Why Do I Care So Much About Sports?

Since I was a kid my mom has been asking me the same question, “Why do you care so much about sports?” I’ve always responded by just saying “because I do”. Vague, perhaps, but what kid gives their mom a straight answer? However the sports hiatus at the beginning of the pandemic gave me time to consider the question and I think it’s time I try to give her an answer.

The first reason that comes to my mind is aesthetics. Sports just look really cool. I was an OK athlete as a kid, but playing was never the real draw for me. If that were the case I would’ve stopped caring when I stopped playing. Whether it be the violent ballet of football and hockey, the skillful blend of explosion and coordination in baseball, basketball, and soccer, or the quiet, graceful brutality of tennis and golf I love it all. Day in and day out I can watch it and never get bored. You just can’t find another place to get that pure visceral reaction you get from a great play. The pomp and circumstance combine to create an atmosphere of pure pandemonium. Where else can you find scenes like this. The mixture of the games and the crowd can’t be beat from a pure aesthetics point of view.

The second reason is the emotion. Sports exist in this weird middle ground where the stakes couldn’t be higher and also none of it really matters. That dichotomy creates the perfect space for passion. Giving yourself over to those feelings is thrilling. It really shouldn’t make me feel good when Harry Kane scores or Ronald Acuña Jr homers, but it does. I know in my head it doesn’t matter where I sit in my house or what I’m wearing, but I can’t stop myself from feeling like it does. I’ll never forget the pain of Kevin Dyson coming up one yard short, but I’ll also always have the Miracle in Amsterdam. But it’s not just limited to the teams you care about. What is March Madness if not a collective fever dream where we all decide to care about a bunch of players and teams we’ve never heard of before and will forget about the next day. Hundreds of millions of people watch the Super Bowl and almost all of them don’t root for one of the teams. Only in sports can you get people to care about something that they don’t actually care about. There’s no logic to sports fandom and I hope there never will be.

The third reason is that sports never end. There will always be another season, a next tournament, or another match. While the moments are permanent, sports aren’t. Where else can you go, where you know that no matter what there’ll always be next year. Stories end. All other pieces of culture inevitably conclude. Not sports. Win or lose you can always know they’ll be back. I’m not saying the moments are meaningless, I just find incredible comfort in knowing my team will be back next season and the season after that, until the end. When baseball ends you have football, into basketball, and back into baseball rinse and repeat. There is always something on because there are always sports. Sports are a constant in an ever changing world, yet never stale.

Lastly is the randomness. I love that for the most part none of this makes any sense. So much time is spent trying to analyze every single thing that can happen, every strategy, every tactic and in the end it doesn’t matter. One crazy bounce, one wind gust, one second back on the clock, and everything can change. Hell, you can get everything right and still lose. You can do everything wrong and still win. Sometimes the calls go against you. We spend so much trying to figure out with absolute certainty what will happen, but honestly it’s a waste of time. It’s random and I love it.

So I’ve written a lot of words over this article yet I can’t help but feel I had it right as a kid. Why do I care so much about sports? Because I do.