Why Men Love Sports, Sports as a social phenomenon
In today’s world of extremely fast paced lives, technology, the internet and virtual relationships, many people find it hard to make friends. This is especially true for men who usually have made all the friends they want to make by a certain age and do not really need anymore. But if an awkward situation ever arises where two men who do not know each other have to make small talk, one of the easiest ways to do it is to talk about sports. It seems sport is the binding glue in men’s lives and it is used as a social tool and as a way to build relationships with other men.
Ever since competitive sports have become very popular in the world, since ancient Greece, we have seen that it was something that men took part in. Sports were seen as the ultimate manly endeavour apart from war and men of all ages loved to watch and take part in sports. Sports are the only actual time when men show genuine emotions, we can see grown men crying at their favourite team losing and sports seem to be the only thing that some men can really open up and talk about. What is so interesting about these sorts of emotional outbursts is the fact that other men who are also sports fans seem to genuinely understand and can empathise with the distraught person.
Many psychologists and social scientists have studied the phenomenon of sports and men and they seem to have found that in a man’s life there are numerous pressures that tend to build up; work pressure, family pressure, social pressure and they use sports as a release from all of these pressures. Men can be seen shouting at television screens as if the team playing can hear them and they have been known to become very angry at times and extremely happy at others. That is the pressure of their daily lives being released through the medium of sports. Another reason why men tend to love to play and watch sports is because it is a very masculine thing to do. Even though a large number of women watch sports, men prefer to play and watch sports on their own or with their friends, where they can prove their manhood and how manly they are.
A very interesting reason that is given by some people on why men love to play sports is because of immaturity. A large proportion of men never seem to want to grow up but when they finally have to and get proper jobs and earn money to survive, the only way to relive their childhood is to play sports. Sports are seen as a way to escape from the real world to do something fun that work obviously is not and play something again after so many years. Taking that concept of bunking school and going off and playing with friends is relived many years later when grown men will leave their families and work and go off for the week to watch a sports tournament somewhere or will play basketball the entire weekend.
Men ultimately use sports as a way to bond with other men. As children men idolise other older men, be it fathers, brother, cousins or uncles. Since a lot of the older men are interested in sports, children find out very early on that the best way to become close to an older male figure is to share the love of sports with them. A lot of men these days have found that the only way to have a relationship with their father is through sports; women too understand this fact and a lot of them initially get into sports as a way to communicate with their fathers and then they end up liking the sports themselves. It looks like sport has a huge influence on us as a species and as a society.
Over the years sports will just become more popular and more men will fall in love with their favourite sports teams. Without it men would have nothing to talk about and there would be no way for them to relieve the pressures they face on a daily basis. Without sports, the world would be a much more lonely and violent place.
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