“Remind me again—why is it that you watch so much sports?”
My wife’s tone was more curious than admonishing. When she waited for an answer, I realized it wasn’t exactly a rhetorical question. It’s not unreasonable for her to wonder, even if (most weeks) the number of hours I spend watching sports is (no longer) as high as the average adult American male. Insofar as time is a finite resource and the hours spent watching sports are hours not devoted to other, more worthwhile pursuits, she is not the only spouse who deserves a serious response.
There is no more opportune time to make the effort than right now, at the start of football season. Tens of millions of fans will be watching each week this autumn. I lay no claim to a unified field theory that explains, in one fell swoop, the appeal of Olympic figure skating, mixed martial arts, PGA golf, college football, March Madness, cricket, curling, and World Cup soccer. Nor is my answer necessarily representative. Homo sapiens may or may not be unique in playing competitive games, though I suspect it is the only species to spend so much time as a spectator. Is it a fool’s errand to search for any meaning in such a frivolous pastime?
Right away I should acknowledge that, whatever its virtues, watching sports can be attended by all manner of vice. It doesn’t take an Aquinas to find the seven deadly sins well represented. Consider the inherently passive nature of watching rather than playing (sloth); soccer hooliganism (pride, or is it wrath?); the incestuous relationship between sports media and the gambling industry (avarice); the popularity of women’s beach volleyball (lust), and how everyone loves to hate the Duke Blue Devils but watches them anyway (envy), to name just a few examples.
Humans are fallen creatures, though perhaps not so totally depraved that we may not hope to find some rhyme or reason in such a widespread activity.
Even non-athletes recognize greatness when they see it. Extraordinary athletic ability is a veritable proof of the natural law.
Surely one reason has to do with the instinctive wonder we feel at something done extremely well. Sports broadcast on television are typically being performed at the very highest level of human skill. Talent-wise, even the losers and the benchwarmers are orders of magnitude superior to normal people. To see Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi or Simone Biles or Usain Bolt in action is to witness athletes doing things of which very few people in the entire world are capable, now or at any time in human history. Those who have played competitive sports can appreciate the gap in ability from their own experience, but even non-athletes recognize greatness when they see it. Extraordinary athletic ability is a veritable proof of the natural law: Be it through natural talent or hard work—and it’s always some combination of the two—it’s the kind of thing you can’t not know.
More often than not, watching sports is also a manifestation of what Catholic moral theology calls the ordo amoris, the notion that, all else being equal, we naturally and appropriately have greater duties to and affections for those closest to us—family, friends, compatriots, coreligionists—than those further away. According to Augustine, those who “by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection” to us deserve our special care and attention.
Applied to sports fandom, the ordo amoris explains why most people root for the home team. Who and what you watch is, for most people, a function of geographic proximity and social connections. I grew to love the Atlanta Braves after living a short drive from the stadium for over a decade. My friends and neighbors here in Memphis will shell out for Grizzlies tickets, but very few watched another minute of basketball once they were eliminated from the playoffs this past spring. The same principle explains why you don’t see many Ohio State bumper stickers in Ann Arbor or Texas Longhorns jerseys in Tuscaloosa.
Natural affinities do not explain all such allegiances. Happenstance often plays a decisive role. Growing up when and where I did, it was my birthright to be a die-hard Kentucky Wildcats fan. Geographically, it made much less sense that I rooted for the Oakland Raiders or the Denver Nuggets whenever they were on television. If I had to guess, it probably had to do with magazines I’d seen, circa 1978, with Kenny “the Snake” Stabler and David “Skywalker” Thompson on the cover. Sometimes these things defy logic. Why does my economist friend—the son of two economists and husband of another—pay extra for the horse racing cable channel? What is going on with my daughter’s recent obsession with Formula One racing? All I can say is that she didn’t get it from me. As Pascal observed, the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
A sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself is also a part of the appeal of sports fandom. Watching is the chief ritual performed by members of the tribe. French sociologist Émile Durkheim came up with the concept of collective effervescence, by which he meant the profound sense of energy and unity that emerges when large groups of people come together and participate in common behaviors in unison. For Durkheim, collective effervescence helped clarify the origins and functions of religion in society. To be among eighty thousand Wisconsin Badgers singing along to “Build Me Up Buttercup” or “Jump Around” in the fourth quarter or with New Englanders belting out “Sweet Caroline” in the middle of the eighth inning at Fenway is to have something like a religious experience in the Durkheimian sense.
Fans are psychically invested in the events they are watching and seem to believe they can influence the outcome. Is it really possible for their rooting to make any difference? The obvious answer is yes. I played a lot of basketball in a previous life. Anyone who has felt an adrenaline surge when the crowd goes wild will attest that home court advantage is a real thing. There would have been no “Miracle on Ice” had the Winter Olympics not been held in Lake Placid in 1980.
In the New Testament, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews is familiar with the phenomenon. He employs an analogy from the world of sports to encourage a group of believers whose faith he fears has grown tepid (Hebrews 12:1):
Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, . . . let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.
The image he evokes is that of a stadium full of spectators urging on athletes who are tempted to throw in the towel. It is an audacious rhetorical move, coming right after his famous encomium to the ancestors from ancient Israel celebrated for their faith in the preceding chapter. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the prophets—they make up the crowd cheering on the first-century Christian readers of the Letter to the Hebrews who are running the “race” of faith, many centuries after their own time on earth. And they are not disinterested spectators. Hebrews suggests that the patriarchs and matriarchs of old will not get their reward until and unless their descendants “running” centuries later finish their own race (Heb. 11:39–40). It is the communion of saints reimagined as a sporting event, with competitors and spectators united in a common cause across time and space.
The idea that sports fandom is a poor man’s communion of saints may be a stretch. I can only speak for myself with any certainty. My pleasure in watching sports was bequeathed to me by my ancestors. Really, one ancestor in particular. My father taught me about lots of sports, and I think he enjoyed the fact that I enjoyed it so much. It is a cliché to mention that, etymologically, nostalgia denotes a bittersweet feeling associated with the attempt to recapture something from one’s past. Like most clichés, this one is partly false but also partly true.
My wife is struck by the detail with which I can recall specific sporting events from the distant past, especially by my memory for where I was and with whom I was watching. Will my own descendants—at present, I have only three—experience the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat the same way I do? I suppose there are worse things they might inherit from me.