• by Gary Holmes , Op-Ed Contributor, October 4, 2018

Sports programming, the bedrock of the television business model for the past decade, has fallen on hard times. That’s not only bad for television, it’s bad for American culture in general. (Now that’s a sentence I never thought I would write!)

The fate of televised sports is important to the health of the broadcast industry because it’s one of the last bastions for live viewing. Advertisers love shows in which viewers can’t fast-forward through commercials.  

But after years of growth, even televised sports is faltering, suffering from trends affecting the rest of the television landscape — especially the migration of younger viewers to the Internet.  Ratings for TV mainstays like football and baseball are declining, as well as for global events like the Olympics and the World Cup. Meanwhile, ESPN is downsizing, with online platforms like YouTube, Deadspin, The Bleacher Report, and Yahoo Sports providing the immediate access to highlights and commentary that used to be the cable network’s bread and butter.

As dismal as declining interest in sports is for the television business, it’s even worse for America’s mental health. 

I say this as a long-time critic of American sports culture and the monomaniacal fans, coach potatoes, gamblers, and travel team coaches who let sports take over their lives. One of my proto-Marxist college professors used to call sports the “modern opiate of the masses,” claiming that it distracted workers from appreciating how exploited they were. That professor might have been a whack job about a lot of things, but he was right that Americans could spend their Sundays more profitably than watching football game after football game on TV.

Unfortunately, the cultural brain space freed up by the eroding interest in sports has been filled with a surge of divisive political consciousness. This is not good. If the people who used to watch ESPN all day switch over to Fox and MSNBC, I don’t think that’s an improvement.

Sociologists and anthropologists have long recognized that humans are a tribal species, finding protection, validation, and meaning as members of groups. For thousands of years, a human’s key group was an actual tribe (and still is in many parts of the world). But as society became more complex, humans came to identify themselves with newer institutions: their country, church, college, union, fraternal organization, or community.

The rise of television weakened many of the traditional ties that people had built locally. They began staying home to entertain themselves in front of the TV instead of attending lodge meetings, joining in bowling leagues, or going to church. And as their identification with neighborhood groups waned, Americans increasingly started to identify themselves instead with local sports teams.

Although people can go overboard on sports, it’s usually a relatively benign form of group identity. Each major pro league has about 30 teams and each state has its State U, creating a diverse range of smallish fan bases.  This means that fans of even the most popular sports brands — the Yankees, Lakers, and Notre Dame — are in a small minority and have to comport themselves accordingly. If 90% of the country has a different sports loyalty than you do, then you have to tread lightly and accommodate yourself to differing opinions.  

The beauty of rooting for a sports team, no matter how passionately you care in the moment, is that the stakes are low.  As much as it hurts, it doesn’t REALLY matter if your team loses.  Win or lose, it’s a consequence-free catharsis.

But as people have transferred their allegiances from their sports to their political teams, the results have been disastrous for our national cohesion.  For one thing, there are only two political “teams,” which means a citizen can spend an entire day never being exposed to a fan of the other team and never learn how to get along with an opposing view.

Worse, political fans actually feel morally superior to the other side in a way that only the most rabid sports fans do. A Yankee player eating in a Boston restaurant would not be chased out by opposing fans, which has now become a common practice in politics.  

Moreover, the obsession with politics is not limited to election season any more. It’s all-politics all-the-time. Fox and MSNBC ratings soar as mouth-foaming commentators egg on their viewers like unhinged sports-radio hosts. Almost every day seems like the political equivalent of a playoff game — except that the playoffs eventually end, while political intensity never lets up. 

Before the rise of professional sports in the late 19th century, politics occupied the overwhelming presence in American life that it now does again.  From about 1830 to 1860, Americans were obsessed with politics, which provided both entertainment and a group identity for a vast majority of American men. Voting participation reached 80% in the elections of 1840 and 1860 (compared to 58% in 2016). That period also culminated in the Civil War because voters developed such intense and unwavering political principles that they couldn’t compromise on anything.

Instead of launching a new civil war, maybe we can all take a chill pill and channel our aggression back into sports. Turn off the cable news channels and wall-to-wall political coverage and focus those tribal instincts back on your childhood team. You’ll feel better — even if your team doesn’t win the World Series or Super Bowl. There’s always next year.