Verified by 
Sport and Competition
Why Pro Sports Make Us Cry
It’s more than just a game; it's our identity.
Posted January 15, 2018
Pro football fans in Minnesota are probably still out partying in the streets as I write this, one day after their stunning playoff victory over the New Orleans Saints. With no time left on the game clock, Vikings QB Case Keenum threw a 61-yard touchdown pass to Wide Receiver Stefon Diggs, who went untouched to the end zone, to clinch the Sunday night win over the Saints, 29 to 24.
To say the final play in this playoff game stunned the New Orleans team and its fans (and the rest of the football-watching nation) would understate it by half. Within a few seconds, they learned the lesson that all sports teach us: winners go on and losers go home.
Pro football players start their official work in July, when training camps open, but the nature of their business is that they work and workout year-round, not just getting in shape but staying in shape, studying film, and reading playbooks that are so thick and complex now that they are installed and distributed on tablets and iPads. What began last summer for a lot of football players and a lot of teams is now over, not to begin again for another six months.
“It’s just a stupid game!” says the uninitiated, “Why do you men (and a lot of women too) get so emotional about losing a game that kids play? You didn’t play it; you just watched it! What’s the big deal? Besides, it’s all a bit too commercial for my tastes anyway, with all the commercials and endorsements and jersey sales.”
And it’s true; we fans (short for fanatics) care much more than we need to or is practical or healthy. Search social media today and you’ll find dozens of grainy, wobbly home videos of fans going crazy after their teams lost in the playoff rounds that started last week. These clips, often taken by bemused spouses, equally inconsolable friends, or laughing family members, show the newly-minted losers throwing things at their TVs, flinging their jerseys or other team memorabilia into snow-covered front yards, or just screaming, crying, and wailing, as if someone important had died or something horrible just happened to them personally. And that’s the issue: it does feel personal. The loss for them is real, tangible, and emotional. They feel like a big chunk of their heart has been physically broken.
“But they aren’t players! They didn’t actually play the game! They can’t feel what the players feel! How does sitting in your living room and watching your team lose equate with what the players feel?” It doesn’t. It’s not the same, to be sure, but since misery loves company, the people at home feel as bad, or maybe even worse, for their teams’ losses, than the players do because at least the players got to experience the game in person, on the field. They are paid to play and paid to care, but these are lifelong athletes who are used to winning in their sport. They have been told they are gifted, special, and way more talented than just about everybody they have ever played with or against since they were eight years old in Pop Warner football. All through high school, college, and the pros, they have tried to demonstrate their athletic prowess by winning. Losing or “giving it their best in a loss,” or “at least they were competitive and didn’t get blown out, etc.” gives them zero comfort. In Michael Lewis’ baseball book, Moneyball, Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane echoed what every professional in every sport feels, “I hate losing more than I love winning.”
That’s saying a lot: the joy of winning a game is overshadowed by the worse pain of a loss. And Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast the First Stone. As a Baltimore native, I follow the Orioles during baseball season and the Ravens during football season. I have some extra skin in the game for the Ravens, since I cover the team for a San Diego sports radio station. Every week, since the pre-season games in August, I did a ten-minute on-air segment about the club and its players and pending games. Pay attention to anything with that required level of detail (I can tell you how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the Ravens kitchen staff makes each week at the team’s training facility) and you will find yourself quite devoted to that subject, be it pro football or high school badminton.
As a practitioner of anger management coaching and an expert on the international phenomenon known as “road rage,” I’d like to think I have learned to keep my emotions under control. Going back a few weeks to the last game of the Ravens season, they had a simple mission: beat the Cincinnati Bengals and go to the playoffs. Lose and their season is over. Well, they lost and I’m still too furious to recount the details of their last-second failure (just like the New Orleans Saints, it involved a pass). Once I realized their season (and my radio duties) was over, I screamed a stunning amount of obscenities, removed and hurled my Ravens sweatshirt at my TV screen, and stomped around my house for a good twenty minutes.
In short, I acted like an idiot and my heart actually hurt with the pain of a loss that meant nothing to anyone else in my house, neighborhood, county, or state. (Colorado people care nothing about Baltimore football, of course, they have their own sagas with the disappointing Broncos this year.) The next morning, Dr. Anger Management Provider here was still furious and I let those feelings – helplessness, rage, intrusive thoughts, what could have been – ruin my mood for the next week. I’m a trained professional and I let my emotions get the better of me over a football game. I didn’t burn my Ravens fan gear in the backyard (I considered it but we have strict fire laws here), but I was as miserable as if something personally horrible had befallen me because it felt like it did.
Take my pain and compare it to the countless fans of the Saints, Steelers, Falcons, and Titans, all who lost this week and the Chiefs, Rams, Bills, and Panthers, all who lost last week, and you have a lot of national anguish. Millions of highly-interested people are hurting, for what non-fans think is a stupid reason – “Your team lost? So what? People are starving in Africa! Get your priorities straight!”
Well, saying “Get over it!” to an NFL fan who is hurting provides no comfort and is bound to be countered by the defense of “You just don’t understand! We were that close!”
I recall a news story years ago about a group of Green Bay Packers fans who met at the same local Green Bay coffee shop, every day, year-round, to talk Packer football. That included Christmas.
As a wounded Ravens fan, I put my purple gear away, with the self-prescription not to think about them again until July. For some diehard NFL fans who hoped and wished and screamed and cried when their teams failed, they will think about their teams until July. So give us some sympathy, either way.
