Why do you love sports, something that don't matter in your real life?

See my signature. Asimov said it well.

 

I loved basketball from a young age. I played all the time. When the Rockets moved to Houston, I started watching. I grew up with Rudy T and Calvin and Mike Newlin and Moses and the Rockets, Oilers, and Astros, but mostly the Rockets. Saw Drexler play in High School. It was a big deal to drive through Houston to the Summit and get back home late at night. When Phi Slamma Jamma came around (went to Jr High with the Bunce brothers), I was an awestruck college kid who, with a couple of buddies, went down to Fonde one day to watch Moses and Akeem and Clyde play ball. My intramural number in college was Clyde's 23. All through High School and College, I subscribed to Sports Illustrated hoping to one day see the Rockets on the cover after winning a championship. After suffering through the Celtics series x2 and the Albuquerque fiasco, I had almost given up hope of ever having a championship team to call my own, but when Dream and the gang won Game 7, not only had the Rockets won a championship, but there was a tangible link in Rudy T and Dream to my East Texas Rocket-infatuated youth and the weight of the world was off my shoulders as one of my teams finally had a championship. (I have never bought another issue of SI and never will... the bastards.) With Clyde the next year, it was even sweeter, given the history.

When I watch the Rockets, I remember the freedom of High School and College and the fun from the camaraderie and the playing of basketball. I remember things I used to do that I will never do again (2 knuckles above the rim, hold court for four hours at a time, use flexibility to make twisting shots, etc.).

I follow the Rockets because I love basketball and they are a link to my youth.

(That's why I'm so ticked off about the recent uniform changes. They should always wear the Championship uniforms. Always.)

 

the same reason i love life...

 

Sports betting?

or YAO........

LOL...........

 

i've thought about this a lot, and i haven't read the rest of the thread and this post probably won't come out like i want it to, but...



it's weird, like you said, sports mean nothing. you don't get a raise if your team wins, your family and friends don't stop loving you if your teams loses. you don't get fired, your don't get sick, food doesn't taste better, world peace doesn't break out, nothing really happens b/c of winning and losing. and yet sports mean so much, even if we just think of them as things to watch while getting drunk.

why do we love sports? for the competition of it all, the way it reflects life and the bonding. i think sports is one of the greatest things man ever invented.

it fulfills all our primal urges for war and conquering people and proving yourself (or your people) superior without anyone having to die or get maimed. we wanna win, we wanna lose (b/c winning would never be as fun w/o the losing), we wanna say we're the best.

we want the bonding and sense of community that spring from sports in general. in a stadium of 70,000 people or an arena of 20,000, you have people of all different ages, races, and creeds, people who would never meet each other in real life and almost certainly never hang out, all united behind a common goal. you turn around and high five or hug a complete stranger b/c some person who you'll never meet or know just scored a touchdown or made a shot or hit a home run. a whole city becomes united behind a team b/c they represent you, and they are you. an identity, winning or losing, can be built around that team. and it's amazing to think it can happen, but it does.

and lastly, in sports you see everyday life. completely unscripted, never knowing what twists and turns will happen. we wanna see unrivaled greatness, a team so good or a player so good they always come out on top, always succeed. we love our larger than life superheroes and sports gives us that. and we wanna see the underdog, david to another team's goliath, come out on top.

we wanna hear about the person who had setbacks or didn't get dealt a good hand, but perservered through it all, and made it. even if making it just means they got to get on the field for one play, or take one shot or make 6 3 pointers in 4 minutes. we love the human drama of it all. we love teams overcoming the odds, we love to hate the teams that the other teams have to overcome. we love seeing our team build over time, progress, and finally come out on top. we love seeing how people fair under pressure. we love figuring out who must've screwed up to make us lose.

we love a father and son playing catch. cliche, but a very good cliche. it's an activity almost unlike any other. it has no purpose, just throwing a ball back and forth. no one is practicing or trying to get better or trying to win, it's just catch. no words even have to be spoken, the bond is just understood. it's a beautiful thing (and why the end of Field of Dreams is so eye-moistening). and that goes for so much of sports. team camaraderie, city camaraderie, country camaraderie.

in the end, we allow sports to be important b/c while they mean so little, they mean so much.

 

there is no real life without any love

 

Gambling.

 

entertainment

 

I actually read somewhere that people who feel a strong affliation with a sports team are happier and healthier than non sports watching counterparts....I guess its a leftover from our tribal days.

Course it may just be because that sample excludes those sad sacks who feel no affiliation to any one or any thing.

I mean I love America...but I don't like all of our policies.

I love Texas, but I don't like how conservative much of it is.

My Astros, Texans, Rockets, Cougars and Aeros are something I can feel a part of and be proud of with no caveats or reservations...course its an illusion that I am part of the "team" but its a very pleasant illusion that enriches my life.

 

Totally agree...and I would add entertainment/escapism in there as well. For me, sports is quite literally my life.

Game 5, 2005 NCLS Astros/Cards, 45,000+ fans going all out wild cause the team is one strike away from history. And I'm right down in the middle of it all within reaching distance of the field. Forget what happened afterward, for that moment will stay with me forever. 'nuff said.

 

And that couldn't be more true.

 

Interesting thread with a lot of great replies. I think that the appeal of sports has a lot to do with the Aristotlean theory of drama and that sports provides a catharsis for us to excise our own emotions but also help to bind us as part of a larger whole.

I think a lot of posters have hit upon how sports helps to reinforce tribal unity. We wear our teams colors and engage in the same rituals that define us apart from other tribes. I think it goes deeper than that. For instance why then do people like to watch non-team sports or sports where the atheletes aren't representing a country or a city but themselves like tennis or boxing. For that matter why will people root for an athelete that doesn't represent their own city or country yet does something fantastic like when fans in Oakland gave Nolan Ryan a standing ovation for his last no-hitter even though it was the A's he blanked. There is something very primal and basic in the human psyche to celebrate achievement and sports is both a microcosm and an easily understandable simulacra of the society and the human condition. In team sports we recognize how individuals meld themselves into a cohesive unit to achieve a greater goal while for individuals atheletes we recognize a common humanity of an individual struggling to overcome obstacles and hardships.

Its easy to say that sports don't contribute any because as fans you can't quantify it interms of material value but I think that's looking at it very simplisticly. Every culture has had some form of athletic competition that often represents the highest and most important rituals of their culture. From the Bird Man Competition of the Rapa Nui to the ball game of the Aztecs to the Superbowl sports are intrinsic to defining a society. So while they don't add material value neither does art or religion yet those are considered intrinsic and necessary to culture.

Sports in a modern culture also are our primary generator of myth. From sports such legends as Babe Ruth calling his homerun, the cursed Cubs, or for us the legend of Clutch City are born and form part of our Jungian collective psyche. Sports become a far wider part of our culture than just for sports fans but part of the whole collective history and language. Just consider how much terms and references to sports permeate all sectors of our society for instance when George Tenet said the intelligence on Iraqi WMD was a "Slam Dunk" everyone knew what he meant.

Finally regarding why on a personal level we imbue such things as getting a ball through a hoop with such meaning that has to do is that humans seek meaning. Albert Camus explains this best on his take of the myth of Sisyphus. For those not familiar with the story Sisyphus is a Greek myth about a man who was condemned by the gods to roll a stone up a hill only to have it roll back down once it got to the top for all of eternity. Camus turns the idea of an eternal punishment of wasted effort on his head by saying that Sisyphus is actually really happy since he has meaning in his life to always roll the stone back up the hill. So while this seems to everyone else a meaningless task to him his life is simple and clear with an objective and a task that although never reached gives purpose to his life. One can say that getting excited or even obsessed about putting a ball through a hoop appears to be a meaningless task and that even if one team wins a championship there will be another championship the next year and the next that simple act provides meaning to the players and the fans since its simple and clear and something that we choose to imbue with meaning.

 

the reason i love basketball is because i live it..... my whole room is a ROCKETS THEME.....! I actually hate it but i couldnt imagine my life without it. its like a love/hate relationship....