Many people love sports unconditionally. It’s a way for them to bond over a shared interest, stay physically fit and have something to root for. Both genders love sports, of course, yet I do feel there is particularly a male culture that revolves around talking about last night's game to converse without actually talking about each other. This is a culture I’ve simply never been a part of.
In high school, I was a part of the track and cross country teams. Akin to swimming or dance, these are competitions based on individual performance measured by time, distance traveled or skills, not through coordinated teams. I loved the deep community that I grew to be a part of and the immense strife of physical fitness that we all could complain about yet also cherish. In this, these ‘individual performance’ sports as I call them may fit inside a different category entirely. It’s one’s own journey that in many ways can be entirely mental.
In addition, I would say I enjoy going to see a sports game if there’s someone that I know is playing as an athlete or marching band performer, as I’d love to cheer on and support a friend. Perhaps this is because I want to have an individual connection to whatever I may be watching, which makes it easier to root for whereas with large teams in a group I can relate to less.
When people become unconditionally devoted to regional teams and put their entire emotions into outcomes that they cannot even control, it feels quite silly to me. For those living in CT, the question always arose of whether you supported the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox in baseball. As I live at these cities' crossroads, topics like these seem pointless. There’s also the irony that, like religion, despite sports being so seductively good at bringing people together, that also means it is quite good at being divisive.
And when there’s small or large teams competing, it also can be hard to ignore that everyone on all sides is always obnoxiously hungry to make a profit. I’ve been to enough stadiums to understand that they herd attendees in like cattle in closed quarters, only to advertise them everything imaginable with bright flashy signs, including alcohol so that people’s decisions keep them further penniless. Everyone just accepts it blindly because they want to see a bunch of large sweaty men run into each other on astroturf and gain lifelong concussions.
Perhaps international sports competitions such as the Olympics or the World Cup might make me comprehend regional support better, as one’s support for their team is one of national pride. But what athletic allegiance do I have to New England, besides the fact that I live there? Of course I am fond of my home, but I have trouble equating that to sports interest. For instance, I believe in the importance of physical fitness and socializing in a community, but these are only aspects of sports that I like already that can also be equated to activities outside of sports.
Let’s talk about the value of sports as entertainment. Some of the main things many men seem to talk about to each other are sports or video games. When I don’t have much or any interest in either, I am immediately an outsider. They’ll continue to talk to me, but you can tell that a part of them died inside upon hearing that I don’t have a fantasy football account or that I don’t follow even one sport.
I can attest to the contributing fact that my upbringing never made the idea of sports important. As my parents divorced when I was an infant, there wasn’t the opportunity or time within my moving about to bring me to T-ball the way my older brother had. In addition, I was sorting through other issues like physical therapy to walk (I skipped crawling and scooted on my butt for a long time) and I had to attend speech therapy until the fourth grade. It’s not that my parents didn’t spend time with me, it’s that I never had a strong exposure to sports. I was too busy cutting up Ninjago magazines and gluing them to paper booklets, imagining Slenderman was outside my playground in pure terror and drawing imaginary creatures with made-up descriptions.
I never understood why throwing a ball was interesting. It’s the same game with the same rules every time and quickly becomes boring for me. You can mix up the players or teams, but it’s the same formula over and over. In hobbies like cooking, you can add and change anything you want. This is the same for anything creative, musical or literary. I believe that the static nature of these rules disinterested me deeply, as there was no chance for innovation or imagination.
During recess as a kid, I played dodgeball and later a little soccer, but most of my time was spent making dirt huts with my friends and pretending there was an entire civilization we were controlling. I was intrigued by kids telling me that the heat lines above the pavement were a glitch in the matrix or that my friend Dominic was pretending to be a pterodactyl. When other boys got older, despite being friends with everyone, for me there was a notable shift away from athletic cliques and towards hanging out with the band kids who were just as odd as me.
Friends and acquaintances in the audience, marching band music and popcorn made high school football games a magical place of social connectivity for me. My mind however was never interested in the game and when everyone would cheer at points scored I’d turn and stop talking to whomever I was talking to and clap my hands in conformity.
If I am forced to watch sports, then I would say there are definitely sports that I find more interesting than others. I like how fast paced basketball is. Football games can drag a lot of the time, and if a team is losing by the fourth quarter it can be mostly pretty obvious that nothing is gonna happen. In the fourth quarter of a basketball game, if it’s neck and neck and both teams are great, I have sometimes found myself swept up in how exciting it is simply due to the uncertainty of the winner. In basketball too, you can clearly see without much sport literacy if a team is cohesive and working together or simply bad at communication.
Still however, my interest has been consistently that of individual connections and experiences and not the sport itself. I’d go to a SuperBowl get together and barely look at the TV. I’ve been invited to play pickleball or tennis several times, but after a couple rounds I feel restless and bored. I end up leaving, wandering or jogging around instead. In this way I have felt that there was something wrong with me as it was just another check in a list of places that I did not ever belong to.
Some people have compared sports to video games (I am not getting into whether they are the same thing as that is a whole other essay). Video games are definitely not exercise, but they do offer interactive playthroughs in self-autonomy, competition and adventure. There was a time over the pandemic where I played PlayStation avidly, but after several years of absence to the hobby it is clear to me that virtual games do not present anything of entertainment or value to me anymore.
As with sports, it felt that you needed to be a dedicated and devoted video game player or not at all and I have always had other interests that were much more compelling. I liked producing media just as much as consuming it, and too long spent within virtual realms began to give me headaches as well. If I tried to sit down and play a video game these days, I am certain that after an hour I would feel nauseous or restlessly in need of a walk.
I hear about brutal rugby injuries and still think it’s better to get out pent up human energy in this way then offering scared slaves with rusty swords to hungry lions for the entertainment of the Romans. I also think that overseen competition as entertainment is a human thing and may sedate mankind’s urges to destroy. However, when I see how much money, gambling and egos are thrown into sports, I cannot fathom what such vast amounts of resources would do if put towards something more productive towards helping people’s suffering.
This is not to say there are no good athletes out there. Some of what professional athletes can do should be commended. Exercise keeps us healthy and staying alive longer. I watch Olympic gymnastics with my jaw to the floor and I see the joy it brings to diverse communities who may be brought together in great beautiful celebrations.
I think it is the giant groups that have always disinterested me and the societal expectation to care about regional entities. The ego of men and the athletic cliques that form where people devote their life to a sport and nothing else, who believe that they peaked in high school or college because they made the football varsity team. From a generalization, the flashy love of girls and glory has always seemed shallow and unintelligent to me yet they are heralded as such saviors sometimes.
Perhaps I just have been afraid of competition or frankly, out of shape. I loved high school cross country and I know what good community teams can do. Perhaps it is true that despite not being a sports guy, I wouldn’t hesitate to cheer on things that matter to me, and perhaps that’s all that matters.
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