Andy Hinds fears that sports culture may be teaching our kids aggression, based upon a cultish and arbitrary legacy.
There are some things about the video that are cute, mostly in the way that kids are adorable when they act like tiny, comical caricatures of grownups. The boy wrings his hands and contorts his face with anxiety as the clock runs down. He calls out the players’ names and shows an understanding of the game that seems beyond his years. And it’s cute the way he’s clearly bonding with his dad over this shared involvement in the fortunes of their basketball team.
But when the little man starts ranting about how he hates a bunch of specific players, and how he hates Miami sooooooo much? Not very cute.
It’s one of the many spectacles I’ve witnessed that makes me shake my head and say,“Sports is weird.”
I didn’t grow up in a family of sports fanatics, which, it often seems, makes me a minority in this country. My family is from Montana, which is two states away from any professional sports teams. On top of that, my dad was in the Army, so we moved around a lot, often overseas. I grew up having some vague notion that we were supposed to like a college football team called the Grizzlies, but it wasn’t something that came up very often. It was sort of like how we were supposedly Methodists. Or Lutherans. I can never remember which.
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In some ways, dedication to a professional sports franchise is a lot like religion. Not just in the obvious parallels of the weekly rituals, pilgrimages, mythology, and iconography; but also in the seeming arbitrariness of how people become believers. As with religion, your belief in a certain team is often predicated on where you were born, and what team your family believes in. Some people never question their loyalty to the teams of their forefathers. Others experiment with exotic teams, ultimately settling with one that better suits them. They may end up abandoning the enterprise altogether—or returning to their original faith.
When kids get indoctrinated into the cult of whatever sports team their parents love, that’s some strong juju. As we can see from the video of this young fan, he is overcome with emotion because of a game played by a team he loves for no other reason than that he has been raised to love them. If he were reacting to characters in a Pixar movie, I doubt that his parents would be encouraging him to become ever more distraught. They would more likely be telling him, “Don’t worry, buddy—It’s just a movie.” I can’t help but be reminded of little kids speaking in tongues, or preaching hellfire and damnation, or—dare I say it?—holding “God Hates Fags” signs on a street corner.
All right, all right…I don’t really think sports fandom (or religion, for that matter) is all bad. Both institutions create community through a shared mythology, foster civic pride, and offer a common cause to rally around, I guess. I used disturbing (to some people, anyway) examples of children who have been indoctrinated into something they don’t understand simply to draw attention to what strikes me as the dark side of being a sports fan: If you love one team, you are bound to hate its competitors. Usually, this is just the fun “play-hate” of the proverbial friendly rivalry; but the more your identity is wrapped up in your love of the team, the more extreme your behavior is likely to become. You don’t have to think very hard to come up with examples of sports fans around the world rampaging through the streets in jubilation, anger, or even just anticipation surrounding the Big Game.
But I’m not really so concerned that the cute little guy in this video is going to run out and set fire to cop cars if the Thunder loses the playoffs. It just makes me sad to hear a child say he hates anyone or anything.
When I was a kid, “hate” was one of the strongest taboo words you could say, and the talking-to you would receive from Mom or Dad if you used it was much more serious than if you said “ass” or “shit”. “Hate” meant that you wished utter annihilation upon whatever caused you to invoke it. I may have an exaggerated sensitivity to the power of words, but I fear that encouraging children throw the word “hate” around can only make it more likely that they’ll think feeling hatred is okay too. If a six-year old hates LeBron James because of what happens on TV, imagine how he’ll react to all his peers who will eventually get between him and his real life goals.
For more on kids, sports and aggression see the video Daddy’s Little Girl Curses at Basketball Game on The Good Feed Blog.
AP Photo/Lynne Sladky
I think watching sports and rooting for a team is a good opportunity to talk to your kids about the dangers of fanaticism, in all walks of life. Supporting your team, obsessing a bit about it, finding others to share your support with, all fine. Learning to support your team also when things are not gong well or when people around you support another team is a good lesson in persistence and in trusting what you stand for and being true to that. But as with so many other things (faith, politics, whatever) there’s a point where it crosses into… Read more »
I played ice hockey until the end of high school and grew up watching American football, ice hockey, basketball and baseball. My wife’s family has never been into sports, so when I took our son to Chicago recently for the Cubs vs. Red Sox and Wrigley they thought it was cool that I was doing that with my son, but they didn’t understand why I chose to go to a baseball game with him. I grew up watching the Cubs on WGN with my grandfather and since I was a little kid I wanted to see a game at Wrigley.… Read more »
I grew up watching the Cubs on WGN too… My family isn’t fanatical about sports, but love the Cubbies. It’s funny, but Wrigley seems different than any other sporting event… It feels like an incredibly warm community experience. We just took the kids last week – it was their first pro game of any sort. They were spoiled because we were given insane seats 3 rows back from right field. I think it’s really a good opportunity to teach kids about teaching kids about good sportsmanship. My eldest said “BOO!” when one of the Mets hit a good shot, and… Read more »
I like this post. Thankfully, the irrational behavior associated with professional sports fandom is offset by the (potentially) positive influence of kids’ sports. My son just finished his baseball little league season, and I was impressed by the way the coaches encouraged the kids to respect the teams they played against. I think participation in sports can be a very positive thing. Passive spectatorship, on the other hand, can be a dangerous thing.
Sports are a sacred cow. Well, actually, that’s not true of all sports. It’s true only for the most popular of the school sports. Don’t be surprised if you receive an angry reaction. Some sports fans clearly are unreasonable. (Notice I did not say “all.”) For example, in my own experience growing up in a football-crazed state, I noticed that if an individual player was a bully, most of the fans didn’t care and would even deny the player was a bully. At a “rival” school in my district, one of the players (someone, incidentally, whom I had admired as… Read more »