Football would be pretty boring if there weren’t rivalries like the one we’ll see this weekend. Rivalry (preferably friendly rivalry) inspires action, and action brings progress. If the St. Thomas football team wasn’t challenged consistently – by itself, the Johnnies or other teams – it wouldn’t be the top-notch team it is.

The Tommie-Johnnie rivalry is somewhat arbitrary. Most students at St. Thomas – purple-clad with voices shot – don’t have a lot of substantive reasons to root for St. Thomas over St. John’s. They just root for the home team. That’s the way a rivalry goes. Students don’t know when and why the rivalry began, and most don’t take time to consider who is the better team and, therefore, the team that deserves to win. There would be something deeply unjust about a Tommie rooting for the Johnnies because they won last year.

Though arbitrary, loyalty to the home team is completely rational. Out of the rivalry comes the athletic prowess of both teams. Both teams benefit from their determination to win the big game. The Tommies wouldn’t train as hard if they lacked loyal fans or consistent enemies. It’s hard to care about football if no team is more valued than any other. If all teams are equal, then all teams are equally unimportant.

So, we now have a non-arbitrary reason to appreciate this weekend’s football game, but the principle of taking sides arbitrarily extends beyond football. Arbitrary loyalties are everywhere in our world, and we would hate for the world to be otherwise.

Consider a mother’s loyalty to her son. Other than the fact that the child is “hers” and she is “his” by a fact of biology, there may often be no reason to prefer the child over any other. Certainly at birth, no child is any more deserving than any other. Yet, it would deflate any mother’s motivation to force her to distribute her care the world over instead of concentrating it arbitrarily in a single child. As the great columnist G.K. Chesterton said, “Love is bound.” And unless we are bound, we cannot love.

Despite the benefit of rooting for the home team so to speak – of students binding themselves to the Tommies and mothers binding themselves to their children – I have noticed a tendency to disapprove of any loyalty that arbitrarily elevates one group or person above another.

If one person is advantaged or privileged, the rest are disadvantaged or underprivileged. How dare a person, the theory goes, give generously to one person in need and not another? We should give equal loyalty to those equally deserving of loyalty. In discussions about issues ranging from economic inequality and inheritance taxes to national borders, this particular theory of equality attracts many supporters.

What this theory misses is that, just as our arbitrary loyalty to the Tommies – or our rivals’ loyalty to the Johnnies – inspires responsibility and progress, so too do other arbitrary loyalties. These loyalties give a clear and manageable domain of responsibility. In allowing each person to arbitrarily privilege some, we privilege everyone.

In short, the boundaries we draw in our loyalties may be arbitrary, but that there are boundaries is far from arbitrary. So, when you are rooting for the home team this weekend, remember that – in a sense – you are rooting for all teams.

Elliot Polsky can be reached at pols4319@stthomas.edu.