Athletics, Embodiment, and the Appropriation of the Self

We are all familiar with the claim that sports "build character." It was a favored dictum of the gym teachers who terrorized innumerable childhoods, and it has reappeared as a central slogan of broadcasters and other purveyors of sports product. "It's more than a game" is the message posted on the walls of sporting facilities and training centers throughout Canada, and though the jaded among us might sometimes think to add "yes, it's also money, power, and sex," the intended meaning, of course, is that sport molds participants' lives and characters in lasting and beneficial ways. What, then, is the value of athletics?