Here’s my thing. I understand spectator sports as entertainment. Not my cup of tea, but lots of the stuff that interests me (like following the SDMB) bores most people to tears. What I don’t get is the actual sense of elation sports fans get when the “home” team wins. (And, conversely, sincere depression when they lose.) Now, you know NONE of those guys (usually) are actually from your town. They’re simply paid mercenaries wearing the same jersey. Why does their winning a title (any sport) make you feel good about yourself and life in general?
I was going to say your earlier post summed up my views completely and 100%- and I have no interest at all in sports.
I just don’t see how anyone can get really worked up about a sporting event or team, to the point of having their lives revolve around it.
And once again, I find myself completely agreeing with you. And despite all the replies in this thread, I’m no closer to understanding sports fans than I was when I posted the OP…
My thoughts exactly.
To understand something doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. Multiple posters have listed multiple reasons, yet you say you are no closer.
What is it you are looking for?
I’m curious as to how many people get into sports that they didn’t grow up with. Are there any people here in this thread that are fans of sports that they got into later in life, as opposed to the more traditional experience (played baseball/football with dad, watched it with dad, played in junior league or high school as a kid = fan for life)?
Soccer fans, for instance? If you’re 35, American-born, and a soccer fan, chances are you didn’t start out playing it with your dad. How did you get into it then?
Some insight as to why anyone could possibly care about a sports team, and certainly why some people care to the extent they do- ie, taking days off work to watch a game, postponing social events because of a match, even not associating with people who support the “wrong” team.
In short, what do these people get out of it? (The same could be asked of Trekkies and Star Wars fans, I guess- but they don’t throw ticker-tape parades in the centre of major cities for winning Luke Skywalker vs Darth Vader Lightsabre Duel Recreations, as far as I’m aware…)
Because it does
TickerTape parades in NYC are held Downtown of course. They Start in Battery Park and march North on the avenue of heroes. I got to be in one*, it was great. 
I am trying to figure out how to explain fandom to Martini. All the posts about being a part of a group, have a common point of interest with others from all different socio-economic groups, the family traditions, the civic/regional pride, non of this helps you understand? Are you asking us to describe a flower to a blind person? What family traditions have you carried on from generation to generation. Perhaps Christmas or some holiday event where you feel lost if you are not with your family. Perhaps you belong to a gun club and really enjoy target shooting and drink with the boys afterward. Going to a sporting event or gathering together in a friends living room is a very similar feeling. It is about sharing good times and memories with friends and strangers.
Jim
- I was with the band, the Long Branch High School Band to be precise. My Niece and Nephew were members and they needed a few extra chaperones.
After living in a foreign country for about 20 years, I’ve lost about 99% of the tribal aspect of sports. I like a good, hard fought match of just about anything and that includes cricket fighting (the insect and not the british kind). But I could really not care who wins or loses from a team/national point of view. Sure, if it’s the Fucking A’s man against anyone, I’d probably root for the A’s, but I wouldn’t really care. Or put it this way, I’d care a lot more about watching an excitng match than if the A’s won a crappy game.
I just don’t have the context anymore to care. For example, in the past world cup, going into it I’d have probably said “I don’t really want Brazil to win, because then all the Brazilians I work with will have their head’s up their asses until the next world cup” and “I’m just not a huge fan of the French, so I kinda hope they don’t win” and “the Germans I work with aren’t that fun, so where’s the fun if they win” and “I played soccer in the first American wave, and it would be a total bitch slap if America won the world cup since the rest of the world perceives us as not being able to play” and finally “hey espresso in Rome is totally awesome so I’d be kinda stoked if the Italians win”
Perhaps it was yer charmin’ Irish lilt, or the pint of Guinness ye had in yer 'and, laddie.
For myself, I can understand the appeal of watching a game of sport play out–the ancticipation of being down one run and having bases loaded in the top of the ninth is as suspenseful as any movie thriller, and the dynamics of a rally cross race is as exciting as anything correographed by John Frankenheimer–but what I don’t get is the diehard, in-your-face, chest-thumping, often belligerent advocacy of fans. Admittedly, this is (for many sports) a minority of fans but they make up for it in amplitude and obnoxiousness. You don’t dare live in Pittsburg or Kansas City , for instance, and not just watch the game but follow the personal lives of the players lest your parentage and sexual preferences come into question. I’m not going to say that this is universally true for football–in my time in Milwaukee I found Packers fans to be enthusiastic but eminently polite–but in some towns pro football seems to bring out the worst in people.
And while I kind of understand the desire to have something over which to bond with other people, I’m pretty lost when it comes to professional sport. Most team owners make it clear that the sport is just business to them and return none of the loyalty shown by fans; indeed, they gouge both fans and taxpayers with elevated ticket prices, egregious concession costs, and public subsidy to build ever-increasingly complex stadiums.
I also have to admit a personal bias against the kind of funding college and high school sport gets versus the pittance doled out to other extracurricular activities of arguably greater merit, or even the differential between prized sport (football) and other sports (baseball, track and field, swimming). Somehow, you never saw the football players walking around school having to hawk candy to pay for their uniforms, and the swim team members never got a chuckle and a pass after slamming someone’s face into a locker door.
Stranger
Ah the academics protest. You sound like one of my best friends.
I do not watch college football, so I really have no horse in this race, but I thought in most colleges the football program either paid for itself or actually made money for the school? Is this not true?
Jim
And while I kind of understand the desire to have something over which to bond with other people, I’m pretty lost when it comes to professional sport. Most team owners make it clear that the sport is just business to them and return none of the loyalty shown by fans; indeed, they gouge both fans and taxpayers with elevated ticket prices, egregious concession costs, and public subsidy to build ever-increasingly complex stadiums.
I feel the same way! John Henry and his rich friends bout the Boston RED SOX. They have just announced price hikes for next season’s tickets. That’s how the blue-collar fan’s loyalty gets repaid!
or take the NY yankees-Steinbrenner bought them for what-$80 million? the team is now worth over $1 billion- what will keep the franchise from being broken up and sold when the “Big Stein” passes on? (Inheritance Taxes are a bitch!)
The Boss paid between 8 to 10 million as part of a group that purchased the failing franchise in the Bronx from CBS. Attendance was way down, there was no Cable money yet and the Bronx was getting worse yearly*. There was talk of leaving the Bronx it was so bad. He pumped money into the Franchise and continually reinvested.
George and the recovery of New York City are the reasons the franchise is worth the huge amount it is. He has carefully structured the Yankee “Empire” so that it will move on to his Son and Son-in-Law without the inheritance disaster that happens so often. The Boss might be a loud-mouth ruffian but he is a very smart business man also.
Jim
- My family fled in 1971
Most big football schools probably make their own weigh in alumni donations, and the Ivy League schools as a group don’t offer athletic scholarships so they’re not subsidising their programs to that extent. They also keep the school in the public consciousness (even if they suck) and so have real value as marketing and PR.
It still doesn’t keep me from being resentful when they cut funding for a library or academic program and pump tens of millions into building a new stadium. But I’m neither a team athlete nor a joiner. University boards know where their support comes from, and the Humanities department doesn’t bring in multi-million dollar endowments.
Stranger
Its silly to keep watching sports as you get older. Better persuits should be found.
ALRIGHT TIGERS JUST BEAT THE YANKEES> oops AS I was saying we should find a better way to use our time.
To quote the late Lewis Grizzard:
“It is NOT just a game. It is our way of life vs. theirs.”
It’s about Georgia fans, all of whom have grown up together watching their team & attending their school, vs. those guys in orange from Tennessee. They do things differently up there, you know. Same with Chicago or Philadelphia. Sure, the players shuffle around the league, and if they’re LUCKY they get to play for our city.
Yeah, we reschedule weddings. You know why? Because Alabama only plays Auburn once a year, and the bride typically doesn’t want the entire group of male invitees crowded around a 19-inch television in the county club bar while she is trying to have her first dance.
"Guys, could you pry yourself away from the TV long enough to see the bride and groom off?? Guys?
GUYS!!!"
Its also about seeing the look on that damn South Carolina fan’s face after your Clemson Tigers whipped them again. He was talking smack in the office alllll year, but you’ll get at least 8 or 9 months of quiet out of the chump now. Doesn’t look so smug now, does he?
It’s our way of life against theirs.
That’s a good question. The general tribalism has been well-explained (ffs, I support Ipswich, I know about pathetic lost causes…)
They’re certainly something more than ‘paid mercenaries’. The single most important thing is the club (not the ‘team’, which suggests the individual players). Footballers join the club, and become one small part of something bigger, something which has its own individual identity. Which is still connected to the tribalism.
Ever heard the phrase, “to each their own?”
In response to the OP, I’d argue that sports probably isn’t a “way of life” to quite as many people as you, ArchiveGuy seem to think it is. Most fans do not paint their faces, do not own season tickets, did not reschedule their wedding around an upcoming sporting event, do not watch a sporting event on television four nights out of the week every week of the year.
Are there more people who live, breathe, and eat sports compared to hardcore Star Trek fans? I honestly don’t know, I know there are more general sports fans than there are general Stark Trek fans. I do not however know the raw number of “sports fanatics” or “Trekkies.” In a completely anecdotal guess, I’d say there are a lot more “sports fanatics” in the raw but I’d be surprised if they represented a significantly large percentage of sports fans.
As to why “sport” is so predominant and widespread in popularity compared to other interests, I’d say:
-It is a major cultural facet, and has been since the beginning of organized civilization.
-“Sports” gets lumped together as one, big, amalgamated thing. There’s tons of people who watch movies, all the time, watch television dramas/comedies/et alall the time but that’s such a passive, disconnected thing we don’t associate those people as being “fans of the performing arts.” They’ve become so ubiquitous it’s just considered “something people do.” But I’d say there’s probably a lot more Americans who get glued to a sofa or recliner every night and watch multiple hours of actors playing out a role than there are Americans who primarily watch/debate/read about sports as their primary activity in their free time.
So, Star Trek fans aren’t consider “fans of the performing arts” they’re considered “Star Trek fans.” Whereas someone with season tickets to the Green Bay Packers usually isn’t exclusively labelled, “a Packers fan” but rather “a sports fan” or the slightly more specific “football fan.”
-The fact that sports is such an integral part of civilizations, and has been for millenniums means civilization hold sports to be valuable. Sports have their own section in the newspaper, their own segment in the nightly news, etc. There’s a lot of saturation from sport because it’s a major part of the culture and civilization in which we live. Even if you’re not a fan of it, you’re going to know at least something about it, that it’s out there, if you ever have access to any mainstream media whatsoever.
But if you think about it, it’s the same way with film/TV. Every little move of the most popular actors and actresses is reported, any social faux pas committed a 30 second blurb on CNN. And there’s actually tons of people that really care what some guy who happens to occasionally act in front of a camera does in his personal life, enough so that major media outlets report on that type of thing all the time.
Why sports cause people to reschedule their lives around it…that’s something unique to the nature of sports itself. Sports are best enjoyed in the present tense. Any fan of theatre will tell you it’s much better to watch a production live than it is to see a recording of it. The stage is actually quite a lot like sports, it exists in the perpetual present tense. Every single performance of any play, for example, is unique, even though the script and actors may be the same, since it is a unique moment being put together by humans, it by its very nature cannot possibly be identical to earlier performances or performances that will come after it. If you’re a big fan of theatre, you have to schedule your life around making certain performances, because they’re on a schedule. It starts at X time, and if you aren’t there to see it, you miss it. Just like a live sporting event, or even a sporting event on TV a big difference between sports and theatre is sports translates over television better. And, sports translates better to larger and larger venues. The bigger the venue, in fact, the more enjoyable a sporting event, whereas with theatre, most productions become less enjoyable once you get past a certain number of persons. It’s important to be able to see, intimately, the performers on stage and what is going on, and that would be incredibly difficult in a 60,000 person stadium.
So, I think sports is so popular because it is a major aspect of human civilizations that is enjoyed more the more people there are watching it together. It translates well to large venues, it exists in the present tense (and you lose something watching a replay) meaning people have to adjust to when it is played.
People have already answered that multiple times in this thread. I honestly think if you don’t get it, you just aren’t going to get it. I’d again, probably start with, “what do you like to do with your leisure time, what are your hobbies?” Why do you enjoy those things? Try to imagine that other people, like you, have things they enjoy, they just might not be the precise same things that you enjoy. As has also been said the people who are rearranging their entire lives around sporting events aren’t normal, they’re nowhere near a majority or even a significant minority among sports fans. I’ve never heard of a single person I’ve known in my entire life who has skipped work purely to watch a game, or actually refused to associate with someone who likes another team, or rescheduled a wedding. I’m a a Yankee fan and even I will have some good natured ribbing with a Sox fan without either of us intending any malice.
Some people are fanatics, they get enjoyment out of the object of their fanaticism. I’m not sure it’s really any deeper than that. What should be realized, however, is “sports fanatics” do not = “sports fans.” I used to watch Star Trek on TV as a teenager, but I wasn’t a “Trekkie.” Likewise, I really enjoyed the first Star Wars movie when it came out, but I don’t devote my life to the collection of Star Wars action figures. You seem to recognize with other things liking something doesn’t = obsession, recognize that tons of people (the overwhelming majority) like sports without being obsessed with sports.
Roman leaders weren’t too subtle in holding gladiatorial games to placate people with no real say in how their government was ran, but that didn’t change the fact the fans loved seeing their games.
College football is pretty unique in that it actually is for a major Division IA school a source of revenue. They have a huge multi-million dollar stadium because more seats brings in even more money, and makes even more money for the school. Alumni pony up the big bucks when a football team is doing well like no other. It’s very common for a wealthy alumni to donate $15m to the athletic program after a successful football season and then another $10m to the academic funds of the school.
If it wasn’t for college football many universities wouldn’t even have the funding to do many of the other sports.
Where I went to High School no one got a pass for slamming someone’s face into a locker door, nor were football players treated with special gloves when I was at the academy, either. There’s certainly a lot of places where that isn’t the case, though. In general I think society has become less tolerant of that over time. At the college level football players are under ever more scrutiny to actually earn grades and be acceptable campus citizens. Coaches are held almost personally responsible for the off field behavior of their players. And players that are allowed to run amok off the field and don’t worry about their academics can find themselves forced off the team, and if the coach or the school tries to “help them out” the school itself could face serious NCAA sanctions which can set the entire athletic program back several years.
Things certainly aren’t the best they could be, but the NCAA and colleges in general have gotten a lot more serious about player behavior and academics in recent years.
On the High School level things are always going to be a lot different, since there isn’t a national regulatory body for high school athletics with the kind of power the NCAA has.
One thing that strikes me is that sports fandom is awfully analogous to religion in many ways. Certainly the tribalism that many have mentioned is common to both. But sports fandom is a kinder, gentler substitution that’s still able to scratch the same basic tribal itch. Leaving soccer hooligans out of it for a moment, fandom does not usually result in carnage or significant property damage. And one of the great things about sports is that for all the investment (emotional and otherwise) that we put in, we all of us know, at the end of the of the day, that it just does not matter. The Sox are out of the playoffs? Boo-hoo-hoo, just wait till next year! But at the end of the day, BFD. I think this realization is within the heart of every fan, and keeps sports fans, unlike other forms of fanatics, from doing real harm in the world.