Sports (spectatorial)

Post on 2 February, 2020 by Dallin Malmgren

Our Spurs group ( the fives are for cham­pi­onship rings)

I just made that word up! But you know what I mean—watching, not play­ing. This might not be as rosy as the last one.

It’s so easy to get obsessed with a sport; a team; a play­er. Not in some psy­cho way—you just think about them a lot. You become emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed in them. And then you share your pas­sion with peo­ple who feel exact­ly the way you do. What fun! As long as you can keep it like that…

Even just watch­ing on TV, I can see the exu­ber­ance and the inten­si­ty and the joy that spec­ta­tors bring to the games they attend. Paint­ed faces (some­times bod­ies!), high fives, pound­ing on bleach­ers, syn­chro­nized scream­ing, jum­botron feedback—it looks like tremen­dous fun (except when a play goes wrong). Ulti­mate­ly, fun should lead to thank­ful­ness. God also enjoys it.

Fun can lead to dif­fer­ent places too—many of them not so spir­i­tu­al­ly reward­ing. Excess is a very close rel­a­tive of fun. And excess always leads to putting your­self ahead of oth­ers. And self­ish nev­er ends well.

Yikes! How gloomy on a sub­ject that evokes so much joy! Like par­tic­i­pat­ing, spec­tat­ing can be a fam­i­ly uni­fi­er. I’m a suck­er for the com­mer­cial where the whole fam­i­ly is wear­ing one team’s jer­seys, and the new boyfriend comes in wear­ing the archrival’s. I watched the Saints win their Super Bowl in New Orleans—one of the best times I can remem­ber. I under­stand why cities are will­ing to build sta­di­ums and give teams tax breaks. A team in the midst of a cham­pi­onship run gives the entire city an upbeat vibe. And teams rec­og­nize how good com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment is for their business—lots of char­i­ta­ble things get done. On the artis­tic lev­el, a great move in sports is every bit as uplift­ing as a great song or show or book. Most of all, there is the inex­press­ible joy of winning—no won­der it arous­es such passion! 

My son and four of his/our friends are in a Spurs text group that they gra­cious­ly allow this old man to join in. It makes watch­ing a Spurs game so much more fun—the shared excitement—the back­seat coaching—the absurd humor—the friend­ship and even the pain. They still haven’t for­giv­en me for tex­ting “We got this!” before Ray Allen made his crush­ing three-pointer.

I must also con­fess anoth­er guilty plea­sure: fan­ta­sy sports. I have been in foot­ball and bas­ket­ball leagues for the past 15 years or so. It just ups the inter­est lev­el. Yes, it is a form of gam­bling, and I strug­gle with that. In all this time, I cer­tain­ly haven’t made a prof­it, but I haven’t real­ly lost that much either. Again, there’s a cama­raderie that goes along with it that is very enjoyable.

Most of us rec­og­nize there is a dark side of spec­tat­ing. As with any obses­sion, it’s pret­ty easy to go over the edge and hard to admit when you have. We tend to idol­ize our sports heroes—who prob­a­bly deserve it no more or less than our neigh­bor or a ran­dom per­son off the street…at least, in terms of char­ac­ter. Indulging your sports habit can eas­i­ly lead to a great deal of expense—easy to jump in whether you can afford it or not. As cav­a­lier­ly as I dis­miss my fan­ta­sy leagues, sports gam­bling has led to the wreck and ruin of many fam­i­lies. And most wives will tell you that your obses­sion with your team can also lead to fam­i­ly neglect. 

So I have come up with a help­ful lit­tle ques­tion­naire to help you deter­mine if your sports fix­a­tion is healthy or not. Answer hon­est­ly: 1) Do you care about this more than any­thing else? 2) Does this bring you clos­er or far­ther away from your fam­i­ly? 3) How much of a finan­cial strain does it cre­ate? 4) Does your mood change when you team los­es? Does it affect those you love? 5) Can you say dur­ing the con­test: “Thy will be done”?

When the sport (what­ev­er your fan­dom) is deter­ring you from becom­ing the per­son that you want to be, that is idol­a­try. If the ‘49’ers loss tonight affect­ed your per­spec­tive of the world, your over­all mood (not imme­di­ate), your treat­ment of your fam­i­ly, your finan­cial sta­tus or your self-esteem, you have gone over that edge. 

Just pull back. Go for a walk. Breathe in, breathe out. I used to pre­sup­pose God’s involve­ment in the out­come of the big game. You know, the Spurs are a classy orga­ni­za­tion, upright men, they deserve to win. Now I appre­ci­ate more the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the game—the count­less ways the out­come will affect count­less lives in count­less direc­tions. Only God can han­dle all that. I believe He loves the spectacle—and grieves for the heartache.

Way to go, Chiefs! 

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