Stupid, Absurd Sports

Sports are stupid. And the idea that Harvard, supposed bastion of the non-stupid, should fund them, support them, and even—on rare occasions—succeed in them, is a tragic one. Sports are plebian; they are for semi-morons, not for Cambridge’s brightest.

That view is fictionalized, of course. Few desire an end to sports, but many remain apathetic. There is truth to the Harvard stereotype of the student too bookish and wonkish to care about sports. As Harvard sporting fortunes have shot up—with a starting NFL quarterback and a (injured but sensational) starting NBA point guard and a basketball team now surging nationally—one or two or more onlookers must wonder what the sports-induced kerfuffle is all about. And certainly, indifference toward sports is not reproachable; some simply feel no excitement. Instead, the onus is on the fan for proof. And here, that leaves it on me. Why care about sports? Why root?

From an economic standpoint, sports-loving is frivolous. Sports constitute a sizable industry—one estimate puts American sports-spending at $81 billion. Those dollars have plenty of better uses: from malaria kits to debt repayment to about 19.2 billion Big Mac burgers. And beyond the special-sauce opportunity cost, there’s the time. In Canada, for instance, 18 percent of high school boys report playing sports for at least 10 hours per week, with 54 percent recording at least four hours. Over a fifth watch at least four hours of sports per week. At the college level, according to an NCAA survey, U.S. football players spend an average 43.3 hours per week on their sport—versus 38 hours on their studies.

Of course, there is an obvious response: Sports are simply a form of entertainment. To criticize them is to criticize every moment of leisure. But most television show enthusiasts do not leap and yell with every development on the screen; most grown men do not weep when a pop star releases a sub-standard album; and most moviegoers do not curse and, at times, physically assault those who dislike their favorite films. Sports operate at another level. In Fayetteville, Ark., Razorbacks fans scream shrill hog calls every football Sunday. In Oakland, crazily dressed football fans boast the moniker “Raider Nation,” which Hunter S. Thompson dubbed “no doubt the sleaziest and rudest and most sinister mob of thugs and whackos ever assembled.” Fans have even been driven to kill. Colombian soccer player Andrés Escobar was shot after a fateful own goal. In May 2008, to cite a more contemporary murder—and one not allegedly tied to drug lords sore after lost bets—a Yankees fan killed a Red Sox supporter with his car after a baseball-related altercation. In forming a response, of course, or an explanation, I cannot condone violence, or the drunken jingoism of Raiders fans.

As historian John Keegan’s not-so-timorously titled “History of War” explains, primitive war dealt not only in destruction but also in ritualized raiding—almost a game were it not for its deadliness. In South America’s Jivaro tribe, that deadliness meant 60 percent of male deaths were human-caused. And the word male is important. Because what is true for primal ape fighters is true for today’s sport-lovers and players. They are both disproportionately male—that accents the historical link.

But playing sports is not the primary concern at hand—playing can be healthy, on top of the driving evolutionary factors. The real question is: Why are there so many fans? Perhaps fans of all sports are a lot like parents of young baseball players. That is, they live vicariously through the athletes. (LLPS, Little League Parent Syndrome, is the term psychologists have coined.) That may be an overstatement: A lot more is going on in a parent-child relationship than in the fan-team one. But whatever the case, even for the seated audience, in sports as in dramas, there is emotion in observation. And there is nothing wrong about that.

It may be possible at once to recognize sports’ utter absurdity and yet to dive wholeheartedly into them. I often ask myself, “What would Camus say?” As I know very little about Albert Camus, I rarely have an answer. Someone who knows more than I do might talk about finding meaning amid the absurd, might see sports as an interesting study in existentialism. Still, I cannot say much about all that. But I do know 'The Stranger'’s author himself was briefly a goalkeeper in Algeria. Said Camus later in life, “After many years during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport.” That just about sums it up.

Maybe Camus laid it on thickly for his alumni magazine (for which he penned those words), but there remains something to be said for sports. Sports are a diversion. And what better a diversion than one rooted in core human instincts, with ties to home or birthplace, or to memories of a parent’s words, to sparks of childhood remembrance? The sports-fan lives and dies and is reborn again, with each crest and trough a team encounters. That is stupid, and backward, and wasteful, and at times painful too. And also, it is fun.

Brian L. Cronin ’15, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Wigglesworth Hall.