Fandom usually means tracking your favorite team for years − so why are the Olympics so good at making us root for sports and athletes we tune out most of the time?
Every four years, millions of Americans join billions of their fellow humans across the globe to celebrate the astonishing athletic feats at the Summer Olympics.
Warm-weather sports such as swimming and track that usually don’t capture much attention in U.S. media suddenly vault to the forefront. National teams compete in world championships every year, but it is only at the Olympics that casual fans root on the red, white and blue.
Why do the Olympics capture our attention in a way that nothing but soccer’s World Cup can approximate? And why does our nationalist rooting extend to sports that are otherwise obscure?
As a sports studies scholar with a special interest in fandom, I have found that sporting affiliations are fundamental to millions of people’s sense of identity. For many Americans, being a Packers or a Lakers or a Notre Dame fan is the primary way they identify themselves, before their job, religion or ethnic heritage. They organize their lives around the schedules of their chosen teams, adorn their bodies to show their support and build a community of friends among fellow enthusiasts.
Fundamentally, I have argued, this is a process of storytelling, weaving a team’s triumphs and struggles together with details from fans’ own lives.
In both cases, these meaningful connections are made via long-standing connections between athletes and fans – imagined relationships built over months, years and even decades.
Every four years, millions of Americans join billions of their fellow humans across the globe to celebrate the astonishing athletic feats at the Summer Olympics.
Warm-weather sports such as swimming and track that usually don’t capture much attention in U.S. media suddenly vault to the forefront. National teams compete in world championships every year, but it is only at the Olympics that casual fans root on the red, white and blue.
Why do the Olympics capture our attention in a way that nothing but soccer’s World Cup can approximate? And why does our nationalist rooting extend to sports that are otherwise obscure?
As a sports studies scholar with a special interest in fandom, I have found that sporting affiliations are fundamental to millions of people’s sense of identity. For many Americans, being a Packers or a Lakers or a Notre Dame fan is the primary way they identify themselves, before their job, religion or ethnic heritage. They organize their lives around the schedules of their chosen teams, adorn their bodies to show their support and build a community of friends among fellow enthusiasts.
Robert Caro spends most of his days writing the fifth and final volume of his Lyndon Johnson series, more than a decade in the making and still without a scheduled release date
She speaks seven languages, has a PhD in particle physics, an apartment in Budapest plastered with her own pastel drawings of nudes, and a career that took her