Upon taking up my new job here at Neumann University, I made a move to the homey and beautiful town of Media, PA. Perched next to the grand façade of the courthouse and nestled among all sorts of bars, restaurants, and boutiques, I find myself increasingly wanting to go out and explore classic State Street.

So, I finally conjured up the nerve to go for a short stroll and was led into a small Irish pub whose activity was pleasantly high for a weekday evening. Of course, as the size of this small world dictates, I met a bartender who was a fellow teacher and shared a passion with sports.

As I sat with a friend, I casually mentioned the Cole Hamels no-hitter, which I had only seen in passing through highlights. He, on the other hand, had an interesting story about it. “I was down in Cape May at some beach bar,” he said. He explained that he was ‘watching’ the game, but with the sound muted and the din of a slightly raucous live band and bar crowd, it was difficult to keep up.

So difficult, in fact, that he explained he hadn’t even realized the enormity of what was going on in the game – he had no recollection of Hamels’ no-hit bid and was even asked by a fellow patron about how many hits he had given up. “Two or three?” he guessed as he saw the score move to 3-0 after a Ryan Howard homer. It was only after he left the noise of the bar behind did he switch on the TV and see Cole dancing around the field with his teammates, celebrating a pretty rare highlight in an otherwise forgettable Phillies season thus far.

As he stood there and told me the story, we simply laughed and shook our heads. I thought how interesting it was that beyond that single game, so many situations can arise in life and certainly in sports in which we are seemingly watching the totality of an athletic event but come to realize later that it was just a small semblance of a larger, much more precious whole that remains hidden – perhaps by the noise of a crowd or the mute of a TV.

This story is so powerful because to me, this is sports today. Our society is saturated with athletics. Our marketing products bolster them, our media outlets propagate them, and our young people aspire to be a part of them.

We watch and participate in sports daily. But do we really see them?

Beyond the sports talk shows and the licensing products, is there something that remains? In an environment in which the silver linings of sport only come to the fore of our collective consciousness through deep tragedies or scandal, we must become open to the transformative process that could arise with asking the right questions about sport.

Why do I play? What does this mean? For whom do I play?

Truly, one can spend an entire athletic career immersed in the grind of progress and yet remain with the volume completely muted, watching and even participating in an act whose special worth is just flying by completely unbeknownst to the practitioner.

In short, transformation is what we need in sport today: an alteration from surface production to deep, substantial and thoughtful action. Through this transition, athletes and spectators alike can begin to see a whole picture here in the present, making those highlights pretty obsolete after all.