The Competition

You simply adore the sports stadium.

The experience of being surrounded by thousands of people cheering for their teams, eating hot dogs covered in toppings, watching the guy a few seats down tear apart a big blue foam hand, all right before seeing the referee make the dumbest call in human history.

Yeah, it’s alright.

After you finish booing the ref and watching someone throw a Pepsi can at him, you gotta think to yourself though: Are sports problematic?

You observe the two men a few seats away to your left. They’re wearing jerseys bearing different colors, and are arguing passionately. One of them, a red-faced man in his thirties, looks angry enough to dump his cup of iced water over the other guy’s head.

Nah, probably not.

But if that’s the case, why do sports cause controversy online?

You recall reading a 2019 Business Insider article that mentioned Ryan Lochte, the Olympian swimmer who had infamously lied about how he and other swimmers had been robbed, trying to cover up the fact that he and a few others had been responsible for vandalizing a gas station bathroom. Sports definitely aren’t immune to controversies. In fact, it’s one of the topics that has the most controversies related to it.

Yes, there’s that argument now about how to handle the matter of transgender athletes, that one story about the biker that used performance enhancing drugs, and the fact that two gymnasts from China and the USA have both had bronze medals revoked for various reasons.

Okay, so sports spark controversies. But that makes sense. After all, sports revolve around the idea of competition and being competitive. It makes sense that certain athletes and groups will go to any lengths to win or make a name for themselves.

You nod and turn back to the game, satisfied with your answer.

But something nags at you. It’s another question your annoying brain has thought up when you witnessed that Pepsi can spiral through the air at the referee. Is there a chance that sports fans sometimes go too far in their celebrations or acts of supporting their team? Surely not. After all, you would never-

Your phone suddenly dings. It’s your friend Jordan, from work. He’s sending you a news story, a video, and with a couple of laughing and thinking emojis. It’s something about how a woman glued herself to a court where an NBA playoff game was going to take place. The video shows a baseball game where a man jumped out of his seat to grab the baseball, which was still in play.

Okay, sure, sometimes people do crazy things, but you’re sure those are the only two examples.

Jordan then follows up with a story about how a fan once went onto the campus of a rival school and poisoned their oak trees.

So that story was a little more intense. The actions carried out were objectively unethical, but at least there aren’t any stories where people were injured.

Another story is sent, this one about how before a tennis match, one fan shanked the opposing player, in hopes of letting their favorite athlete win the match.

Gosh darn it.

You put your phone on silent mode for now and ponder.

Your answer has changed. Yes, sports fans do absolutely go too far sometimes. But is there any difference in the games they support? Do the crazy ones belong more to male games or female games?

Statistically, you know the answer is the former. After all, simply more people are invested in sports played by males than anything else. So it would make sense mathematically that more crazy fans watch male-played sports.

However, there doesn’t seem to be a clear gender difference either. That shanking story from earlier was from a woman’s tennis match.

So yeah, sports are pretty crazy.