Why We Watch Sports – (And It’s Not What You Think)
© 2006 BestShowTicketsLasVegas.com
Whether you want to believe it or not, we like to
watch sports for very different reasons than you may
think. In fact, the real things that cause us to like
sports are in every person, whether we like sports
or not. What things can we learn about human nature
by simply looking at our fascination with competition?
The answers may surprise you. Not only are the answers
interesting in themselves, but they may just help
you in other ways too.
There are some fairly straightforward and obvious
explanations for why we like sports to be sure. Sports
teach us about loyalty, perseverance and honor. It
gives us a way to bond, it’s cathartic, and
we identify with teams and players. We live vicariously
through the players we watch. We have our favorite
players, and there are teams we’ve grown up
rooting for because our brother or dad used to love
them, and now we still root for them today. Or we
may follow a sport now that we used to play as a child.
But there are some deeper, more powerful and fascinating
reasons too.
We’re All Just Big Children
Whether you want to believe it or not, all adults
are just big children. We’re all just big kids.
We just hide our true feelings and thoughts with highly
developed skills (or at least most of us do). We still
want to belong or be accepted by our peers, we all
still want to be loved, we still feel emotional pain,
and we still find ourselves giving in to immediate
gratification when we know better. And yes, some of
us still lie and cheat in our normal day to day lives.
We certainly hide things better and often successfully
‘act’ as if we don’t care about
belonging, or love, or pain, or whatever. Deep down
inside we are a little more mature and wise, but basically
still just children. We may not say it out loud anymore,
but we still think to ourselves sometimes, “That’s
not fair!” We would rather play than work. Some
may argue, depending on whether they pee standing
up or sitting down, that this is especially true for
men. Maybe that’s why there are more men sports
fans than women.
You see, watching sports gives us a perfect, safe
and secure, black and white, little microcosm of life.
Following a player, team or game allows us to experience
ups and downs and a whole array of emotions, just
like in real life, but we aren’t actually affected.
And unlike life, sports and games are generally fair!
There are rules and a crystal clear framework, or
paradigm that all the participants and spectators
know about. There are never any monkey wrenches thrown
into a sports game, like the rules changing mid-game
for instance. If rules are broken, the offender is
penalized. They don’t frustratingly get away
sometimes like in real life.
At the end, there is an unambiguous winner and loser.
We get to pretend that the game we’re watching
is life, where everything is perfectly fair, everyone
plays by the rules and everything makes sense.
Children tend to think of things in much more black
and white terms. It is only through living and maturing
that we realize that all of life is a series of grays.
But we all still long for a simpler and easier life.
When things are only seen in black or white, things
indeed seem simpler and easier, but life isn’t
so clear-cut.
This helps explain why politicians who break their
platform down into simple sound bites and into terms
devoid of complexity often do better than politicians
who talk about life like it really is, a complex,
interrelated world of nuances.
Watching sports allows us a temporarily safe and
socially acceptable way to be more like our true nature,
and our true nature is frighteningly childlike. So
the next time you deal with a difficult person, remember
that they are just a large child, like you and everyone
else, and maybe that knowledge will help you deal
with them a little more easily.
What do watching a horror movie and sports
have in common?
Ever wonder why so many people, including maybe you,
enjoy watching horror movies so much? They provide
a safe way for people to experience high levels of
suspension without actually being in any real danger.
Sports can be the same way. Again, watching sports
allows us to enter a perfect world where the suspenseful
outcome has no bearing on our real lives (unless you
have a nasty sports gambling problem of course).
People love drama, suspension, and resolution, which
are all elements inherent in sports. In fact, the
closer the game, the more suspension there is. If
we identify with a player and he wins, we are vicariously
happy for the success. However, if the player’s
team loses, we feel the defeat a little as well. But
our lives are unaffected. And sports announcers usually
only add to the drama and suspension.
A sports game is a sort of story. There is a beginning
and an end. There is a protagonist (your team) and
an antagonist (the other team). There is a scene and
setting, the stadium at noon, and there is a plot,
which is the action. Only after the games ends, and
depending on if your team won or not, is it decided
to be called a fairy tale ending or a tragedy.
Reptilian Brain and War
Whether you want to believe it or not, humans are
a lot closer to nature and the animal world than most
people like to think. We’re not just close to
nature; we’re a part of it! Evolutionarily speaking,
we are much closer in time to our unintelligent animal
ancestors than we are to a transcended sentient species
apart from nature. Our behavior is guided much more
by our ‘primitive brain’ than our more
recently developed neocortex, which is the seat of
our intelligence. The primitive brain, or lower brain
function, deals with fight or flight behavior, hunger,
fear, and sex, among other things.
A common, yet erroneous concept is that the human
brain is the result of billions of years of evolution.
Our primitive or reptilian part of the brain is that
old, but our brain’s extra large neocortex,
the thing that separates us from other mammals, came
about only a couple million years ago, a mere drop
in the evolutionary bucket. The neocortex has not
had much time to develop, and so our primitive brain
plays a significant role in our lives.
Our basic flight or fight mentality is manifested
in sports. We can relate, on some deeper and unconscious
level, with the guy running with the football towards
the end zone and being chased by a pack of angry men.
We can understand what it feels like to check another
player in hockey and slam him into the boards. Or
we can sympathize with the NASCAR driver who gets
passed by a competitor, but throws it into a higher
gear and chases after him.
Our primitive desire for dominance is represented
in sports. When our team wins, we experience a sort
of dominance over the opposing team and their fans.
Our predatory nature is lit up when we see a linebacker
following a running back through a mass of football
players, waiting for the perfect moment to strike
his prey with a tackle. Watching someone chase the
man with the ball in basketball, soccer, or baseball
affects us in similar ways.
Our tribal instincts are fulfilled by sports. We
all want to belong to something; it’s a basic
human need since we are such social animals. We identify
with a team like our ancestors would identify with
their tribe. This is especially true for the Western
world’s modern man, where community has taken
a back seat to independence.
Our primitive warring nature is satisfied by sports.
There seems to be an innate desire for war, even in
so-called ‘modern’ man. Indeed, look at
the world today and how many current wars are going
on, and you’ll see how far we are to real peace.
Pathetically, that last statement holds true for almost
any time in history, regardless of when you’re
reading this. Again, this goes back to the fact that
we are ruled more by our ‘primitive’,
survival-driven, fight or flight brain than our reasonable
and intelligent ‘modern’ brain.
Every sports game is like a tiny war between tribes,
with an end and a declared victor. But there’s
one important distinction; unlike war, no one has
to die in sports.
One of the reasons going to a game is more exciting
than watching it on TV is that there is a kind of
energy created when so many people get together and
root for one cause. You might even liken it to a mob
mentality. We don’t have to look farther than
our own stadiums where pandemonium has broken out
in protest to a call or in celebration of a win. Sports
strongly appeals to the gaming and struggle instincts
of humans.
And since our modern lives no longer contain any
real physical danger and all our basic needs are immediately
taken care of, we now have a void that needs to be
filled somehow, our primitive brain expects it. Sports
fit the bill. It gives us the illusion of reality
where there are no consequences. It gives us the illusion
of battle, war, victory and defeat, without the consequences.
And it gives us the illusion of being a child again,
even if it’s all temporary.
You may not like sports at all, but we are all a
quite childlike inside. We all yearn for some level
of drama in our lives. And we are all constantly affected
by our primitive brain. Watching sports is one excellent
way for people to reconcile these inescapable facts.
