The sports industry is one of the largest in the world and it is only continuing to grow; “The sports market in North America alone was worth more than $60 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach $73 billion by 2019” (Emba). For the sports industry to get as big as it is there has to be a product that consumers just can’t get enough of, and that product is sports. People such as myself seem to absolutely clamor for collegiate and professional sports as well as some of sporting’s biggest events; “Almost 112 million people watched Super Bowl 50 [in 2016], and it’s predicted that 480,000 tourists [flooded] Rio for [last] summer’s olympics” (Emba). What I will attempt to answer in this essays why do people care about what some twenty-to-thirty something year old men do in a game? I believe it is to live vicariously through their favorite teams and athletes and for a sense of belonging within their team identification and I will look through the science, the bad and good that comes out of it, psychology, and sociology of the matter.

The first aspect I am going to look at as to why people seem to obsess about sports is the exact science of it. The chemistry that goes on in our brains when we’re watching a big sporting event or an athletic team that someone is passionate about. When we watch sports we stimulate our hormone levels which makes us jump for joy or makes you so irritable nobody wants to talk to you for days after a loss. One of the main hormones found most prominently in males that is linked to brain power, awareness, and muscle growth is testosterone. It’s shown that while we watch sporting events, large amounts of testosterone are released; “scientists have found that after watching your team win, levels of testosterone skyrocket, especially compared to experiencing a loss” (AsapSCIENCE, 0:36). Another chemical agent in the brain that contributes to our obsession with sports is the amount of dopamine your brain releases after watching your favorite player or team win; “When your favorite athlete takes home the gold, a surge of dopamine is also released. The biological rush activates pleasure centers in the brain while increasing memory and learning” (AsapSCIENCE, 0:58). The rush of dopamine that gets released after you see your favorite athlete or sports team also explains why people keep watching and caring about sports even if their team isn’t particularly good, because they’re yearning for the pleasure they get only when their favorite athlete or team wins; “to recreate the psychological excitement they can’t seem to forget” (AsapSCIENCE, 1:11). There are also things in the brain called mirror neurons, these neurons are activated not only after completing a certain action, but after seeing and even hearing an action. Mirror neurons are the reason as to why we are able to identify with someone after they win or achieve something, and why we feel the same pleasure and enjoyment after the victory as the athletes feel; “Scientists monitoring both athletes and spectators see the same parts of the brain activated- as if the viewer were playing the game” (AsapSCIENCE, 1:33). It’s not a secret that a lot of people care about and even obsess over sports. The science provided here in this paragraph is supposed to provide for you concrete evidence to the fact that there are reasons as to why these obsessions come to be, and proving the science behind it.

It seems many times, and now more than ever, that obsession over sports is a bad thing. We glorify a lot of people who maybe shouldn’t be glorify, and we as a society seem to be quick to forgive some people for very bad things just because they’re good at throwing a football or dribbling a basketball. Glorifying some of these sports stars is a problem, but giving up your love of the game is not the solution to the problem of obsessing over sports, says Alex Alben: “The antidote to our collective obsession is not to give up our passion for the home team or fail to recognize great talent but to engage in a reality check on our priorities… American culture also needs to consciously promote nonathlete role models for kids as a viable path to their future lives in the workforce” (Alben). While there are certainly bad people in the sports world that we glorify and probably shouldn’t look up to, there are many good people who don’t get recognized by the fans and the media that probably should, and they are the ones we should be cheering on and paying attention to.

While there are certainly disadvantages to caring about sports, there are a lot of good things to come out of it too, according to sports psychology professor Daniel Wann of Murray State University; “epic fandom is also linked to higher levels of well-being and general happiness with one’s social life, as well as lower levels of loneliness and alienation” (Almendrala). There is a lot of good that can come out of obsessing about sports and identifying through a sports team. Personally speaking, I can relate to the fact that feeling a part of a fan group has helped make me feel less lonely in some difficult parts of my life, and also watching sporting events help distract myself, with I assume a lot of other people, from some of those difficult parts of life as well. While there are certainly negative aspects to caring so much about sports and and sports teams, I really do believe as a fan that the good outweighs the bad and that there are far more benefits to being invested in sports than to not be. 

Turn back the clocks to July of 2010. NBA free agency is in full swing, but this is no normal free agency, because sports superstar LeBron James, who is widely considered the best basketball player since Michael Jordan and one of the greatest to ever play the game, was on the market, and he was openly looking to leave the team he had played for for the past seven years, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Cleveland wants LeBron to stay and play for their beloved Cavs and for good reason, it also doesn’t hurt that James is a hometown kid who grew up in nearby Akron, Ohio. The extent as to which the fellow natives of Cleveland were willing to go to keep their beloved superstar were quite curious, however; “Celebrity chef Michael Symon of Cleveland has offered to cook a free monthly gourmet feast for LeBron if the Akron native doesn't flee… A Cleveland talk-radio station has launched a "Beards for Bron" campaign. LeBron Appreciation Day is Saturday at the University of Akron's football stadium” (Balint). What I remembered thinking back then and what I’m trying to get to the bottom to in this essay is this: Why did people care so much as to where this twenty-five year old kid decided to shoot a ball? The answer could be as easy as they wanted “King James”, as he is well known as, to be the ultimate Cleveland legend. Born in Cleveland, play in Cleveland, die in Cleveland. To bring Cleveland their first title in over forty years. That could be it. I believe their is a much deeper psychology to it, however. As Ronald F. Levant, a psychology professor at the University of Akron puts it, is that the Cleveland fans wanted to experience the success that at the time they felt only James could bring them; “Identifying with your sports teams is one of the ways you can vicariously experience success, and in real life, success is hard” (Balint). For many years after a hard day at work or even just a bad day, Clevelanders could count on coming home and seeing LeBron play some basketball at a high level and it would bring a little joy to their day. And with their other two professional teams such as the Browns, coming off a 5-11 season with no signs of improvement (per pro-football-reference.com), and the Indians, struggling their way to a 69-93 season and a fourth place finish in the AL Central (per baseball-reference.com), the Cavaliers and LeBron James were one of the only things the Cleveland natives and fans could be proud of, which made his departure to Miami all the more hurtful to the city. But after four years the King returned, and brought the city of Cleveland their first major championship in 2016, which made the city proud to be Cleveland again.

Another way we can see the obsession people have with sports is the way we view amateur and youth sports in the United States. The concept of youth sports should be first and foremost for the kids to have fun. It seems as though nowadays, however, that it is less about whether or not the kids have fun and it becomes more and more pressuring from kids to win, wether it be from their parents who hope to vicariously live through the potential successes of their child that they themselves never accomplished, or from the coach who tries to mimic some of their coaching legends that they grew up watching. It seems that the line between amateur and professional sports is becoming more and more blurred, and that each level seems to be increasingly more focused on whether or not the teams win or lose and less on the values being instilled in the kids; “In most youth leagues the model of how sport should be approached is that of the adult professional ranks-those athletes who earn a living from their sport. The concern with winning above the concern with enhancing the experience of the athlete is at the core of the professionalization of youth sport” (39, Brower). It seems as though youth and amateur leagues are becoming more or less farm systems for their professional counterparts. While these youth organizations goal should be to allow the children to play a game and have fun, the pressure for the kids to be great and have their teams win shows the amount of obsession sports in America has become. The fact of the matter is that adults now no longer want to live vicariously through their favorite professional athletes and sports teams, but now they are living vicariously through their kids athletic successes and achievements as well.

One theory as to why people like sports so much is because people like to see the violence. Now this theory doesn’t work as well for non contact sports such as basketball or baseball, but for sports such as football or hockey, violence is a big part of the game, and even in non contact sports you see the eventual scuffle or bench clearing brawl every once in awhile. Nicole La Voi, the associate director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport, has this to say as to why she thinks violence is such a draw for the sports industry; “We like violence in sports because violence has been commercialized in sport. We’ve been sold the idea that violent hits and big and hard hits is something we should be excited about and we see therefore we value it” (Collin). You can certainly see La Voi’s point in the way a game like football is branded, commercials for Sunday and Monday night football between two rival teams is riddled with countless highlights of big hits from past games, to show the hatred between them. The same can be said for the Wednesday Rivalry Night games in the NHL, with commercials for the matchups containing big hits as well as even video of some players fist fighting, which is legal in the NHL. There are also sports such as boxing and mixed martial arts which draws huge amounts of fans and money which is solely based on the matter of fighting and causing physical harm to one another for sport. There is definitely history to back up the draw of violence in sports, why one of the most innovative and historical sporting venues of all time, the Roman Colosseum, was home to a countless number of gladiator matches in which the participants were mauled, murdered, and slain all in the name of sport and for the entertainment of the paying customers. I don’t believe violence is the real reason why people care about sports so much, if it were, then sports such as basketball and baseball would not be the major sports around the world as they are today. However, there is certainly credence to the fact sometimes violence is a huge draw to some of the most popular sports you see in the world.

Our alliance and loyalty to our favorite teams does not always bring out the best in us. Brawls in the stands at sporting events is nothing new to the sporting industry, fights at football games, riots at soccer stadiums, not to mention all the fights we don’t hear about in our local bars every weekend ignited by a disagreement about the games we watch. Fan brawls has been a part of spectator sports for as long as they have been around and will probably never stop. It seems silly though, that someone would throw a punch at another person just because they might have said something about someone’s favorite sports teams, and to be fair many of these fights are fueled by massive amounts of alcohol but still, it seems strange on the surface of it. In all truth, the connections we allegiances we have to our sports teams is somewhat barbaric in a way, as Justine Gubar explores in ‘Fanaticus: Mischief and Madness in the Modern Sports Fan’; “Sportsmen and their followers are the closest analogue we have today to the age-old human tribal hunters…Tribal bonding leads to hostility toward other tribes... all obey basically the same rules. We hate those who oppose us and praise those who support us” (Gubar, 62). Being a part of a devoted fan base is much like being a part of a tribe, you’re loyal to your tribe, and if anyone threatens your tribe or mocks your it in anyway you have a duty to your tribe to fight back. Our loyalty to our perspective sports teams, while in this medium is relatively new to society, is nothing new, and it’s just a matter of switching to what people are allegiant to throughout time. In simpler terms, it’s human nature to be devoted to sports teams as much as a lot of people are.

There are many theories as to why people care about sports, many of which I have covered throughout this essay. There is no one answer as to why people care about sports as much as they do because everybody has different reasons as to why they are so invested. All of these theories could be the reason as to why you are invested in sports or there could be just one, the fact of the matter is that people really do love their sports. It helps provide an escape from some peoples’ hard lives and give them a sense of purpose. The reason as to why I believe people care about sports as much as they do is to live vicariously through their favorite stars and teams as well as to have a sense of belonging within their respected fan bases. People want to succeed and people want to belong, which is why I think people care about sports as much as they do.
