← Something You Should Know
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- [00:01]
Larry Olmsted
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- [00:32]
Micah Carruthers
with all the recent excitement surrounding the NBA and Stanley Cup Finals and the World cup, you might wonder why do millions of people spend hours every week watching sports? Most people think of it as entertainment, a way to relax or pass the time. But what if watching sports is actually doing something good for your mind, your emotions and even your health? That's why today's Sysk trending topic is the extraordinary bed of watching sports. In my conversation with writer Larry Olmsted, who has explored the science and psychology behind sports fandom, we'll discuss the research that suggests being a sports fan can create a sense of belonging, strengthen social connections, reduce stress, and even boost feelings of happiness and well being. You'll learn how cheering for your favorite team may be more beneficial than you ever realized right after this Starting or
- [01:32]
C
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- [03:00]
Micah Carruthers
Chances are you are a sports fan or you live with or work with sports fans. Professional and college sports are huge. And yet with all that's been written about sports in books and magazines and blogs and talked about on podcasts and radio and portrayed in movies and television, there isn't much about the fans. And yet sports without the fans, well, it's just a bunch of people playing a game. The fans are the biggest part. So writer Larry Olmstead decided to take a close look at sports fans. Who they are, why they're fans, and what, if anything, does being a sports fan do for you? He's written a book about it called How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Understanding. Hey, Larry, Welcome.
- [03:52]
Larry Olmsted
Oh, it's great to be with you.
- [03:53]
Micah Carruthers
When you look at sports fans, in essence, sports fans are people, a lot of people watching other people play a game. What is it about watching other people play a game that pulls people in and makes them such big fans?
- [04:11]
Larry Olmsted
You know, I've given that a lot of thoughts because people, people who aren't sports fans say, oh, it's a waste of time watching. But they never say that about, like, watching movies or Broadway plays. You know, it seems specific to sports. So I tried to really figure out what's different between sports and kind of every other form of popular entertainment. And I think the two big things are for fans. You know, most people want a sense of community, belonging, it's human nature in our DNA to be tribal creatures. And sports gives you that in a really accessible way that, you know, other kinds of entertainment don't. You know, you feel like if you're, you know, whatever, a Mets fan, you feel like you're part of the crowd even when you're watching alone at home, which, like, I'm a Star wars fan, but I don't get that. When I watch Star wars on my couch, I know I'm just watching a movie. I don't feel transported. So that's one big part of it is this just sense of community. And the other thing is the unpredictable, real time nature of sports. You know, it defies our DVR streaming culture because it's no fun if you know what happens before you watch it. And again, you know, I didn't have to watch nine Star wars movies to know the good guys were eventually going to win. Most entertainment is pretty, but sports is not. You have upsets and Cinderella stories and you could be watching that game when it's a perfect game or A historic moment. And that sort of anything can happen nature of it is really compelling.
- [05:37]
Micah Carruthers
Well, it's interesting what you said about Community, because when you watch a Star wars movie and the good guys, when Han Solo and Luke Skywalker beat the bad guys, you, as the movie watcher, the moviegoer, don't say, ooh, we won. But you will often hear sports fans, when their team wins, say, ooh, we won.
- [05:59]
Larry Olmsted
They do. But actually, what you bring up, it's sort of a classic of sports psychology research. A lot of times fans always say we won, but a lot of times they say they lost. And it's like a psychological defense mechanism. We have to distance ourselves from our team's failure. Which is why, you know, even if your team is like 50, 50 over the long term, studies have shown that sports fans gain happiness because the winning is more satisfying than the losing is disappointing, because we have a number of these kind of circuit breakers that allow us to overlook the losses. So every win is that much sweeter. And yes, you're right. They feel like. I mean, studies people say that even when they're cheering at home, they feel like they have an impact on the game.
- [06:41]
Micah Carruthers
It's also interesting to me to watch people watching on television criticizing the play, criticize, oh, why did he. Why did he do that? Like, if I were a coach, I would have never done that. Like, they know better.
- [06:59]
Larry Olmsted
Yeah, absolutely. And part of that was really, I think, driven a lot by the growth of sports talk radio in the past couple of decades, where there's a lot of opportunities for people to call in and kind of be Monday morning quarterbacks. It's made everybody more critical. But one of the more interesting. I didn't know what I would find when I decided to see what being a sports fan did to us. And one of the sort of unforeseen benefits is it's really good for your brain and cognitive ability, especially fighting cognitive decline as we age. And it's very similar to, like, if you do Sudoku or crossword puzzles every day, it's a real exercise for your brain. And that's gotten even more so with all of the new statistics, especially baseball, the kind of Moneyball saber metrics. People have to be more intellectual about their approach to being sports fans in order to be critical and be informed and especially. And also to play fantasy sports.
- [07:55]
Micah Carruthers
Yeah, I want to talk more about the benefits, because I don't think people ever think about that. And it's pretty interesting that there are these benefits. But before we get into that, fundamentally what do you think is the difference between the person who says sports are a waste of time or they're a very passive sports watcher, they'll watch the World Series or they'll watch the super bowl, but that's about it. Versus the guy who goes to the games, has the chart, is keeping statistics on his little, on his phone app or whatever. What's the difference between those people?
- [08:30]
Larry Olmsted
Well, I mean, one is, you know, most people like Sports. More than 50% of people identify themselves as sports fans. But, you know, not everyone does. Just like, not everyone likes rock music or something. So, you know, there's some people who just don't like sports. But I have found that a lot of people who say that, oh, I'm not a sports fan, it's a waste of time when you dig into it. They have a lot of excepts, you know, except when I watched, you know, the Bulls win three titles when I lived in Chicago, you know, they still watch sports even though they say they don't. So, you know, that's, that's, that's a big part of it. But I think what I really found is the portrayal of the sports fan in the media, especially Hollywood TV sitcoms. I took a pretty deep dive. I looked at every basically sitcom and movie that depicted sports fans that I could find, and it's universally negative. They're portraying this kind of overweight guy who is excluding his family, drinking too much with other overweight guys, dressed uniforms in their basement, making fools of themselves like the Saturday night, the Bear skit. And so I think a lot of non fans actually believe that as a perception of sports fans. And so then it's not just like a waste of time, It's a negative. But that, that stereotype just is not true.
- [09:40]
Micah Carruthers
Well, it, it also seems that, well, at least for me, I was much more of a sports fan as a kid and less so as an adult. And I know a lot of people are even probably more sports fans as adults, but I kind of, I don't know, I don't want to say I grew out of it, but I mean, I was a Yankees fan. I grew up in Connecticut and you know, I got to meet some of the big Yankees. I was really into it. Not so much anymore.
- [10:10]
Larry Olmsted
Yeah, I mean, there's a variety of reasons. One is, you know, you typically have less time, leisure time as you get older. You know, when you're a kid, you don't have kids, you don't have a lot of, you don't have a job, you don't have responsibilities. But, you know, in particular, baseball, you know, has seen a decline in fandom. You know, that while, you know, the NFL and the NBA have gone up. And part of it is, you know, that we, our society in general, we live in a time where we have a shorter attention span. Everything is more at a premium on time. And baseball takes a really long time. And baseball is cognizant of that. They've been trying to make rule changes to speed up the game, but, you know, it's hard to commit, you know, three hours to watch a game when there's 160 games a season.
- [10:52]
Micah Carruthers
Well, and there's also the cost. The cost of going to a game has certainly gone up. And that's got to be, you know, make people stop and think before they plop down the money.
- [11:01]
Larry Olmsted
Yeah, absolutely. And there are, I mean, a lot of avid sports fans who never go to games. And the vast majority of sports are consumed on television. But I do think that's sort of one of the negatives I came away with is how corporate some live sports have gotten, how expensive. I mean, you mentioned the Yankees. My wife is from the Bronx. When we lived in New York, we used to go to Yankees games and get the cheap seats. There are no cheap seats anymore. You know, my dad would take me to Mets games. I grew up in Queens. And again, we would sit in the cheap seats. And it's become harder for families to do that because it's so expensive. And then when you get to people who really feel like they have to buy licensed logo merchandise and $12 light beers and things, it can add up very quickly. But that's sort of the beauty of spectator sports is how diverse and democratic the way you can enjoy it is. You can spend nothing except your cable bill, where you can spend a ton of money and travel and go to the Super Bowl.
- [11:53]
Micah Carruthers
So let's talk about the benefits of being a sports fan. I mean, who's looked at this and when did somebody come up with the idea that maybe there are benefits here?
- [12:03]
Larry Olmsted
There's benefits on several levels, but really the mental health benefits, which are, you know, sort of the most provable, are also the newest. It's really maybe the last 30 years. And one of the sports psych, probably the leading sports psychologists in the United States, probably the world, studying this particular issue is Dr. Dan Wan from Kentucky. And he did his first study on this about 30 years ago and was so sort of intrigued by the results that he kind of made it his life specialty. But now, in that 30 years, there have been hundreds of studies of sports fan mental health done around the world to fans of all ages, fans of all sports, professional, collegiate, everything, you know, cricket, rugby, soccer, as well as all our sports. And no matter where they're done, they pretty much get, you know, exactly the same results, which is that there's a lot. I mean psychologists have two dozen different distinct mental health benefits that sports fans enjoy more than non fans, but things like higher self esteem, lower rates of depression, more happiness with their social lives. And again, you know, a lot of those have a common thread which is this feeling of community and belonging and that, you know, that's something that makes people happy. And sports offers it in a way that is super accessible and requires no membership, applications or, you know, you don't have to pass a test to become a Yankees fan.
- [13:27]
Micah Carruthers
We're talking about sports fans and my guest is Larry Olmstead, author of the book How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Understanding.
- [13:38]
Larry Olmsted
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- [13:46]
Micah Carruthers
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- [13:53]
Larry Olmsted
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- [14:07]
Micah Carruthers
And we're live on Matchday as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing. He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. What a finish. There's no doubt about it. It just taste better. Match days deserve Pepsi. So Larry, are there big differences between either countries or fans of different sports? Or is there or is a sports fan a sports fan?
- [14:35]
Larry Olmsted
Well, for the most part a sports fan is a sports fan. The biggest distinction would be most of the studies that have been done are fans of team sports, which again is most sports fans. And most sports fans follow between five and six different. So you know, that could be college football and pro football, but the one sort of odd man out or the outlier would be a person who only follows a non team sport like golf or tennis is the only thing they watch and they still get a lot of the same joys, but it's different because they don't get that kind of community aspect because there is no team, you know, and you're if you're you know, a Tiger woods fan. You know, Tiger woods is someday going to stop playing golf, but presumably the Yankees will be here when we're all dead. So that would be the biggest difference. But there's very few people who only follow one sport. And then internationally, the big difference is college sports are huge in the United States. I mean, college football is ahead of baseball in terms of professional baseball in terms of viewership. College basketball is huge. And they just don't have college sports anywhere else, anywhere near the way we have in the U.S. that's what, when I talk to people in Europe, they're confused. And Americans don't typically think of that. But there's no equivalent. You know, they have like, you know, the Henley Regatta where, you know, Oxford and Cambridge go in row. But there's no organized collegiate intercollegiate sports leagues in the rest of the world like we have. So it's a whole huge second infrastructure of sports that's distinctly American.
- [16:06]
Micah Carruthers
It would seem that maybe that collegiate sports fans are a little different than professional sports fans. Often it's, you know, the school you went to or, you know, at least the conference in which the school you went to or, you know, there's a different connection. I don't know if it's better or worse or is it?
- [16:26]
Larry Olmsted
Yeah, it is. I mean, because people, you know, people say, you know, you're my team or you know, I like the Red Sox because. But the reality is choosing a sports team is basically exactly the same as choosing a religion, which means you don't really choose it, you're born into it. And the two, the two biggest factors for both what religion you follow and what sports teams you follow are where you were born and what your parents believed. So I tell New York Giants fans, hey, if you'd been born in Dallas, you'd be Cowboy fans. And they get upset, but it's true. But college is different because it's something you come to later in life. Unless you grew up in a big college town. It's typically driven by where you went, which is a little bit more of a choice and comes later. But I would say I get asked a lot which city has the most passionate sports fans? And there's no real answer because they're differently passionate in Philadelphia and Denver and some of the big sports cities. But of all sports fans, I think the most passionate are probably the big time college football fans, especially the kind of University of Alabama, Michigan, Texas type schools. I mean, I didn't know until I wrote this book that you could buy official NCAA Logo coffins and be buried in your University of Alabama coffin. And that's something Yankee fans aren't doing. So that's pretty impressive.
- [17:45]
Micah Carruthers
Good Lord, can you imagine?
- [17:49]
Larry Olmsted
I can't. But now that I've talked to a lot of fans, I can imagine why they do. And you see, one of the other things I never thought of before I wrote this book in the same vein is if you drive America's roads, highways, you see sports teams bumper stickers all the time. Right. My next door neighbor, I live in New England, has both a Patriots and a Red Sox bumper sticker on his pickup truck. But I've never seen a Harry Potter or a Star wars bumper sticker or even a Beatles. So the way people choose to adorn themselves with sports logos, memorabilia, team identification is extremely distinctive to sports.
- [18:25]
Micah Carruthers
It does seem that they're kind of lifelong fans. Tend to be lifelong fans, I guess, right? It seems that way. Although, like, when I moved from the east coast to the west coast, it's kind of hard to be a Yankees fan here. So, yeah, I'm more of a Dodgers fan now. Although I wouldn't consider myself a big die hard Dodgers fan. But. But it's hard to stay loyal to a team when you're. When no one else around you is and you're a million miles away.
- [18:54]
Larry Olmsted
Yeah, absolutely. I have a good friend who moved from Boston to Seattle years ago. Big Patriots fan and now a big Seahawks fan. But if the Patriots and the Seahawks played in the super bowl, he would still be supporting the Patriots. And I would imagine you would probably still be supporting the Yankees. And one of the interesting things I looked at, you know, sports team vanity license plates, which almost every state offers. And it's odd again, because it's the only for profit business that you can get a license. You can't get a Chevrolet license plate for your Chevrolet, but you can get a Yankees license plate from the government, which is kind of odd in itself. But California is one of the only states that doesn't do it. And so you can't get a Dodgers license plate in California, but you can still get a Dodgers license plate in New York all these years later. So I find that pretty interesting when
- [19:43]
Micah Carruthers
you did the research for this because you probably have taken a dive into this more than most. What are some of the things that really surprised you that we haven't talked about yet?
- [19:54]
Larry Olmsted
Yeah, to me, the big thing is the societal benefits. I mean. Yep. It makes sense to me that, you know, if watching football makes you happy, then watching football makes you happy. You know, it's sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. A lot of the happiness and then you enjoy benefits from that. You know, being happy is important to your health. But it's really the bigger picture. Things like the role of sports fandom in the civil rights movement movement and the women's rights movement, now in the social justice movement. You know, it's really profound. And if you look at like the Jackie Robinson story is sort of the number one example, there's lots of others, but you know, that predates basically what historians identify as the civil rights movement and was a huge moment, pivotal watershed moment in American history made possible by sports fans. And there's a lot of those. And then, and the other big thing is the post traumatic healing power of sports after man made and natural disasters. And you know, I lived in New York. I actually used to work in the World Trade Center. So like I very vividly remember that first Mets game after 911 baseball had been suspended or all sports had been suspended. The first game played in New York City after the resumption was this Braves Mets game. Everyone around the country watched. And I have fans, people quoted in the book who were there who told me like that that was the moment it was okay to smile again. The moment it was okay to laugh, to clap. And you know, I remember that, but I thought at the time that that was sort of a one off. But it's not. I trace the history and after hurricanes, after Katrina, after tsunamis in the Far east, even now with the pandemic, I mean sports is playing the same role. It's a place to, when you feel it's safe to go back out and be a member of society and gather and sit next to strangers and express joy. Well, you know, there's no better place to do that than a sports stadium, which our biggest stadiums are bigger than the biggest mosques and cathedrals and synagogues. There's no sort of public gathering place in America where you can go be part of society again more distinctly than at a sporting event. And you know, and that has just gone after the Boston Marathon bombing, after the Las Vegas shooting massacre, I went out there and I interviewed people who one after another told me how basically the Las Vegas Golden Knights NHL expansion team saved their lives. And you talk to enough people like that. Then I had my aha moment. You can't trivialize it. You can't say sports is a waste of time. It's a vital part of the fabric of our society.
- [22:25]
Micah Carruthers
Why do you think that some sports are so much more popular than Others, you know, where soccer is such a big sport around the world, but not so much here. Hockey is not, you know, people go to hockey games, but not the way they go to baseball games. What is it about some sports versus other sports that make them so desirable?
- [22:46]
Larry Olmsted
Yeah, I mean, a lot of it has to just do with historical kind of happenstance. I mean, hockey is basically traditionally a cold weather sport. Until technology came along, you could only play it in cold weather. You couldn't build a hockey stadium in Florida before you had the technology to do that. So it tends to be Scandinavian countries, northern parts of Russia, Canada. It kind of makes sense. The soccer one is more, I think, just happens, the American experience, you know, ever since 1776, you know, we've kind of wanted to create our own things, right? Baseball, basketball, our sports, football that we created out of whole cloth rather than adopting what was already the norm, you know, elsewhere. And soccer in particular really lends itself to, to not having a lot of means. I've traveled all over the world, I've been to a lot of less developed countries, and you see soccer fields everywhere. And sometimes they're not fields, sometimes they're paved lots, sometimes they're gravel, Sometimes the net or the goal is a bunch of two by fours or PVC pipes, a range. But it's distinctive. You look and you say, huh, somebody plays soccer there. There's a big field with two kind of goal looking structures and all the kids in this town need to play soccer is a ball. They don't need shoes, they don't need gear, they just need a ball. So it's very easy access, grassroots all over the world. But you know, America had the benefit of having been a fairly wealthy nation from the get go, especially as organized sports arrived. So I think that's why, you know, we have gravitated towards sports that if your parents who play youth sports, you know, are very expensive in terms of equipment and travel, you know, youth hockey is a lot of money to play. Just in gear.
- [24:30]
Micah Carruthers
Since this is a topic that people don't think about in the way that you've written about it and the way that you speak about it, what do you think is the big takeaway from this to look at sports through this different lens? What do we get from it?
- [24:46]
Larry Olmsted
When I set out, I was trying to find out what being fans did to us. And what I found out was really that in addition to us individually, sports fandom plays a continuous and very present role in world affairs and the life we live around us. And I think that you know, if you're a non fan, if you're that person who thinks it's a waste of time, then you should educate yourself to realize that, you know, sports fandom has made your life and your world, you live in a better place, even if you never watched a game. To me, that was sort of the big takeaway is you can't, you can't avoid the benefits of sports fandom even if you don't watch sports, because, you know, they make us a more democratic, more tolerant society.
- [25:25]
Micah Carruthers
Well, this is so interesting because as you said right at the very beginning, you know, a lot has been written about sports, but very little about the sports fan. Because when people write about sports, they write about the sport and the players, but the fans are such an important part of the equation that no one ever really talks about. And I think it's really important to understand that part of the equation because without it, you know, sports ain't much. Larry Olmsted's been my guest. The name of the book is How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Understanding. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Larry. Thanks for being here today. This is fun.
- [26:05]
Larry Olmsted
Thank you very much for having me.
- [26:06]
Micah Carruthers
And that's it for this sysk trending episode. I'm Micah Carruthers. Thanks for listening to something you should know.