Don’t rush out to buy a copy of Mihir Bose’s new book inappropriately entitled, The Spirit of the Game: How Sport Made the Modern World. It is dull. Deathly dull. Dull as dirty dish water. It is also highly unoriginal. It covers, over its 570 odd pages, all that has been covered countless times before, only with considerably less insight and considerably less literary verve. It rehashes the old story of the original Corinthian sporting spirit, one supposedly full of honour and fair play. It retells yet again the tired old story of how the modern Olympics were reborn by the Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin.

He then drags up the Victorian classic, Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes, as a way of creating an opposite pole to the commercial juggernaut that sport has become today. But it’s all so familiar, all so safe and unoriginal.

It doesn’t get any better. Bose trudges through the very familiar tales of ping-pong diplomacy, of Kerry Packers World Cricket Series, of Nelson Mandela’s intervention into South African apartheid-scarred rugby institutions, and finally into the now tedious exposures of IOC and FIFA corruption scandals. There is also mention of the rise Formula 1 and snooker and how TV money drove these two sports to global prominence. Bose provides a predictable historical dimension, shining a spotlight on sport through the colonial and post colonial eras, sport during the fascist interlude, sport under the newly emerging communist states and in an effort to be contemporary, sport during the rise of the BRIC nations, particularly China and India.

Now you cannot fault Bose in terms of a type of comprehensiveness, shallow as it is. The trouble is there is nothing intellectually challenging in the damn thing. I really feel I want my money back.

After grinding through 13 chapters of the stuff, you finally arrive at the concluding chapter; What shall we do with Sport? Surely here Bose will offer his readers a thought-provoking polemic to send us on our way. Well yes and no. Most of the chapter serves up more of the same this time focusing on FIFA’s and the IOC’s more recent shenanigans. Yes, we have all read about the Salt Lake City Winter Games fiasco and we are well acquainted with the latest FIFA bribery allegations. Nothing new or polemical here. But wait, in the final few pages of this dry-as-dust encyclopaedia of sport Bose finally offers an opinion something verging on an original thought. Hooray. Three cheers. He’s come off the fence at last!

But what reactionary tosh it turns out to be. What is his big idea for the resurrection and saviour of modern sport? adopting the model of US professional sport along the lines of the NBL and the NFL. This is what he has to say on the subject:

One avenue for reform could be if the sports institutions of the old world (ie Europe) were to learn from the new world how to run modern, commercial sport. The world’s only superpower may not play most of the sports other countries do but it can claim to have the most focused and successful sports administrations. American sports administration has one crucial advantage over almost everywhere else in the world. At the highest level, all of its major spectator sports baseball, American football, basketball and ice hockey are run by commercial organisations. They exist to maximise the franchise owners income. They are uncluttered by wider responsibilities, such as international competition, grassroots development, or the role of their particular sport in American or world society. In short they have no political or social agenda. P559

So there you have it. Not the slightest possibility for Bose that capitalism may be the problem, turning everything and everyone into a commodity for the market place. No, for our professor of sport, what is required is not less capitalism but more! No thought of trying to reconnect sport to the local community and greater regulation of the national and international governing bodies. No sir. For our Mr Bose it’s laissez-faire capitalism all the way. Even as we have witnessed capitalist institution one after the other, succumb to their own avarice and social irresponsibility, our dear Mr Bose wants to advocate that very same route turn a quick buck and to hell with the long-term consequences. Can our scholarly Mr Bose not see where unregulated capitalism in sport as in all things leads to? Just ask the supporters of Glasgow Rangers and Portsmouth FC for a lesson in casino capitalism – I’m sure they would be only too pleased to oblige.

And when the Glazer family and the Abromovich style oligarchs lead their respective clubs to bankruptcy and ruin then perhaps professor Bose, the penny might finally drop.

And to top it all off, Bose has the temerity to describe our US sporting cartels as practising a form of sporting socialism. What is the man on? Just cast your eye over this lame apology for corporate greed:

What the Americans do is recognise sport as special and, at the highest level, they practise a form of sporting socialism that is unique and would be unthinkable in Europe. This American sporting socialism is combined with a very business-like approach to running sport, an open acceptance that sport is big business. So, at the highest level, major American sports are run by high powered business people, with clear commercial objectives, and clear commercial disciplines and accountabilities. Essentially, no one assumes any responsibility anywhere in major American sport without business and administrative competence. Not for American sport the European talk of family and sport for all. P560

This is not socialism Mr Bose, this is commercial capitalist oligarchy plain and simple.

Bose must be one of the last men on the planet still openly in thrall to the concept of totally unregulated capitalism. Even old Etonian jerks like Cameron, Osborne and Boris Johnson must now at least pay lip service to the notion of responsible capitalism. Not that we believe their rhetoric for one moment. But our learned Mr Bose simply oozes with enthusiasm at the thought of transporting the American model to European sporting institutions. As a fully paid up Thatcherite he must still believe that you cannot buck the market the market is always right. Someone should tell him that if were not for giant state/taxpayer bailouts, American capitalism would be on its knees and American society would be in the midst of another full blown economic depression. And as for business and administrative competence that Bose lauds so high, someone should point out to him that the Glazers have leveraged nearly a billion dollars worth of debt onto Manchester United in order to keep their shopping mall empire afloat during the current world recession. I would hardly call that disciplined and accountable.

I want to try and end on a positive note though it is not easy. Bose, at the very death, offers us a well worn analogy of sport as the new religion. Even the humble Sporting Polemics offered this one up some two years ago. Nevertheless Bose does present some decent prose on the subject and here is one of his more thoughtful passages. It goes like this:

Sport can indeed supply some of the ingredients associated with religious observance: theatre, ritual beauty, belonging, a source of hope and belief and a space to express extreme feelings, a sense of right and wrong, even a glimpse of another kind of existence. A visit with fellow supporters to an important fixture away from home, especially overseas, has some of the character of a medieval pilgrimage. In certain respects, belief in a team or an athlete is a safer investment than belief in religious faith. You may not take your feelings quite as far as religious fervour but supporting a team or player gives you many ways to put some meaning into your life and to express your identity.P562

Nothing dramatically new here but it is well put all the same. But generally speaking, this is definitely one to avoid. Simon Barnes and Matthew Syed do this sort of stuff so much better. Oh and by the way Mr Bose, it is modern capitalist life that makes the modern character of sport not the other way round. Get it right please.