I heard a funny/insulting/poignant description of professional football once: That it’s 22 men on the field who desperately need rest surrounded by 22,000 fans (or 82,000!) who desperately need exercise.
But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? My own family’s not big on football. Here in Colorado, we figured out that the Broncos won the division championship game on Sunday not by watching the game, but by the happy shrieks we heard in our neighborhood. Still, even from that lowly vantage point of the disinterested, I can clearly see that for so many, football (and other pro and college sports) serves as more than merely a televised time waster.
I’m not talking about it being an obsession, as it surely is for a few. I’m talking about it being a point of bonding, a shared interest with family and friends and colleagues. I enjoy the conversations it triggers here at Plugged In the morning after big games—the so-called water cooler conversations. It opens doors to get-togethers, nachos-themed parties and lots of friendly scraps about such things as yardage gained, penalties pondered and field goals glamorized.
Rooting around for poll ideas yesterday, I came up with one that forces folks to think through what they’d sooner give up this year, watching the Super Bowl or the Olympics. After publishing it on our website home page and Facebook page, the concept became an instant hit, generating a huge amount of conversation about everything from the difference between amateur and professional players to an admonition for us to pray for the athletes in Sochi this year.
So it’s like I said, sports can be a social glue, a bonding agent, and that can be a great thing if we let it. Today I’m setting aside for the moment concerns about raunchy Super Bowl commercials and obsessive blowhards and overpaid athletes and lamentable doping and all those other downsides. What I’m interested in is hearing some of your reasons for watching sports, by way of the television or up close and personal in the stands. Is there a difference between the way you interact with teams you have personal connections to and teams full of pros you’ve never met from far-flung corners of the country? Have sports brought you closer to someone you might not otherwise share much with? Have they become a focal point of common interest with a son or daughter?
Let’s exercise our fingers at least, then, and give sports a chance!
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