Sports and Psych Alike

I found this to be a somewhat suitable article just because we have just gotten over Super Bowl Sunday and are now into the season’s of the NBA and NHL. Every season has its own unique sports teams playing. It seems like the cities and stadiums themselves never grow tired of fans flocking to see their teams win a championship or just play an exhibition game. I personally find it thrilling when the NFL comes around every August to the end of Janurary/early days of Feburary. Even though my team did not make it to the Super Bowl, I clearly found it very entertaining as anybody else may have, depending on if they liked sports or not. Just the mere excitement of having your team win, especially in a home game makes it seem like your team is unstoppable. This was the case when the Patriots went 16-0 in the regular season and 2-1 in the playoffs in the 2007-2008 season. At the time, they won every road and home game. They called this team a “dynasty” because of their amazing run in the playoffs/super bowls. This is what excites fans and sports fanatics to come together and just enjoy a game to watch and not just football.

What I am meaning by all this is that when people get together, they form a saying in what Health Psychologists on Health Psychology.com as, “a key cog in the socio-cultural Anthropology”. The article, “The Psychological Impact on Cities of Successful Sports Franchises” , says that  teams such as the Patriots, Celtics, Red Sox, Steelers, all winning franchises; have a major affect on the collective culture of the city area that the team surrounds. Also, such franchises as these, produce and help the cities economy and per capita income.

From an economic perspective, research on the carryover effects of positive fan reaction to on-field success is thin, as you might expect. One such report, however – a 2001 paper on “The Economic Impact of Postseason Play in Professional Sports,” by Brad Humphreys and Dennis Coates of the University of Maryland Baltimore County – suggests that, “winning the Super Bowl increases real per capita income in the home city of the NFL champion by about $140.” Their study between years 1969 and 1997 showed no other correlation between winning other league championships and improving economic performance.

The researchers posit that per capita bump is due to the uniqueness of what’s become a national holiday of sorts – climactic Super Bowl Sunday – and consequently “winning the Super Bowl has a stimulating effect on the productivity of the fans of the winning team.” This is unlike championship series in other pro leagues which are often best-of-7 series played out over a period of weeks. The dispersal of these games, when weighed against the heft of a one-day Super Bowl mega event, renders them inconsequential to the psychological motivation of fans.

Every sports team has their own bragging rights and their own team superiority. They believe their team is the best. Every NCAA, Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup, and World Cup Soccer has their own team destined to be great each and every year. The people are unique in ways to support their teams and some live their lives by it. I know I have roommates that go to a Seattle Seahawks game every year and try to find ways to support their team. People are diehard fans when it comes to what sports they like, some more than others. This seems to become a part of their psyche, which shows how every person is unique in their own way. Cognitively, people want to show how unique of a person they are by supporting something they love and believe in. They do this extrovertly by displaying team logos on cars, signs outside/inside of their homes, wearing colorful jersey’s that sport the last name of their favorite player. Every person will show some other form of the passion of the games they love to watch AND play. This has been around for decades and more to come.