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They say victory is sweet, and some scientists at Cornell University set out to prove it.

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Boston Globe Column: Story Behind The Book

The coronavirus pandemic changed our relationship with sports. What will fans need for sports to be normal again?

Op-Ed: Fans author Larry Olmsted on the Lessons Fans Learn From Sports The resurgent Buffalo Bills came up two touchdowns short of a trip to Tampa and shot at the Vince Lombardi Trophy. I was glued to the set for the AFC Championship, rooting my Bills on, but part of me knew it was probably just as well. The Bills lost their last four trips to the Big Game — back to back to back to back — the kind of record no one wants, and one that will in all likelihood never be broken. But if there is one thing I have learned while researching the nature of sports fandom, it is to never say never, because what we enjoy so much about athletic contests is the inherent unpredictability. After all, just a few short months ago it was unclear whether there would even be a Super Bowl LV. Now we’ve got an epic quarterback matchup for the ages, 22,000 fans in the stands, and the first-ever championship game with actual home-field advantage. Other than the underwhelming halftime show, there is a lot to look forward to this weekend. All in all, it was a good year to be a Buffalo supporter, but back in October, when I tried to tune into the Week 6 Bills-Titans game, I was disappointed to find that it had been postponed. That quickly become more common, as Monday Night Football morphed into Monday Afternoon and Evening Football, while the Steelers and Ravens entered uncharted territory with a midafternoon Wednesday game. But for bored and often sequestered fans with no movie theaters or live entertainment, rescheduled football was way better than no football. In Aesop’s fable, “The Oak and the Reed,” the big, tough tree discovers too late that in a storm it is better to bend than break. The last year has been a torrential storm for sports, but at least the notoriously inflexible NFL finally learned some new tricks. After what seemed to be a fairly successful attempt at simulating a normal-ish season quickly devolved, radical ideas were floated, including shortened playoffs, playoffs bubbles, no playoffs, a postponed, relocated and/or fan-less Super Bowl, or even cancellation of America’s marquee spectator sports event. Such drastic changes proved unnecessary, but the ups, downs and league’s flexibility are a teachable moment for fans as well. That has been the untold story of sports in the pandemic. Sports are inherently unpredictable. Yet leagues and athletes have long been fixated on making them less so. That’s why, for example, we have instant replay. Complex data-driven fielding shifts a la “Moneyball” are all about eliminating unpredictability. So is training for many sports; pro golfers hit balls endlessly to ingrain muscle memory that will not fail in the face of mounting pressure (doesn’t always work). And fans? Well, in sports everyone loves an underdog. This makes for good movies, both fictional (“Rocky,” “Breaking Away,” “The Bad News Bears”) and based on reality (“Hoosiers,” “Rudy,” “Cool Runnings,” “Miracle”). Fans who embrace underdog themes, such as validation of hard work, inspirational coaching, teamwork ethic, or even good versus evil miss the real point. The true power of sports is its unpredictability, and nowhere is that clearer than in shocking upsets. If we really thought USA hockey had absolutely no chance against the USSR in the 1980 Olympics, no one would have watched. There would be no sports. Research shows so many physical, emotional and societal benefits to being a sports fan, but as I racked up study after study about all the good things that happen to us from following teams, my editor asked me, “Isn’t it the same for fans of Harry Potter? Or Star Wars? Or opera?” She questioned whether fandom was fandom in any sphere. So I went back to the experts, psychologists and academics. It turns out that one big factor setting sports apart is its inherent uncertainty. It may have taken four decades and a few too many installments, but we always knew the Dark Side was not going to take the galaxy. James Bond won’t let the villain blow up the world. Sports are the last great unknown. It’s why games are, unlike most any other form of broadcast or digitally delivered entertainment, still consumed in real-time. Accidentally hearing the final score ruins the unscripted experience. No one waits 17 weeks to binge-watch the previous NFL season. The era of “peak TV,” with limitless content via more and better streaming options than ever, seemed perfect for the pandemic. Yet opening day ratings for the return of baseball were through the roof — fans were starving for games. The MLB season opener drew a record 4.4 million viewers, up from just 1.2 million the year before. WNBA viewership jumped a staggering 68% across the entire season. These record ratings slipped as more and more sports came back to the screen, but fans hardly turned away: the first 10 NFL Playoff games averaged within one percent of last year’s viewership. Following sports has been demonstrated to make us happier, feel more socially connected, be part of a community and provide a very real healing balm in times of cultural trauma. For many reasons, we need sports, and especially now. But we also need to be safe. Both the spread of COVID-19 and return of sports have been full of surprises, and the bend-or-break silver lining is that it forces us to embrace change to survive. So, what can sports fans learn? The NBA and NHL got creative with “bubbles,” a word no one but children ever used conversationally pre-COVID. Now we hear it daily, and just as those seasons finished successfully, we learned that in our own lives, maintaining a bubble is a good practice. Baseball? For my entire lifetime, it was safe to gather in stands without social distancing, but when a virus changed that status quo, MLB abruptly bent in the wind with an entire regular season of empty ballparks. As fans flocked back to televised games in record numbers, the sea of empty seats provided a months-long visual reminder that our safety lay in social separation. Baseball also changed matchups, dividing teams into geographic clusters to keep games regional and reduce travel. No sporting event involves as much travel as the Olympics, which were wisely postponed in hopes that vaccine salvation would arrive within a year. These demonstrations of minimizing unnecessary travel and that even the biggest gatherings on the calendar were worth skipping to save lives applied equally to Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Christmas and New Year’s. Not everyone got this message, but millions did. The NHL fined players for unsafe social gatherings. The NFL made a very public point of aggressively fining teams and coaches caught violating mask requirements on TV. So even in a global pandemic, we can still learn a lot from the unpredictability of sports. If the Bills play one mid-season a few days late, the Boston Marathon is canceled and the Olympics are postponed, let’s think of it as just a part of sports. In fact, let’s recognize it as an essential part of what make sports so uniquely important in every culture on earth. And if the fans watching in droves learn that safety measures, like frequent testing, wearing masks, practicing social distancing, and skipping unnecessary travel and ill-advised gatherings can make their own lives and others safer, then that’s just one more blessing we get from sports. 

Assuming the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, now rescheduled for late July 2021, go as planned, there will be lots of Gold, Silver and Bronze medals handed out. But the biggest long-term winners will likely be the two newly added sports debuting for the first time, surfing and “rock” climbing. In my book Fans: How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier And More Understanding I cover a lot of the benefits that being a sports fan brings us individually and collectively as society. One of those benefits to society is physical health and exercise, and one way that happens is when spectators are so intrigued by the sport they are watching that it motivates them to either generally “get fit” or try a sport new to them as participants. In the book I cite studies specifically related to the Olympics, summer and winter, and how every two years the games cause a spike in gym membership and fitness activities. But this is demonstrated most clearly when the Olympics televises sports that are not regularly seen by viewers at home, and in the past such spikes attributed to the Olympics have occurred in swimming, beach volleyball and triathlon. Surfing and rock climbing both stand to attract a lot of newbies when they air from Japan for a couple of reasons, First, they are both “sexy” and exciting sports that will hook viewers and get the adrenaline flowing. Most sports fans at home have never watched either sport, and will be fascinated when they do. But they are also accessible. You can take a 2-4 hour “learn to surf” lesson at just about any beach resort around the world and you don’t have to be especially fit or experienced. I’ve personally done these intro classes a couple of times, and it’s lot of fun. I could really feel the rush when I rode my first wave into the beach with a big smile plastered all over my face. I have long been an avid skier, but there’s no way I could do a run just a few minutes after starting my first lesson, but that’s possible with surfing. Climbing is even more accessible because the format being used in the Olympics is indoor on an artificial wall, and these can be found in climbing gyms and health clubs all over the country, including the middle of major cities where other sports are hard to practice. It’s safe and easy to try for the first time. So, if the Games go on, expect a surge of interest in surfing and climbing – and maybe you’ll try it yourself!