It is often said that Americans are “sports-obsessed.” But while
we obsessively watch, follow and bet on sports, seldom do we
actually play them.
Commercials during football games underscore how sports
dominates the lives of many Americans. A beer commercial asks “Do
you know what love is?” and shows the lengths to which some NFL
fans will go to prove their allegiance to a team. For example, a
Pittsburgh Steeler fan proudly displays the numerals of all six
Steeler Super Bowl wins tattooed down his shoulder and
arm.
A Visa Card commercial
features Larry, a member of the Never-Miss-A-Super-Bowl-Club. “I
have missed weddings. I have missed babies being born. But I have
no intention of missing a Super Bowl,” Larry says. Then, with an
earnestness I’ll bet his family appreciates, he adds,
“ever.”
Don, another member of the club, says, “Super Bowl
III, that was like one of my children being born.”
The commercial urges viewers to use their Visa Card to
become eligible to win a free trip to the Super Bowl “every year
for the rest of your life.” That’s right—spend enough on credit and
you too can become just like Larry and Don and make watching other
people play games the center of your life.
These commercials work because there’s a lot of truth in
them. Millions of Americans would enjoy attending the Super Bowl
every year. Many of us know people who can’t make it through a
romantic dinner with their significant other without obsessively
checking their smart phone to get the latest update on their team’s
performance, as seen in a current AT&T commercial.
The lives of millions of American men revolve primarily
around sports. These are guys who spend large chunks of their
weekends on the couch — often in their “man caves” — watching
sports; guys whose most anticipated day of the year is their
fantasy football league draft day; guys whose most
emotional and passionate moments are brought on by the ups and
downs of their favorite teams.
Ask these guys which teams should play in the BCS National
Championship game, and they’ll have a ready opinion, and probably a
fairly well-informed one. Ask them about the latest political
debate or about anything going on in the rest of the world and
they’ll respond with a blank stare.
Most of these guys aren’t athletes themselves — at least
anymore. They live vicariously through their heroes and their
teams.
Football is by far America’s most popular spectator sport.
Of the 45 most-watched network TV broadcasts of all time, 21 are
Super Bowls. According to the National Football League (NFL), a
record 22 games attracted at least 20 million TV
viewers through the first 11 weeks of this
season.
In 2002, the NFL found that the average male surveyed
spent nearly seven hours a week watching its product. Those numbers
have no doubt grown over the last decade with the advent of huge
flat screen and high-definition TVs, the Red Zone channel, and as
fantasy football has become more popular.
An estimated one in five American males plays fantasy
sports, a billion-dollar industry. A 2010 ESPN poll
found that half of American adults have placed a bet on sports in
the past year.
Sports have become the centerpiece of our holidays.
Baseball is traditionally a part of Independence Day celebrations.
Thanksgiving is as much about watching the NFL as it is about
turkey or giving thanks. And it was reported that the NBA rushed to
reach a labor agreement so as to be able to broadcast games on its
most lucrative day, Christmas Day.
But as more Americans follow more sports more often and in
more ways, it seems fewer are actually participating in
them.
Sure, most parents get their kids involved in sports, and
many teenagers and college students play. But at some
point after college, most people stop playing.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to curtail sports
participation, including work and family obligations. But though
they stop playing sports, many men continue to spend lots of time
watching and following them.
Everyone knows the effect inactivity has our health.
Numerous studies have
found a link between TV watching and
poor health.
Studies routinely find that most Americans get less than
the minimum recommended level of physical activity, about 30
minutes of moderate-intensity activity a day. In fact,
according to the CDC, only about one-third (35 percent) of American
adults engage in regular physical activity. About the same share,
33 percent, do no activity at all.
Our inactivity helps explain why two-thirds of American
adults are classified as at least overweight, according to the
Kaiser Family Foundation.
And why there’s been a “dramatic increase” in overweight
and obesity rates over the last two decades, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2010 “no state
had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%,” according to the
CDC.
Inactivity is associated with a host of other maladies,
including heart disease, diabetes, depression and hypertension.
Every year in the U.S. at least 250,000 deaths
are attributed
to a lack of physical activity.
So is our love of sports killing us? Let’s
just say that when millions of Americans are spending most of their
weekends watching sports and filling out their fantasy football
lineups, there’s a lot less time for exercise.
Health is not the only casualty. We chuckle at women whose
sports-crazed husbands have made them “sports widows.” But a
clinical psychologist from the University of Alabama
recently
warned that football fanaticism
qualifies as an addiction that can have profound effects on our
relationships.
Other psychologists have
discussed how sports have become a
substitute to organized religion.
And our sports obsessions can
distract us from more serious matters.
As former Minnesota Vikings running back Robert Smith has
written, “If people would spend as much time investigating and
looking at our government or some of the decisions that are made in
this country as they do memorizing stats of players, then we’d have
a better understanding of the world and would be capable of making
better decisions.”
I’m no sports hater. Growing up, I spent countless hours
every day watching, playing and following sports. I played high
school sports and was a scholarship athlete in college. I put in
thousands of hours in Tecmo Bowl and Madden Football. I’m a proud
two-time winner of the fantasy football league I used to play
in.
Now in my 30s, I continue to play sports several times a
week, and I still enjoy taking in a good game. But the degree to
which watching sports dominate the lives of many American men is,
in a word, pathetic.
Sports have much to offer. They can promote teamwork,
sportsmanship and good health and instill discipline and humility.
But most of these benefits are derived not from watching, betting
on, or fantasizing about sports. They come from actually playing
them.
