While sport seems very different from religion, recent scholarship increasingly has detailed the interrelationship between sport and religion as well as the ways in which sport functions religiously. If the latter is the case, can sport be subject to the same Marxist critique leveled on religion? This paper argues that it can.

Sport often is an integral part of the civil religion of a people. As such, it fundamentally functions to celebrate and disseminate their central ideas and values. These ideas and values inherently benefit some individuals more than others. Thus, sport functions to preserve the status quo, to maintain the position of the “haves” vis-à-vis the “have nots.” To do this, sport must act as a kind of “opiate” for the “have nots” so that they will accept the inequities and injustices of the social system.

In this paper, the argument will be made that sport is the new “opiate of the masses.” To illustrate this argument, the paper also will detail some of the ways that college football in the American South has functioned in this way.