I was at a loss to adequately explain to mrsgnu why men like to watch sports so much, so I’m doing what any good doper would do: ask my fellows to bail me out.
Why do you watch sports? Why do ‘we’ watch sports?
Why do we place such importance on the performance of strangers?
She understands actually playing, but not the entertainment people find in watching. Perhaps someone here can explain it better than I can, or at least give me talking points.
Notes:
She’s a basketball referee.
Her two sisters and her father are all Raider fans (I’m a 49er fan, isn’t that lovely?).
We’re both really getting into hockey, which she finds entertaining, a fact which she refused to consider when posing this question.
We watch sorts for the same reasons we watch anything else. Baseball is no different than opera.
Well, except baseball is only just beginning when the fat lady sings.
“Oh sayyyyyy cannnnnn youuuuuu SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”
I have a friend who’s a self-confessed art-snob. Turns her nose up at sports. She once said, “I prefer entertainment that has a plot.”
I pointed out that sports is all plot. The basic idea of struggle against difficulty is the point of every single sporting event. The difference is that in sports it’s unscripted.
When I’m watching a movie, no matter how good it is, how well-written, how perfectly acted, how masterfully edited, the suspension of disbelief is never total; there’s always a consciousness that the end I’m about to see has already happened somewhere. Somewhere there’s a screenwriter, actor, director, producer, etc., who already know how this movie ends.
With sports, though, it’s never predetermined; if it were, there would be no need to play. Granted, sometimes you have a pretty good guess as to who’s going to win; 100-1 odds are pretty long. But the odds are never “100 to zero.” Upsets happen. People surprise you (and themselves). Coaches call trick plays. Sometimes bad teams just get freaking lucky.
To me, that’s the appeal of it. That both teams (I’m thinking about football here) are really out there, really trying their absolute hardest, really hoping to win; but only one of them can.
It’s the oldest, most basic, and greatest plot-line there is: The struggle against an adversary. Sure, it’s done within a confining set of rules, but what isn’t?
That’s pretty much it. Sports is an ongoing story. There are heroes and villians, unlikely heroes and unfortunate goats.
My sport is baseball, of course, and to me the story of baseball is a fascinating, still unwinding story that goes back to the 19th century and continues today. Each team has its own history, some more heroic and some more tragic. Every player’s career tells a story. You look at the career of Hank Aaron and it’s over two decades of brilliant play; Mickey Mantle’s story is one of truly sensational talent and victory that comes to an early end because of personal demons. Jackie Robinson’s story, of course, transcends baseball, and then you have the little stories. Follow the career of a Chad Mottola - the superior young prospect who blew his chance and didn’t get another shot until it was too late to take advantage of the wisdom he’d gained. Look at the career of Bret Saberhagen, who was so magnificent, so brilliant at times, but his body kept betraying him little by little until finally he could play no more. Look at the long and steady career of reliable old Bill Buckner, now forever tarnished by one horrible mistake in 1986. Or Billy Beane, a magnificent physical talent who could never master the intricacies of hiw own sport - and later became a baseball executive famous for disliking players who reminded him of himself.
And the teams! The Amazing Mets of 1969. The snake-bitten Red Sox of, well, so many years, and then in 2004 the greatest one-series comback ever to dispel it all. The Phillies of 1964, who pulled the biggest choke ever; the Blow Jays of 1987, the Angels of 1995. What about the mercurial Marlins, or the Wheeze Kids Phillies of 1983? Consider the long and weird history of the A’s. The magnificence of the Yankees. And the seasons… 1978! The 1991 World Series, the Shot Heard 'Round The World, the Series-ending blasts of 1960 and 1993, the brilliance of Bob Gibson throughout World Serieses of the 1960s. The Dodgers finally, finally winning it all in 1955 because of an amazing catch by a nobody outfielder after so many years of brilliant teams and bitter disappointments.
Each team, each season, each career, each game is a story of men vying against the odds - because at the extreme end of the talent pool, you are forever battling the odds - to win championships and fame and glory. It’s ten thousand soap operas all going on at once lasting over a century, and done around the most beautiful of games.
Nothing is more hypocritical that someone saying watching sports is stupid who then goes to the movies or the theatre. What’s the point of watching a three-hour treatise on the Corleone family that hasn’t got the slightest iota of basis in reality? Why should I give a flying crap about Rick and Ilsa? And opera- geez, who cares who Carmen’s been doing the noodle dance with? Why is sitting and watching drama majors act a worthwhile enterprise, but watching athletes isn’t?
It is very much like literature.
There are heros and villains. (the guys I like are heros, they guys you like are the villains) It can be a great tragic story, (like when my team loses) or a classic story of good triumphing over evil. (my team wins)
Plus, at the opera, there is no gamboling. $50 on Mimi living is a sucker bet.
The only sports I watch are those that I play or have played. I enjoy a great skilled move or play that I can relate to and can appreciate the difficulty or artistry of. Other than that, I completely don’t care who comes out with more points on the scoreboard at the end, unless the team or individual is one whose play style I particularly empathize with in some way.
I have never understood the appeal of team loyalty (at least here in the US), where few if any of the pro players are from that home town or state, or for collegiate sports teams where most players are pulled and recruited from out of the area.
I go to the bar to watch the hockey, basketball, and baseball at the bar. We go and have a beer and talk about all kinds of stuff while we are screaming at the television. Its a good male bonding thing to use a trite expression. I guess that is a huge part of it for me. It isn’t as fun to sit and watch a sporting event but guys get loud and excited at the bar when they watch it together.
I’m going to postulate that at least part of the reason people watch sports is so they can have something in common with fellow fans that they can talk about at the water cooler the next day. It is amazing how long two people can talk about sports with one another and never actually have to share any personal information whatsoever.
ROTFLMAO!!
This quote is good enough for me to steal! 
Thanks for the replies so far. I’ll have my wife read this thread.
I wouldn’t be so hasty- I’ve never seen the attraction in watching sports, either on TV or actually at the match.
I don’t get the Team Fandom- especially from people supporting teams that aren’t from their area- and I just don’t understand how people could care that passionately about a sporting team made up of complete strangers who don’t really care about the fans.
I’ll venture out and say there’s also a heavy element of wish-fulfillment to it. Many men watch sports for the same reason my dad loves to watch the Terminator and James Bond films: because they accomplish awesome, powerful feats which the spectator can only dream of doing.
Sure, real athletes watch as well as play (I’d be interested in seeing a study on just how much time pro athletes spend actually watching sports), but a much greater majority of the fans are fat, lazy, and/or old men who can only marvel on and imagine themselves doing the same things their heroes are out there doing. Why else would a 40-year old man want to walk around wearing a Peyton Manning jersey?
Excellent post.
“The human drama of athletic competition” with a outcome that isn’t predetermined but depends on the skill, exertion and luck actually on display before you - that’s it.
I root for my teams because I like their cities, or have some personal connection to the cities. I grow to like or dislike the players on the teams, and either follow them as a fan after they leave or don’t.
Eagles, Phillies - I used to live right across the river from Philly.
Oakland A’s - I lived in SF when the A’s were bad, and they had dollar Wednesdays - Hot dogs and tickets for a buck each! I’ll be loyal to that forever!
Georgia Tech - went to school there.
Phoenix Suns - I worked with the sister of a kid who played there for a second or two, plus I LOVE Charles Barkley, who was there at the time
And others I could list…
Joe
Then I’ll ask you the same question I always ask people who turn their noses up at sports, a question none of you has ever had the balls to answer:
Why do you like the sort of entertainment you do?
Do you like movies? Explain to me the point of watching movies. It’s just a bunch of people you don’t know who don’t care about you pretending to be people they’re not. Or insert your preferred type of entertainment and phrase the question the same way.
Explain.
Ah, but here’s the thing. No matter what response you get, you’ll turn around and say “See! The same things are true of sports. Nyah nyah nyah!”
How about “I don’t find sports entertaining?” There’s lots of things I don’t find entertaining. Opera bores me. Bungy Jumping is not my idea of a good time. I don’t see the artistic merit in most popular music at the moment. Reality TV should be banned, its followers scattered and writings burned. You get the idea.
Most of the stuff I like would probably bore you to tears. Or not. Depends what your idea of a “good time” is. 
Ah, but here’s the thing.
The question is, “why do people like sports,” not “why should people like sports?”
I don’t care what you like, as long as you like it. But “art” people rarely extend the same courtesy to “sport” people.
I like sports because people can relate to it. At the end of it all, it’s just people playing a game. Nobody comes to see me and my pals play baseball because I can’t crush it 400 feet, but they’ll build a stadium around a guy who can. Because that’s just cool.
And, as I have said before, when you appeal to that many people, there exists a power.
Jackie Robinson. Last year’s New Orleans Saints. The 2001 World Series. The games played right after 9/11. Ichiro Suzuki’s major league debut. Michael Jordan. Joe Louis’s win over Max Schmeling, Jesse Owens’s wins in Berlin; the Olympic protest. The Miracle on Ice.
These people, these events- they capture the imagination of people in a way that other media, other people, other things, simply cannot. No parade could have done for the people what the Saints home opener did. Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron were just as important to the civil rights movement as any politician or activist. When a woman beats a man in a marathon (and mark my words, that day is coming) it will be bigger than Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs (and that was huge). And the glory of sport is this: you never know when that next amazing, galvanizing, world-shocking moment will be- because it could be any or EVERY time.
We watch sports because our own struggles are shown to others- and those struggles are theirs as well- and by that we are unified.
That, and the fact that watching the Yankees get swept in Fenway is just so damn sweet!
It is a legitimate question, but I suppose it is as hard to answer as any why do we like question.
I don’t really like to watch most sports. I like American football, but didn’t watch that until I was an adult. I started watching it about the time that I was of an age that my dad and I had almost nothing to talk about and I figured it was a way to connect with him.
I do root for “my” team, but often only watch a game in spurts unless someone comes over to watch it with me. So at least part of it is social.
Part of it is - IMO - the fantasy that I am part of the game. Not too unlike the fantasy that I am part of a movie or anything else one watches. Hooray! *We *won! Let’s face it, I didn’t do anything other than drink beer and yell. (And man, sometimes it is like they can’t even hear me…)
For the only other “sport” that I like to watch - I enjoy watching because I sometimes learn something and I can relate to the difficulty of some of the shots. I am talking about 9-ball (which is why I put sport in quotes.) I usually don’t care who wins, but I do enjoy watching the true masters of the game do their thing.
Of course, this is all my opinion and others will have their own reasons for watching.