The Weekender: Sports Fandom

Why we love to be stressed out on the Weekends

This will be short.  I just wanted to rant about sports for a minute.

Why is it that we love to stress ourselves out watching sporting events?  Is it the cycle of anticipation followed by the reward of watching a team you like winning or the disappointment of watching them lose?  Is it like gambling?  Where you know you have no idea what will happen next but you can't wait to see it?  If I wanted to dig out my psych textbooks I could go into it all, but the answer has something to do with both of those things.  We are addicted to the exhilaration of victory, even vicarious ones.  We clearly gain nothing from watching Dez Bryant catch a last second pass to win a football game or watching David Wright blast a baseball into the upper deck, but we love it?  And when a quarterback throws an interception that costs the game or the batter hits into a double play it hurts and makes you a mix of angry and sad.  But we do it every weekend.  This weekend all of my teams, The Dallas Cowboys, The New York Mets, and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, lost games.  The odds are so rarely in our teams' favor but we watch and hope and sometimes are rewarded, but usually we're disappointed.  Goes for every sport, and (almost) every team.  Some teams are lucky and have a long history of success.  The Cowboys have been contenders many years, and have won like 10% of all Super Bowls played.  Only 4 of the other 32 teams have done that.  But the Mets...  I'm lucky and blessed and so happy to watch them play in the World Series after such a crazy season.  We have our best pitcher on the mound tonight and I hope when I wake tomorrow to get ready for school that the Mets have won and a World Series  Title is still a possibility for the Mets.  But if they lose, the Royals take it home to KC and I have to hope for next year.  I don't know why we do this to ourselves, but I think, no matter what, we will always have sports to stress us out, and sometimes fill us with pride and exhilaration.

Have a good night, and LETS GO METS!