Why Do People Care So Much About Sports?

Have you ever wondered why people care so much about football? According to CNN Money, the NFL brings in about 12 billion dollars annually. Why do people spend so much money on NFL apparel, tickets, and television just to watch  twenty two men try to move a ball from one side of a field to the other? The answer to this is in part explainable by sociology. 

Early twentieth century sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that as societies become more and more complex, people no longer have as much in common with each other. Back in the day when you were a farmer along with most of the other families around you, it was easy to get along with others in your community. People want to feel that sense of belonging and unity with others, but when people’s occupations are so diverse like in most of today’s cities, it is hard to find this same sense of community (what Durkheim would call social solidarity). And this is where sports teams come in. 

Sports teams offer people in today’s society something to unite behind and something that they can have in common with the people around them regardless of what they do for a living or what they believe about politics. In this way, people satisfy part of their need to be in community with others and feel a part of the larger collective. That is in part why sports have become so big over the past hundred years or so as the United States has become more and more diverse and industrialized.

Why Do People Believe What They Believe?

Why do so may people around the world have such different beliefs about things like religion, morality, parenting, marriage, and taste in music? Perhaps more applicably, why do people have such strong differing beliefs that they are willing to mock, ridicule, or even kill and go to war with those holding to differing beliefs? This has been a serious issue throughout history. However, people seem to continually focus solely on these differences themselves, rather than trying to find the root cause of why people think and behave differently. Sociology provides a platform on which to understand these differences. 

One of the most fundamental concepts in sociology is the idea of socialization. Socialization essentially describes the process by which people come to believe what they believe and learn to interact with and think about the world around them. Early twentieth century sociologist, George Herbert Mead, argued that a person’s “self” only develops through interaction with other people. This usually begins within the family. Different families obviously believe different things and then impart many of their beliefs to their kids. This includes everything from religious beliefs to knowing how to behave at a funeral. These ideas become so ingrained in the person’s understanding of the world around them that any idea that deviates significantly from their own may be perceived by the individual as threatening their way of life. If these feelings are strong enough it can drive different people to mocking, violence, and even national wars based on these competing ideologies. 

So, before you judge people’s convictions too harshly, take a step back and examine the bigger sociological forces that may cause someone to think and behave differently from yourself. Understand the context in which that person was brought up, what influences shaped their lives and their ideas and even if you disagree with them over an issue, still extend grace to that person and reason with them with an understanding of their background in mind.

Why Are So Many People Doing CrossFit?

The fitness methodology known as CrossFit has been exploding in the past several years. Going from being relatively unknown a decade ago, the CrossFit brand is now, according to forbes.com, a 4 billion dollar a year industry. That’s billion with a “B.” The number of CrossFit affiliated gyms or “boxes” as they are called has gone from about 500 in 2007 to over 11,000 today. CrossFit competitions are now aired on ESPN as a major sport and have acquired Reebok as a corporate sponsor. For a simply being a training methodology this begs us to ask the question, why are so many doing, and often times obsessed with, CrossFit?

If the political theorist Karl Marx were alive today, he would explain the CrossFit boom as a perfect example of commodity fetishism. Commodity fetishism describes the process by which the value of a good or service, in this case CrossFit branded products, memberships, and methodologies, becomes separated from the cost and effort needed to produce it. Boiled down this essentially means that if you get enough people pumped about CrossFit, see people on ESPN in insane shape with abs that could literally function as a washboard lifting over 300 pounds over their heads, people are going to want to get involved to become more like those people. People will buy CrossFit branded apparel, join boxes, and provided they like it, get others involved. CrossFit owners are able to profit immensely with little expenditures making the company, and ultimately the CrossFit craze continue to explode.