Ultimately how does one develop into a sports fan? While every person is different when it comes to sports, in one way or another, we all have been lured to the spectacle of the game. But who ultimately influences a person’s choice of sports team to cheer for? Is it TV? Is it Geography? Is it peers? Teachers, coaches, family… what? The answer’s surprisingly simple! In an overwhelming number of public responses, it’s Dad! Dad decides and is how the creation of a sports fan is born.
Since the creation of man, sports have played a considerable part in influencing the way people live their lives. Major League Sports are now a profound and integral part of our society. “Fandom is a modern day slang term used to refer to a subculture composed
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The salaries of athletes were only peanuts twenty to thirty years ago compared to what their salaries are today. However, in my opinion, I believe the world of sports in the United States is far from reasonable when it comes to athletes’ salaries. Many fans are outraged with the high priced contracts given to professional athletes these days. I can’t blame them, many athletes are making more money in just one year than the average citizen will make in their lifetime. Though economics is key in the understanding of why athletes earn such tremendous salaries, but it still fails to explain why they actually deserve it. The justification is that the high salaries distinguish the “stars” from the “normal players,” however I feel that these salaries are not at all reflective of an athlete’s economic importance. Their salaries keep increasing because they know that the public will continue paying for it. I argue that the time commitments these athletes make do not in any way justify their salaries. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, even the president of the United States of America’s time are also valuable to our everyday lives in order to keep the world moving and to better society and yet their salaries don’t justify their time …show more content…
On Friday night, our basketball team made us angry, we lost to the worse team in the NBA, what was the coach thinking putting that player in? However, on Sunday night, just forty eight hours after our evening of anger, sports had provided us with a redemption story. Our football team is now heading into the Super Bowl! Wow, what a game! Then on Friday we were left scratching our heads at the no- hitter game that we just had watched. What would happen if our society lacked professional sports? I imagine it would be replaced with an increase of societal violence. Numerous people use competitive sports as an outlet for aggression and hostility. It has been suggested that, “Sport is war without weapons…” Individuals and organizations have begun recognizing that sports are a powerful vehicle for building peace. Sports inspire us like nothing else. They have a positive impact on both participants and spectators. They allow us to switch gears, moving from the mundane to the exceptional. Without, we would be impoverished by a lack of vision of what is possible for a human being. We do sports because we need a way to channel our aggression and make use of our strengths and instincts. When “our team” can beat the “other team” in competition, it makes us feel good. When simplifying sports down to the human level, it is a “tribe vs. tribe” battle, but it doesn’t involve killing for
When their teams compete, spectators’ feel a part of the action and are emotionally attached to the team. If the team wins, they share in the exuberant celebrations; if they lose, they may feel disappointed but, like the players and coaches, they look forward to the next game or the next season. My father is a prime example; a Buffalo Bills fan, he endured four Super Bowl losses in a row, but still is a fan. Diehard sports fans, like my dad, are committed to the teams, win or lose. They loyally purchase sports apparel that display their team’s name or logo; they proudly wear their favorite player’s jersey; and they gladly slap bumper stickers and other fan items on their vehicles. As Kirchheimer points out from Daniel Wann, Ph.D., a psychology professor from Murray State University in Kentucky, “Sports fandom is really a tribal thing” (Kirchheimer, 2012, p.294). Diehard sports fans feel satisfaction and happiness in their committed connections and support for their favorite teams and
The last type of fan is a fair-weather fan. This is the least liked fan and these fans irritate many people. Fair-weather fans will like one team one year and switch their favorite team the next year because of recent success by the other team. These people are not truly sports fans, and will just root for who is popular or whoever their peers like so they can fit in. Fair-weather fans root for teams that they do not follow because of excitement revolving around a team or because there are some big names on the team that they have actually heard of. These people will like a team, but will not follow them very closely and may only attend one or two sporting events a year at the most. Fair-weather fans will know the names of the star people on their team, but will not know the majority of their favorite team. Usually they will not have much merchandise with their favorite team on it either because they switch teams so much that they do not have tome to accumulate many goods with their team on them.
I set out to analyze the extent to which fantasy sports affected the social bonds established by traditional sports. The expected result was that as involvement in fantasy sports increased, social reasons for enjoying sports would decrease. I focused the research on fantasy football for convenience purposes, as it is the largest and most active of the fantasy sports communities. Furthermore, as I participate in fantasy football myself, I already had an understanding of not only the specific knowledge and jargon, but also of the current trends and developments. This allowed me to gear the research towards this particular community, and helped connect to respondents as one of their own as opposed to an outsider.
We come across many different cultures and fashion in our society. Some may indicate that the culture influences one’s fashion while others may oppose and state that each aspect stands alone. Fashion and culture fall into the following identity categories: chosen and assigned. Culture affects many parts of an individual, in some cases you can determine an individual 's culture by their speech and clothing; in addition to traditions and the environment in which they were raised. Whereas fashion may be impacted by culture and tradition, but it may also not interact with culture at all.
Over the last couple years, college athletics have hit their peak in revenue and have gained immense popularity in every state across the U.S. With millions of viewers and thousands of athletes, college sports have become a huge part of American society. But with this popularity also comes the controversial question of college athletes being paid more than their athletic scholarships for the revenue, admissions, and excitement they bring to their universities. With both sides having valid viewpoints about the idea of college athletes being paid or not, the argument is debated more and more every year as college sports popularity continue to rise. But for the meaning of this paper and for everything college athletes do for their schools, they should be paid for the money they bring to their school, that they receive none of in return, the 43.3 hours a week they put into their dedicated sport, which is an average work week, and the countless other abuses they are put through by their universities to play the sport they love.
Sports are an intricate part of most people's lives and popular culture today, whether it be football (soccer) in Europe, football or baseball in the United states, or rugby in Australia and New Zealand there is always a cult following of those sports in those regions. These sports develop the players into role models for the adolescent child, but with a following the ego of a player could be boosted to such a level they become jerks and try to put the “I” in “Teiam”
Sports are extremely popular around the world and only get more popular as time goes on. Sports is on television (TV), in the news, in the newspaper, and online. It only makes sense that this is the case. A sporting event is the ultimate drama. The variability of a game is what gets people so into it. Sports can tell a story, and teach great life lessons as well as inspire people. If sports are that important to the people around the world who watch it, just think about how important sports are to the ones who actually play it and coach it. It is their passion, their persona, their life. With the media’s harsh expectations of teams today, unless a team wins a championship, they are deemed unsuccessful. Since expectations are so high,
I thought this quote was very interesting because these categories are very accurate but prior to today’s lecture, I never really categorized sports, athletes, and fans as such. The category that intrigued me the most was labeling fans as consumers. It is very obvious that fans are consumers as in order to watch the game, fans must buy tickets and in order to wear sporting clothes, fans must purchase those clothes. Both of these can be influenced by the media through ads. So, despite maybe not thinking of fans as consumers initially, the label of being a consumer is very accurate.
Everyday there are competitions in sports going on. Thousands of people gathered around to watch that one sport they truly love. Those people are called “sports fan”. What does sports fan stand for? According to Oxford English Dictionary the word “fan” means “A fanatic; in modern English (orig. U.S.): a keen and regular spectator of a (professional) sport, orig. of baseball; a regular supporter of a (professional) sports team; hence, a keen follower of a specified hobby or amusement, and gen. an enthusiast for a particular person or thing.” In that case a true “sports fan” is someone who just doesn’t stop talking about that one sport, only wears that one sport team jerseys and if he has a son or daughter he’s going to want them to play or support that one sport he truly loves.
According to the world's largest search engine, Google, seventy-two percent of 18 to 29 year olds, 64% of 30 to 49 year olds, and 58% of those aged 50 and older in the United States admit to being sports fans. Out of these millions of fans, most of them fall into certain categories. There are typically three ways to classify sports fans: the fans that think they are the coach, the dedicated fans, and the bandwagon fans.
In America, sports have become almost an epidemic across the country. They have embedded themselves in a society that promotes a type of competition at every level. According to Eddie Matz, a senior writer at ESPN, approximately 40 million kids play some sort of youth sport. The obsession of sports is further validated by the nfl’s revenue last year, which topped 9 billion dollars(Carnette). From an early age, younger generations are taught to embody these sports, which only contributes to this addiction. They are pushed to play sports year round, watch their favorite teams during their respective seasons, and idolize the stars that transcend the athletics they love. While not always the case, as these generations grow up, many of the children
Regardless of specific cultural backgrounds or geographic locations, professional sports are often regarded as cherished sources of heritage and entertainment. They prove not only the ability of the
There you are with your friends in the living room watching the game 4th and goal, eagles have 2 minutes to tie the game and you’re on the edge of your seat wondering are you going to win the bet you made or lose money. READY…..SET….HIKE. They could not do it, and now you are in despair wishing you did not bet but are happy you spent time eating and hanging out with friends. Being a sports fan can be an amazing thing to be but it also can take a toll on your money
Sports of old were merely competitive activities rooted in heroism and romanticism. Sports activities today, however, have no such innocence or simplicity. Currently in America, the activities that make up our sports culture is not only the competitive events themselves but the processes and issues that underlie and surround them. Entwined in our sports culture is the giant business of mass broadcasting. Indeed, sports and the media go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly, like Mickey and Minnie, Darth Vader and Luke. They are intertwined and depend on each other to continue to grow. Sports media includes television, radio, magazines, newspapers, books, films, and, now, most importantly, social media devices provided by the
There is a variety of professional sports in the world today. People from all over have come to enjoy watching athletes compete. The fans of these sports all love, cheer and support their respected teams. Even so, there is diversity among sports fans. Sports fans usually exhibit distinct behaviors that separate them from others. By examining the behaviors of a sports fan, a person can categorize the different types of fans. Football fans can be classified into the following categories, the Bandwangoners, the Agents, the Coaches, the Followers, the Teachers, and the Opportunists.