Pre-Game

Since perhaps the beginning of time, or at least of organized athletic games, pundits of all sorts, from many fields, including science, literature, history, journalism, and politics, have asked the same question about sports: “why do we care so much?”

       Whether or not sports themselves actually matter—a fierce philosophical debate in some quarters—there is no doubt that they are important to us as a society, if only because so many people do care. The forced global absence of organized competition during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic served as a reminder of just how much people love sports and how passionately they miss them when they are gone. We may never know exactly why sports are so important to so many of us, and in this book I decided to ask a different question, one that has received a lot less attention, but one that I consider more enlightening: “what happens when we care?”

       The world is full of sports fans, and I wanted to know what being a sports fan does to us, individually and collectively.

       Let’s find out.

Game Time

        … she asked what my next book was about. 

        “I’m exploring the effects of sports fandom on individuals and also collectively. I’m looking at what it means to be a sports fan, what it does to us, and what it does to society.”

        She was simultaneously skeptical and uninterested. But to be polite, she asked, “Why?”

       “Sports fans have been dissed. I’d like to set the record straight.”

       “What do you mean?”

        I took a breath. “So many people, here in America and around the globe, identify themselves as being ‘sports fans.’ In terms of popularity and participation, it’s a huge part of our national conversation. The sports section is often the thickest in newspapers, no news broadcast is complete without sports coverage, and sporting events are our most watched programs of any kind. Yet until very recently, little research has been done into the effects of sports fandom, especially when compared to religion, the most comparable system of widespread group identification and belonging. But the research that has been done, as well as the historical record, overwhelmingly shows that being a sports fan is good for us, good for humanity, and good for the world.

        That’s a bold claim and one that seemed to surprise Dr. Kristie—and a lot of other people I’ve talked to.

       She thought about it, then shrugged. “I always thought it just seems like a big waste of time.”

       Here’s the thing: when I write the words “sports fans,” what picture do you see in your mind? Dr. Kristie likely sees an overweight guy in a team jersey sitting on a couch drinking beer with his overweight jersey-wearing friends, and I’m not surprised. This is how sports fans have been routinely portrayed for decades in the media, on the most popular television sitcoms, in commercials, and in movies.

       Scott Simon, NPR Weekend Edition Saturday host and former international correspondent, is a devoted, dyed-in-the-wool sports enthusiast who wrote a book called Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan. He begins a chapter titled “I’m a Fan” this way: “Fans don’t get much respect. In literature and pop culture, advertising and conversation, we are often seen as the anonymously clamorous: bug-eyed and beer-swollen . . .” Longtime ESPN television producer Justine Gubar—and unlikely fan hater, given her profession—described the American sports fan in these words: “That beer-guzzling, jersey-wearing guy headed to his buddy’s house to watch football all day. . .”

       The corpulent lazy guy is a sitcom staple as well as a commercial fixture (personified by Kevin James’s serial sports fan Doug Heffernan, aka The King of Queens), but equally unflattering are the most common alternative stereotypes: the lovable jersey-wearing dolt with nothing better to do than watch sports on TV (like Chris Pratt’s Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation) and the screaming, face painted, jersey-wearing maniac (à la NHL Devils fan David Puddy on Seinfeld – which also features two other overweight and troubled sports fans in starring roles, George Costanza and Newman). Saturday Night Live built a whole franchise of recurring skits around “Da Bears,” a group of hard-drinking, hard-eating, jersey-wearing Chicago sports fans. It’s set in a bar and portrayed by all the heaviest comedians on the show, plus the occasional overweight guest star. The entertainment industry can’t even seem to draw non-obese, non-beer swilling sports fans – the longest running sitcom in television history gives us Homer Simpson, and eighteen seasons in, Family Guy stars Peter Griffin. Both shows are animated, hilarious, and still on the air.

       The movies haven’t been especially kind to sports fans, either, though for the most part Hollywood has simply ignored them. No amount of permutations of the words “sports, spectators, fans, and movies” could google me up any kind of list, compilation, or discussion of movies focused on sports fans, because there are, as far as I can tell, only four of note—versus literally thousands on sports in general (Wikipedia lists five just for the subcategory of “Greyhound Racing”). This mostly undistinguished quartet includes Big Fan, a comedic look at the rather bleak life of a football-obsessed (and of course beefy and jersey-wearing) parking garage attendant whose every waking moment revolves around the New York Giants and sports talk radio. In this case, the Big Fan of the title is a double entendre referring to both the depth of his passion and his physique.

       It gets worse. Green Street features Elijah Wood as an improbable Harvard journalism student who decides to move to London and join a gang of soccer hooligans who live for violent brawling with rival fans. If you are going to produce one movie about fans every decade or so, why wouldn’t you opt for this particularly unlikely plot, right? But we have yet to hit rock bottom. The best-known example and cream of this way off-base crop is The Fan, with Robert DeNiro as an insane, down-on-his-luck, knife salesman (?!) and baseball junkie who stalks the star player of the San Francisco Giants, played by Wesley Snipes. In the process, he becomes increasingly unhinged, slashing, beating, stabbing, kidnaping, and killing his way through the movie (and, yes, he dons a jersey).