I grew up as an NC State basketball fan. I’m from Raleigh, and I’ve attended games since I was a young child. I’ll openly admit that I’ve seen ESPN’s 30 for 30 “Survive and Advance” more times than I can count. And even though growing up as an NC State fan was definitely not the reason I chose to attend NC State, it sure wasn’t a deterrent.
At games, my heart races. The emotional rollercoaster of watching the “Cardiac Pack” play can either be very exciting or a disappointment, and it’s this emotional roulette factor of not knowing which it will be that is a large part of why NC State basketball is so appealing.
But in the midst of the excitement March Madness incites, it is easy to become blind to all the problems fandom culture provokes.
In the past 50 years or so, sports have become increasingly notable and the subject of countless analytical speculation and glorification. Sports now occupy multiple TV stations, entire sections in the newspaper, multitudes of magazines, websites, radio shows and podcasts.
With sports culture becoming so prevalent in our day-to-day lives and provoking the levels of idolatry and hero-worship that it does, many consider it a religion. Joshua R. Keefe, in his 2009 article “Religion, Commodity, or Escape: Sports in Modern American Culture,” critically dubbed sport culture as something sinister—an “opiate for the masses.”
Sports teach us how power-relationships are constructed, thus culturing us to fall blindly into an oppressive pecking order simply from watching and following our favorite sports team.
Varda Burstyn, in her 2005 publication “Sport as Secular Sacrament,” claimed, “in industrial society, sport has overtaken many of the previous functions of an established patriarchal church and organized religion.”
The world of sports is a men’s club not only because the free market favors men’s sports over women’s, but also because the culture of sports mimics the traditional power-driven hierarchy that favors men over women. It is alarming to realize the extremely prevalent and transcending culture, which heavily favors men as opposed to women, is inhibiting the struggle of feminism and equality.
Additionally, athletics have created bitter rivals that, in the eyes of some, can cheapen our degrees and ultimately distract from the education we receive. Every time I see a classmate, a friend from another university, and yes, even adult fans or alums, taking to social media to bad-mouth players, referees, coaches, fans or a university, I cringe. What should be the fast-paced excitement of a basketball game has become a channel for people to be hateful under the flag of team allegiance.
It continues to amaze me how sports can completely pit intellectual communities against each other. Stop hating UNC-Chapel Hill so much and realize our athletic program has had plenty of scandal as well.
The recent bonfires at the Bell Tower following big wins are symbolic of the deeper and often overlooked darkness of the mob culture sports can summon. These rituals are so ingrained in what it means to be a fan that we rarely step back and consider why we perform them.
Sports have the ability to exhibit the best and the worst of our character, and I encourage everyone who follows basketball to be reflective in the upcoming weeks as the NCAA tournament draws to a close.
Take note of how quick you are to persecute athletes based on their performance and why you are doing it. Step back and evaluate how much you are worshipping players, coaches, and institutions.
The NCAA tournament is an excellent opportunity to create dialogue about the implications of sport culture at an individual level and as a campus-wide phenomenon. Let’s work to understand what sports reflect about our society and what we can do to make it better. Athletics has an amazing ability to unify our campus, so let’s use this unification to improve the culture around sports.
