Sports and the Joys of Being a Casual Fan
I enjoy watching sports as a general thing. I’m pretty casual about it but I enjoy watching things like the World Cup, the finals for various sports, and sometimes the Olympics. I only really care about two sports – rugby and baseball – and am really only a serious fan of one team, the SF Giants. I’m a serious Giants fan but a casual sports fan.
A few days ago was the final game of the Stanley Cup – the finals for hockey. When I mentioned to my coworkers that I was planning on watching the game, they were surprised. I’m not a huge hockey person and neither DC nor SF teams were playing. I shrugged in response and stated, “I like watching sports.” My two coworkers looked at me in confusion, until one said, “people generally just chose a specific one.”
Which on one level is true, I suppose the more common response would be “I enjoy hockey” rather than my statement. But at the same time, one can enjoy sports as a general thing. Despite the atomized way we tend to think about sports, football which is separate from hockey which is separate from pole vaulting, they are all still sports. Sports are a medium of entertainment, just like any other. Saying “I like watching sports” is no different than saying “I like reading books.” It is an appreciation of the medium, rather than specific pieces of it.
And there is a reason sports are considered a medium. All sports share the same DNA. All sports are people competing against each other, either singly or on teams, in a physical challenge. The common DNA is more apparent when you break things up into team vs individual sports. Physically, biking and skiing are very different, but is watching cross-country skiing actually different from the Tour de France? I think not. On a fundamental level it’s the same concept, acted out in different ways.
These similarities are even more apparent when it comes to team sports. I don’t know the rules of hockey. I don’t know what constitutes a foul, or what’s off-sides. But at the end of the day, it’s two teams trying to get an object into a goal. And that I can follow and enjoy, whether its hockey, basketball, or even something like lacrosse. I might not understand the nuances, but I can tell when a team is playing seamlessly or disjointedly, and that’s really all I need. I know I’ll enjoy myself and understand it all well enough.
Most people have preferences within any medium of entertainment. I love fantasy, and kind of hate 19th century fiction. A movie buff might eschew action films and prefer noir. But in both cases, one can be both a die-hard fan of a genre, and still be a casual fan of medium in general. No one would ever say that I don’t love books just because I cannot make it through a single novel by Charles Dickens.
It is the same with sports. You can love football and think baseball is super boring (you’d be wrong, but you can think that). You can enjoy a couple sports casually but ignore all the other ones. Or you can enjoy most sports, while only really caring about a small corner of it, like me.
Which brings us back to the casual fan, or the fan of the medium. Despite the fact that the word fan is derived from “fanatic,” there is nothing disingenuous about being a casual fan of something. Being hardcore is a lot of work. We all have lives and things to do, and being a serious fan of everything you like is, quite frankly, exhausting. So being a casual fan is entirely reasonable. I honestly do not have the time or energy to pay attention to every single Bay Area sports team. But at any given time, that’s who I default to. Sure, go Golden State Warriors. Why not? Being a casual fan allows you to be involved in the community and enjoy the emotional fervor, along with watching something you enjoy, without having to commit more than you have time for. Or get so emotionally involved that you are not ok with people on your team being traded.
Of course, it’s not required to be a casual fan. I deeply love the Lord of the Rings and a number of other movies, but I’m absolutely not a “movie person.” I’m not even a casual movie fan. I’ve taken film classes, but it’s just not preferred form of entertainment. Loving the local college football team doesn’t obligate you to have a general “I like sports” attitude.
Sports are one of the easiest mediums to enter as a casual fan, and many of us do it. Plenty of people who otherwise never watch soccer watch the World Cup. The Olympics makes many of us care about sports like curling. The truly important thing is if you are enjoying yourself. If watching something, whether you are emotionally invested or just a casual observer, brings you joy. If it does, then that’s what’s important.
