Ok, I’m likely to get some nasty answers on this one…and I’m not even certain that I’m posting it in the
correct category…BUT: Why is it that fans get so excited over team sports?…I live in Vancouver and the BC Lions just won the Grey Cup…My question is –why do the fans treat the victory as if it were a personal accomplishment?…They only sat on their sofas/or in their bars watching….but they treat it as if they as individuals had accomplished something?
I think many of us feel somewhat frustrated and even helpless in many life situations and certainly in the daily humdrum. Sports represents the overcoming of obstacles in a long-term, concerted way. Usually these big victories are huge and hard and many sports fans feel an emotional connection with the effort, in part because they have faithfully attended ‘their’ team’s regular seasons through thick and thin which many teams depend upon. In fact I think many of us feel we are also working hard against the odds but our victories are not celebrated in a grandiose way. So these sports victories amplify the principle of success, overcoming obstacles and even rough opposition through unremitting effort. In the case of football it is very much a group effort combined with, or enhancing individual effort. It is also a very rough, dangerous sport. I was hospitalized for a month with a serious football injury when I was in high school and was not happy with the way my team mates handled it, so that sobered me at the time. They seemed to care more about ‘school spirit’ than about my well-being as an individual. I thought they had lost perspective.
But yet I can see that the spectator feels an emotional wave of overcoming the tough obstacles. It can be a hugely emotional release through identification with their own team (or even an adopted team like an underdog). And this idea of their ‘own’ team is important because in their own environment it is often repressed, nasty, competitive. They feel unappreciated, ignored, often insignficant. A victory from your own team helps to unite a community in a common emotional bond that acts a bit like great music. Perhaps they should not be compared, but the truth is a shared emotional experience is the same no matter how it comes about. A lot of love can be expressed and exchanged among happy fans who have faithfully attended the struggles of ‘their’ team.
And of course the same victory can also release a lot of violence and craziness; the whole thing can go to excess like anything else. The vicarious emotion that accompanies any group event from watching a sit-com, to attending a rowdy rock-concert, to going to church on Sunday, always has the potential of failing to really satisfy what the individual actually needs. But as long as it is kept in perspective, a group spectacle such as a sports victory can be a legitimate emotional release that unites a community that otherwise is in a tense competition with itself most of the time. It has a similar effect as New Years celebrations or fireworks during natal day. I myself choose not to attend these sports events mostly because I don’t enjoy the level of violence and that sort of thing. But I do understand that others have different taste and need the elevated group experience and the emotional feeling of belonging to a larger frame of reference that momentarily transforms their feelings of loneliness, frustration and insignificance – states that I myself feel more often than I like to admit.
But your question is important and often it does seem mystifying to watch people getting all worked up over sports or movies or any other apparently vicarious activity. The need to belong and the need to feel one’s emotions amplified within a greater form of humanity seems to be with us for the duration. Many people really need that extra feeling of belonging and sharing with the group – the mass. It roots them. It increases the sense of meaning. Even recently when visiting New York I was amazed at the emotional pleasure I got out of watching the skaters going round and round the rink in Rockerfeller Center. Each skater had their own style. Some were hilarious. But they were individuals who really wanted to just get on that ice with others and go round and round. It was relaxing and fun. The music was pleasant and the crowd who watched seeemd to enjoy it as much as I did. Then we drifted off with an even greater crowd until we were swept into Times Square – a sea of amazing faces. Flowing with this sea increases one’s sense of humanity at least sometimes. It is an incredible reminder just how many others are out there beyond one’s own immediate isolation. Many people love to belong. For many loneliness is an unbearable waste of time. I covet all private time to work, but yet I understand that group urge.
Important question.
B. Lyons
Vancouver Sports Bar Grand Opening
