The Sharks lost to Chicago this spring in the Stanley Cup Playoff Western Conference Finals. They’ve never won the Stanley Cup. The Giants haven’t won the World Series since 1954, when they were the based in New York. The Warriors last won the NBA Championship in 1975, and the A’s haven’t won the World Series since 1989.
The list goes on. Cal’s last Rose Bowl trip came when major college players still routinely played both offense and defense. The Raiders have been at the bottom of their division for years, and even our crown jewel, the 49ers, haven’t been to the Super Bowl since the 1994 season or even made the playoffs since 2002. Stanford points to its entrance requirements when it can’t compete well in football or men’s basketball.
So what sustains us? Why do we buy the jerseys, paint our faces, pay high ticket prices, call KNBR, get tweets on our smartphones, and stay up late to watch the ESPN highlights and get the West Coast scores before bed? Is the rare playoff appearance or odd deep run in the playoffs worth the frustration of regularly falling short?
Why do we put up with steroids, blood doping, cheating, disinformation, tape-delayed Olympic events, and often boorish behavior of high-profile athletes that we have to explain to our children? And based on the size of our market or what local owners are willing to pay, often our best professional players leave for greener pastures once they establish themselves as stars. Yet, for some reason, we keep watching.
According to the New York Times, some researchers have found that fervent fans become so tied to their teams that they experience hormonal surges and other physiological changes while watching games, much as the athletes do. The self-esteem of some male and female fans also rises and falls with a game’s outcome, with losses affecting their optimism about everything from getting a date to winning at darts, one study showed.
One theory the Times quotes traces the roots of fan psychology to a primitive time when human beings lived in small tribes, and warriors fighting to protect tribes were true genetic representatives of their people.
In modern society, professional and college athletes play a similar role for a city in the stylized war on a playing field; the theory goes as quoted in the Times. Even though professional athletes are mercenaries in every sense, their exploits may re-create the intense emotions in some fans that tribal warfare might have in their ancestors. It may also be these emotions that have in large part fueled the explosion in the popularity of sports over the last three decades.
”Our sports heroes are our warriors,” Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology at Arizona State, told the Times about sports fans. ”This is not some light diversion to be enjoyed for its inherent grace and harmony. The self is centrally involved in the outcome of the event. Whoever you root for represents you.”
So there we have it. If Professor Cialdini is right, we almost have no choice. We root for teams representing our place or other important association, and we have visceral reactions to the results of those contests. Is that enough to sustain Warrior fans through one playoff appearance in 16 seasons, or Giants fans through years of anemic hitting since the departure of Barry Bonds? Apparently it is.
What do you think? Why do you root for your favorite teams? Do results matter, or do you identify with the old Brooklyn Dodger fan lament of “Wait ‘till next year,” almost no matter what? Is it the journey or the destination? I’ve set up a mailbox, paullhirsch@yahoo.com (don’t forget the second ‘l’) to collect your responses for use in a future column. Maybe we’ll gain some insights as to why we do the things we do in the name of sport.