with fifty shades of gray in it is your Kindle. And so I've been told that LeBron James—by losing four NBA Finals—is not the winner Michael Jordan was. On the other hand Jordan—in declining to take a political stand during his playing career—was no Muhammad Ali. On still another hand Ali—in refusing to be inducted into the military—was no Ted Williams. On a fourth hand Williams—in never winning a championship—is slightly diminished when compared with ring-bearers like LeBron James. That is a lot of hands, to be sure, but without many hands it can be difficult to hold several robust opinions simultaneously.

With that in mind, a few pro tips are in order: When weighing in on the day's issues, it isn't always necessary, possible or even desirable to believe everything you say. The skilled purveyor of piping-hot opinion can argue either side of an issue with equal vehemence, often in the same sentence, in the way that Bum Phillips said of Don Shula, "He can take his'n and beat your'n, and then he can turn around and take your'n and beat his'n."

It's also not important which side you choose as long as you're unwavering in that position. Hold fast to your beliefs. Every one of them is a lamppost in a hurricane. Sure, Mark Twain said, "Loyalty to petrified opinions never broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world—and never will." But he was a 19th-century naïf—half man, half mustache—who died four months after the first radio program was broadcast to the public. It was Enrico Caruso singing opera.

That was 106 years ago. Today's radio shows, and their myriad brethren on TV, online and in print, are old-growth forests of petrified opinion. There will never be a sports-talk show called You May Be Right, no TV roundtables called Point Well Taken, never a magazine column headed TOUCHÉ.

If this sort of public discourse doesn't lend itself to understanding, education or progress, we get something far more exciting: pointed jibber-jabber pumping into the blathersphere, burning up cyberspace like a lit fuse, hissing its way to a combustible conclusion that will be—above all other things—very hot indeed.

It isn't always necessary, possible or even desirable to believe everything you say. The skilled purveyor of piping-hot opinion can argue either side with equal vehemence.

Do you have a hot take on hot takes?

Join the discussion on Twitter by using #SIPointAfter and following @SteveRushin