I just checked the results of the French first league championship of last year, for instance. Out of 20 teams, 12 have been playing in first league for between 40 and 65 years.
One however with 58 seasons of presence has been downgraded to second league that year. I’m wondering what fans of such a team do in these situations. Do they keep following the team even though the games won’t be shown on TV, etc… Or do they switch allegiance to another first league team?
And finally one thing : out of the three teams dowgraded, two had amongst the lowest budgets in the league, in the range of 6% of the wealthiest team. Which shows what really matters to win : how much money your favourite team has.
That’s not necessarily true. It might be that everyone is ignorant. I doubt most sports fans put much thought into why they like sports. I also highly doubt that all of the answers are known here; the attractiveness of sports is a pretty weird psychological quirk and deserves a scientific explanation. There have been a lot of just-so stories in this thread but not much at a deeper level. For instance, I’d be curious about fMRI imaging of people when they watch sports. Do the same parts of the brain activate when their team wins as when a close family member accomplishes something positive? Etc.
If people didn’t care, what would be the point of watching sports in the first place? Individual players? Being invested in them is just as puzzling. Being amazed at athletic feats? Better, but how often does that happen, and what then would be the point of organized play?
Of course that’s what’s happening! Regardless of where the players are from, the professional team represents your city or region. For example, after Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans rallied around the Saints as a symbol of the city’s resurrection after the disaster - and I doubt many players were from that area.
In addition to the fact that the team represents your home city, they are actually members of your community. The players may not be from your town originally (and most of them won’t be around for more than a few years), but they do live there, they own homes and often businesses in your city, many of them have small charity orgs that operate in your town, almost all of them get sent out by the team on goodwill trips to local children’s hospitals and the like, etc. They’re not total strangers, in that sense.
More importantly, though, RickJay’s question about movies is on point. Why should I give a shit whether Woody Allen winds up with Diane Keaton at the end? It’s totally arbitrary. The only reason I’m rooting for him is that the story happens to be told from his point of view, so I’ve followed his travails, seen the arc of his successes & failures, and empathized with his struggles. It’s a piece of entertainment that’s designed to elicit an emotional attachment in the audience.
Sports is no different. For all intents & purposes it’s an unscripted drama. Does that make sense?
UEFA is aware o f this and there are rules in place or coming in to stop this in future. And they are also supposed to stop the clubs running at a huge loss, bankrolled by a sugardaddy that treats it as a vanity project.
Unfortunately legal objections are resulting in what was, essentially, a very good idea being downgraded somewhat:
One can enjoy the competition without particularly caring about the result. In fact, I suspect a lot of fans don’t particularly enjoy the sport they’re watching – they’re invested totally in the team’s fortunes and I think that’s a lot more weird than enjoying the game itself. Games are fun.
As an example, people enjoy game shows all the time and rarely root for anyone in those.
That’s not a bad example. But I wonder if watchers root for a particular player or team more often than you think.
I also suspect that most people who enjoy watching game shows enjoy the element of playing along (trying to guess the answers before the contestants do) that doesn’t really apply to sports.
Are you familiar with the terms “Monday Morning Quarterback” and “Kill the Umpire”? Sports fans absolutely play along with the game.
I mean, sure, sometimes you’ll really like one of the contestant’s personalities or a contender will have a really good sob story about using the money they win to go to grad school or pay for their son’s cancer or whatever that really resonates with you. And of course, in single-contender games like Who Wants to Be A Millionaire or Deal or No Deal a lot of times you may want to see someone extort money out of the faceless corporation.
But it doesn’t seem to me that as a matter of course people pick a random Jeopardy! contestant to root for every game.
Why does it matter? Maybe it’s just --gasp!-- fun? Why does it deserve some kind of analysis?
Brains are interesting. Maybe even more interesting than sports.
But without sports we wouldn’t have brains.
No, it is true.
The appeal of sports has been explained on this message board, in detail, often quite eloquently, maybe two hundred times. Perhaps more. It has been and I assume still is a matter of academic study, examples of which can be found with a Google search. The OP, and many before him, isn’t really asking a question, he’s saying “Sports fan are stupid.” We’ve done this song and dance before and the beat’s really familiar.
Nobody seems to want to answer this, but I’ll ask again; if you claim to not get sports fandom, or you’re saying it’s stupid, tell me if you like movies and what some of your favourites are.
“Just Google it” isn’t really considered an acceptable answer on this board.
The weird part is that if I have a favorite director, but he releases a few duds and I say I’m not sure if I like his work anymore, no one accuses me of being a “fair weather fan.”
So do you like movies? Tell me some of your favourites.
Curious, but not curious enough to actually do any research on your own. I find that curious.
I already said in post #40 why I find the manufactured drama in movies but not sports compelling. I suppose it just means that sports fans are able to find meaning in more abstract works of fiction. I’m not interested in gotcha games, so if you have some other point, just say so.