People love sports. There’s no denying it. Everyone huddles around their televisions or packs into stadiums to watch the big game. Whether it is baseball, basketball, football, or the real football, people love their teams. People completely adopt the identities of these teams, and because of that they make perfect subjects. The fans/subjects are defined by the culture of the sport, but the sport culture also wouldn’t exist without the fans. The fans are both the definition and the defined.
However it cannot be said that people are born loving a certain team. Just as with Howard Becker’s pot smokers, people learn to love sports. Their parents are fans, all their friends are fans, and before you know it they are a fan as well. Some kids even use sports as a way to rebel against their parents. Parents are die-hard Yankees fans? Be a Red Sox fan. Parents love Man U? Cheer for Liverpool. The team-identity completely takes over. Fans have no personal stake in games. Their lives continue as normal whether their team wins or not, but people are still devastated if their team loses and ecstatic when they win. People speak as if they are a part of the team, saying things like “Did you watch the game? Yeah, we won!”. The use of “we” doesn’t really make sense. Chances are the person speaking didn’t play in the game, yet they are so invested in the team that it is as if they personally won.
Sports fans learn behavior just as the pot-smokers in the reading learn. They learn to love the sport, and they learn to love going to games to watch the game with other people. Sports are like a drug, and people go crazy for it.
On that note, GO PACKERS.
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