As sports fans, we choose to conform more often than not. But when we go against the grain, writes Aaron Gordon, we’re able to see the social movement taking place.
I watched the red desert sun set in a parking lot while I waited for a taxi to take me home. Around me, Steelers and Cardinals fans giggled as they diligently went through every pose on the goofy picture checklist, including the Captain Morgan and the Heisman. I leaned against a pillar and constantly refreshed my Twitter feed, trying to look preoccupied with pressing affairs. No one was tweeting, so there was nothing for me to read. I stood in idleness until my cab arrived.
In the modern, connected world, it’s easy to take for granted how important socializing is to the sports experience. I’m almost always connected to others. When I wake up at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday to watch the English Premier League alone in my room, millions of fellow soccer fans are on Twitter, awake across the world. I can instant message with a friend in Australia, who is awake at the opposite extreme of time to watch the same match. It’s a social, uniting experience.
This social unity has become standard in life, and so in the sporting world as well. But, as I sat in University of Phoenix Stadium watching the Steelers play the Cardinals—sitting alone, the only person wearing blue—I perceived sports as primarily a social phenomenon.
I was in Phoenix for a conference, and as my Good Men Project bio explains, I’m on a quest to visit every professional stadium in America. So, I had to seize the opportunity to go to a Cardinals home game. I sought out a tailgating group online, which left from a local restaurant, and paid the fee for unlimited beer and barbeque. Conscious of keeping both feet outside the two camps, I decided to wear the neutral color of blue for the game.
Over some 9:00 a.m. Bloody Marys, I spoke with a cheery Steelers fan named Lance, who bragged about the wonders of his New Mexico town. When asked what there is to do there, he gleefully responded, “Hunt, fish, drink, and have sex. But since I’m married, it’s mostly hunting, fishing, and drinking.” His assessment of life has me convinced he is somehow related to Brett Favre.
After effortlessly downing a shot of tequila, two bloody marys, and a Jager bomb within half an hour, I began to wonder if Lance’s frequency of marital relations is inversely proportional to his alcohol consumption. I didn’t catch the name of the gentleman he was with, but they were childhood friends, and they possessed the gift of banter you would expect from two men who have spent a majority of their lives together. They meet up every year to watch the Steelers play.
As we boarded the bus to the game, I quickly picked a seat, thinking someone would sit next to me. A young girl asked me to switch seats, since she couldn’t sit with her friend. I happily obliged, and resided next to a middle-aged woman from Georgia with the type of accent that gave away her SEC bias instantly. On the half-hour bus ride, I learned of the privileges of working for the city of Scottsdale, the college football conference hierarchy (the SEC on top, of course), and heard a rather unconvincing argument for why college football players ought to remain amateurs that involved the phrases “love of the game” and “smart, small town folk.” Her two friends behind us, old friends from the Air Force, agreed with all her contentions in the manner a congregation would concur with a preacher.
At the tailgate, my interactions with others rarely evolved beyond brief pleasantries. Most of the people were reuniting with old friends, and far be it for me to interfere. I ended up resting in front of the satellite TVs with several beers at a time, watching the worst football game I can remember witnessing. (When people described Tim Tebow’s performance as “awful,” they weren’t being harsh enough.)
Walking to the stadium was a surreal experience, as if it was a carefully created scene for an expensive feature film. It was like the production company rented out a major stadium and hired 70,000 locals to fill it, wearing only the colors of the two opposing teams. Then, as the lead, I was to wear a neutral, but distinctive, blue shirt. Each individual, as I walked past, was to stare straight ahead, ignorant of my existence. A staccato violin would play in the background, the rhythm of my feet correlating with each new beat, as other string instruments would echo a contrasting, legato tone in the background. There I would be, the lead actor, invisible to the world.
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Here lies the principle element of a sporting event, and indeed sports in general: it’s a social movement. Every day we get to choose the colors of our clothes, the types of hats we wear, and the food we eat independent of what others choose. On game day, we don’t choose those things; there are guidelines we voluntarily subscribe to so we feel a part of a larger cause. We wear jerseys, drink beer, tailgate, and cheer together as a massive social tradition. It’s not a place for individualism. A lot is said of the uniting aspects of sports, from the Olympics to the Super Bowl, but you have to conform to be a part of the unity.
On the ride home, I slept as the Steelers fans sang to their victory (granted, they were singing “black and yellow” over and over, which was the single point of the afternoon I was proud to be different). As I waited for the taxi to arrive and watched others pose for pictures, I couldn’t wait until next Sunday, when I’d be on the couch watching football with my dad or my friends. For one day, I took the social movement out of sports, and I was left with nothing. The game isn’t the substance of sports, people are.
—Photo rhett maxwell/Flickr