I have come to realize that interest in sports is not something I will ever be able to understand. That’s okay; I give up. The thing I ask myself now is, why are there so many people who are interested, and what do they have that I lack (or what do I have that they lack)?
I make no headway with this question either.
The basic attraction to sports, I think, has been explained. It’s like theatre with injuries. Or action movies with unpredictability. Or a chance to be in a torch-waving mob without the usual legal repurcussions. Or a chance to get together with near strangers and comfortably sing ‘Kumbaya’. Whichever. (I don’t share the interest, myself.)
There’s been lots of declaimations against the claim that a significant percentage of sports fans are sports fan-a-tics. Fair enough; my question is this: I’m sure I’m not the only one who has heard anecdotes of entire (generally small) towns that were totally dominated by a sport, usually football. Like, shops close on game day, that sort of thing. So, do such places actually exist? Or are they products of fiction and exaggeration?
I think it’s the element of uncertainty (as was stated upthread). To put it in other terms:
Let’s say you’re an opera fan. The music moves you emotionally, to heights unheard of. You *looove * your opera.
Now picture a universe where the outcome (musically) of the singer’s performance was uncertain…that when you attended an opera, you didn’t know in advance whether Pavarotti’s rendition of Nessun Dorma would be flat and dismal, or would knock your socks off.
Imagine how you would feel when Pavarotti nails it? That’s how I feel when the Cal Bears win a football game.
What, you’ve never been to Texas? Watch “Friday Night Lights” for an example.
I’ve heard this is close to true in Green Bay where the fan base is small but fervent. Hopefully a cheese head could let us know for sure.
I had a Friend from outside Akron Ohio who used to hate the way the Town was so devoted to High School Football, This would have been the early 1980s. He was class of '83. By his description, even the arcade closed for the football games and the Homecoming game was the event of the year. He did not like football and “hated this crap”. His words.
Jim
I’ll have to admit I’m genuinely puzzled by people who say, “I’ll just never understand people who like sports.”
I don’t like skiing, but I can definitely understand why there are people who love to ski, go skiing every chance they get, go on multiple ski trips in the appropriate seasons, and read magazines about skiing.
It doesn’t seem so hard to me to grasp the idea that, “hey, different people like different things, some people like things to different degrees, some people have hobbies or interests that they take so seriously, it is a major part of their lives.”
What exactly do these people who “don’t understand people who like sports” do with their day to day lives? They probably have some interests. I’m a moderate sports fan, I don’t usually watch more than one football game a week, and that is usually at the college level, but I do follow the goings on of the sports world. Aside from that, I like to lift weights, run, and I’m active in martial arts. I’ve always assumed most people, likewise, have interests, hobbies, activities they routinely engage in. And, just because the things they like to do aren’t the same as what I like to do, I don’t “fail to understand” them. It seems pretty simple to me.
I have a harder time understanding people who don’t have any significant hobbies and just mindlessly go from work to the computer screen where they spend 6-7 hours web surfing before crashing into bed than I do people who paint their faces when they go to a football game.
I sort of suspect a lot of the people who repeatedly claim “they just don’t understand” people who like sports, really mean, “I don’t want to understand those people, and in general have a negative view of them.”
Never been to Texas, no. (I hear it’s got unpleasant weather.) Wouldn’t the existence of such places belie the ‘occasionalness’ of the rabid fan? I mean, it sounds like these places have sports so far under their skin it’s become a dominant part of their culture. And it’s a single specific sport, so comparisons to the shortage of "Trekville"s seems apt.
Not that I find this confusing, really; sports (even football specifically) have had a slight head start on most everything else with regard to ingraining themselves. It’s more… disturbing… than anything else.
Ding ding! Winner! I think there’s more than just a little condescension going on. You never hear anyone say “I don’t understand people who like knitting.”
I don’t have a negative view of sports fans, no more so than of BDSM fans (in that I have no problems with people having different hobbies and what not) but knitting actually produces something useful, be it a scarf or a hat or gloves. Watching a football game produces nothing of value.
I don’t understand people who like knitting enough to watch other people knit, as a priority event in their lives.
You’re right though, I’ve never said that before. Prob’ly because, so far as I know, no such person exists.
Me, I think if there’s condesension, it’s fear-driven. You’re like, "Look at that mob! Those guys could take me apart, and probably would if I merely set fire to their team jersey while shouting imprecations at their team. I mean, I’m a fervent fan of macrame, but how much more of a fan would I have to be to be so public about it all the time! They must be maniacs! :eek: "
Not true, two of my best friends are fellow Yankee & Giant fans. We are from 3 different generations but we all love our teams. I met them at work, they have both moved on to other jobs and yet I see them often. They are coming over to watch the Yankee Game tonight in fact.
I think making a friend or two is worth at least as much as a sweater. 
Jim
I live in Gainesville, Florida. Today is Gator Growl and the Homecoming Parade; tomorrow is the Homecoming game. I work in a university medical lab which is running on about half the usual staff today; I had to turn away a delivery of supplies and tell them to come back Monday because all the people in that particular lab area had locked up and gone home. Not a huge calamity, I’ll admit, but I just don’t understand why a football game should have any effect on such a thing.
I have to run errands tomorrow, and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it’s going to take more than twice as long as usual, because the whole town will be given over to the game celebration.
Nothing new here; just a synopsis of what others have stated before.
First, everybody has a hobby. So there’s nothing particularly more unusual about being a sports fan, as opposed to being a birdwatcher or a Ren Fair enthusiast.
Above and beyond that, though, there’s:
But if you go beyond being a fan of the sport, and into being a fan of a team, then you get:
The “tribalism” aspect. You’re a member of a group that has something in common, something you can discuss at length, regardless of any thing else you might share.
Competition. Our brains are still hard-wired to get an adrenaline rush from beating the other tribe that has come over the hill to steal our women and raid our berry stash. So once you buy into identifying yourself with your team, that band of mercenaries out there in uniform becomes *your * band of mercenaries. *Their * victory is *your * victory, and you get the rush that comes with it.
So come over to the dark side, guys. It’s a cheap, legal and socially acceptable thrill.
Now you’ll have to excuse me – I need to tab over to the message board where we’re discussing at length how to beat Oregon tomorrow. And get some work done, if I have any time left.
One of sports’ attractions that we haven’t mentioned yet is the quasi-illegal aspect known as gambling. It is tough to get a bet down at an opera house, movie theatre, concert venue or a knitting circle. I’ve heard tell that people bet sizable amounts of money on various sporting events, even though doing so is illegal in many localities.
That is a major component of Football, Boxing, Horse Racing and maybe even March Madness and the Pools. I see a lot less of the gambling aspect for Baseball, Hockey, Tennis, Golf and the NBA.
How about Nascar? I do not follow Nascar, does it have a large gambling component?
Whew, what a long-assed way to say “Yankees suck”
To paraphrase the immortal Det. Frank Drebin: [The outcomes of these games] don’t amount to a hill of beans for most people… But this is our hill, and these are our beans!
I have, over the years, developed some theories about sports fandom.
I grew up without any interest in sports, either watching or playing. No one in my family watched or cared about sports. In Junior High, I was given permission to sit out the flag football games in PE after I eventually managed to convince the coach that I wasn’t just being obtuse, but that I really didn’t have any idea what he meant by “run up the center and cut left in front of the blocker.”
My small, liberal arts undergrad school had no football team and gave very little emphasis to sports in general. Basketball was the one big sport, and players (at least the ones who made basketabll a major part of their college career) were probably looked down on as much as elevated (partly because if they were any good and had any brains, they presumably would have found a more sports-oriented school to play for, if that was one of their main reasons for going.)
In graduate school (at seminary) I had some friends who eventually managed toconvince me to watch a number of football and baseball games with them, and I found them surprisingly enjoyable. The main obstacles to my enjoyment, however were 1) my lack of understanding of the mechanics of the game, and 2) I never had any idea which team to root for.
The second problem caused me to develop the theory that since triablism (or at least having a team to root for) is a key part of sports enjoyment, it helps enormously if you already have a tribe. I grew up in Arkansas, but my parents weren’t from there and I never enjoyed living there very much. I went to seminary in DC, but I wasn’t there long enough to feel like a Washingtonian. So I didn’t have a “natural” team to identify with. I realized, however, that if there had been a popular team representing my seminary or, even more, a team representing The United Methodist Church (which I then identified very strongly with, seeing both my personal and professional life tied up intimately with the organization for the rest of my life), that it might very well have been enough, combined with the moderate enjoyment of simply watching a game, to actually make me into a fan. Possibly even one who would, concievably, paint his face (though not reschedule work or a wedding).
I decided that a key factor in influencing the degree of sports fanship people felt was probably the degree to which they felt connected with the area they lived in, had grown up in, or went to school in. None of those applied to me, but I could see how it would give someone a natural identification with sports team.
Talking to sports fans, I quickly found out that this was not necessarily the case. Many people felt no particular connection to the area their favorite team was from. But they often felt a strong connection with their family, which had a long history of supporting a team. Other people didn’t have a family connection per se, but had memories of watching games with a particular person (usually a parent) who nurtured an interest in sports. The key seemed to be that they already felt a strong connection with a person or group, and that sports then became a further source of connection with those people.
Other people had played sports at some point and came to identify in that way with people playing sports, and to appreciate those teams or individuals who played same way that the person had or wished to have. Again a clear, natural source of identification between the fan and the player/team.
In summary (and I here’s the significant part), most fans had a preceding relationship (with people, with a sport, etc.) that led them to a natural interest in a team or a player or the sport itself, which then naturally developed into a hobby and a passion.
Many fans have praised sports for being so accessible, but that isn’t actually the case. I find most sports very difficult to follow and understand, and asking for basic information (how many points is touchdown?) from fans can be very embarassing. It’s easy to imagine someone developing an interest in a tv show (even one you don’t personally care for) simply by happening upon, say, a Star Trek rerun and finding interesting. Becoming a Trekkie may be an extreme aberration, but it’s easy to see how the interest began.
Non-sports fans find the idea of casually sitting down to watch a three hour game they don’t understand and don’t have a pre-existing interest in absolutely baffling (and frustrating and boring when they try it). But most sports fans didn’t begin that way. They had an “in” into the world of sports, which some of us (a minority) didn’t have. The necessity of such an “in” and the ubiquity of such (making those without an “in” a distinct minority) is what sets sports apart from practically any other recreation.
I’d suggest this situation arises from North American demographics, not because of something inherent in sports fans. In Britain, and I’m confident it’s true for all of Europe, identification with a local team is the overriding factor in most cases. More people will have a longer family history in one place, and even people like me who are ‘internal immigrants’ identify with the place we’ve lived most of our lives, and supporting a local team is integral to that.
But that supports my overall theory that some form of pre-identification (of which local identification is a common, but not the only, form) is usually a prerequisite to sports fandom. Right?
I’m guessing you don’t read any of the Lost or Survivor threads in the Cafe. The fans of those shows are every bit as rabid as sports fans, and their schedules generally take into consideration when the shows air. I would imagine the same holds true for shows like American Idol and 24.
Are you equally unable to conceive of how people can be television fans?
Not a fan of the Olympics, I’m guessing. And a quick perusal of your Cafe posts shows no activity regarding tv shows. The only thing I could find to relate to you would be that the enjoyment you get from reading Tolkien is similar to the enjoyment a sports fan gets from watching games.
You no doubt enjoyed Tolkien because of his skill as a writer. Same thing; the skill of the athletes is one of the primary sources of enjoyment. I’ll get back to this in a bit.
I was 20 when I became a sports fan. I absolutely agree that sports are exclusionary in that you need an “in” to get hooked. The vast majority of people who become fans do so because they have family or friends who are already fans. Sports fandom is quite contagious, so if you have a lot of friends, odds are you’ll run across somebody with enough enthusiasm to suck you in if you are open to it.
For me, it was back in the summer of 1990, when I became good friends with a diehard Giants fan. (NFL football.) He got me hooked, despite it being the offseason. That year, the Giants played a memorable season, and capped it off by winning the greatest Superbowl ever played. (Still to this day that statement is true.) I have been a huge fan of the Giants ever since.
Returning to my previous point about how the skill of the performance being a contributing factor, I am profoundly more satisfied in the Superbowl win the Giants played, (both of them, though I didn’t see the first one,) than I would have been last year if I were a Steelers fan. I would probably go so far as to say that if my indoctrination had been last year’s Steelers instead of the 1990 Giants, I would not be nearly the fan I am today 16 years from now.
Greatness in anything has intrinsic appeal. Great writing, great art, great acting, great music, great athletic skill; it all basically boils down to being able to appreciate what talented and motivated people can accomplish.
As for people who say they simply can’t understand sports? I generally assume that they are harboring deep resentment at getting beaten up in highschool for being geeks.
And finally, why do fans get an adrenaline rush when their team is playing? I’m not entirely sure, but for me it is 100% involuntary, and even selective. I can feel the endorphins flowing at kickoff, and whenever the game is close. During a blowout either way, watching is a purely academic experience. But if it’s close, the experience is much more visceral.
I suppose I could draw a correlation to movies. Movies are totally fake and just as irrelevant as sports, so why should anybody ever have an emotional reaction to them? IMO, it’s because they enjoy having emotional reactions, and thus allowing oneself to get emotionally invested in a movie (or sporting event) is similar to the concept of suspension of disbelief.