Benefits of being a sports fan. From HuffPost.
1. A sense of community
Longtime fan Gary Sargent, 66, of Winchendon, Massachusetts, eats a hotdog at Fenway Park in Boston, September 10, 2014. (Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
"We've known for years in psychology that feeling connections and affiliations with others is important for well-being," said Wann. "What fandom allows you to do is to gain those connections, which then in turn provides you with social and psychological health."
For instance, doing something as simple as putting on a team baseball cap can have a powerful effect on one's sense of community, said Wann. Say, for instance, that you're wearing a Red Sox cap while walking through Boston. Several passersby will give you a thumbs up, high-five, fist bump or even stop to chat with you about your local team and its prospects.
"All these people are going to be your friends and your comrades, even though you don't know their names, you've never seen them before, and you're probably never going to see them again," said Wann. "But you feel this important sense of connection to the world around you."
2. The community, in turn, boosts your sense of well-being.
Of course, if you watch a game with others, your feelings of loneliness are going to be at least temporarily lower during the event. But Wann's research finds that simply knowing or feeling that you're part of a larger community has long-term positive effects. In fact, sports fans report lower levels of loneliness whether or not the game is on.
"We've gone to people in classrooms. We've gone to dorm rooms. We still still find this general effect," said Wann. "They have this enduring level of connections to others, and lower levels of loneliness and alienation, whether or not they're watching the game."
3. Fandom gives us a common language.
Being a fan of a sports team can also be a deeply rooted heritage that connects you to others across time, transcending the barriers that divide people generationally, adds Professor Alan Pringle, Ph.D. Pringle specializes in mental health nursing at the University of Nottingham and noted that soccer, the U.K.'s most popular sport, gives families a "common currency" that connects family members unlike few other subjects.
"Most granddads were not that interested in the latest computer games, and most grandsons did not really want to hear what it used to be like to work in a coal mine," Pringle wrote in an email to HuffPost. "But the game offered often three generations of a family a shared experience, shared language and shared emotion that is not found in too many other areas of life."
4. Fandom is a safe space.
Pringle also noted that in a culture where men often feel that they have to stifle emotional expressions, sports fandom offers some a safe space to feel, cry, laugh or show signs of affection.
"The classic difficulties British men have with expressing emotion often means that they are limited in their opportunity to externalize emotion and often internalize it," wrote Pringle. "For many of them, football offers a safe space where expressed emotion is acceptable (even crying or hugging other men!)."
In Pringle's research, he examines how following local soccer leagues gave some men a safe way to express identity, reduce their stress and feel a sense of continuity. He quotes one fan of a Mansfield Town soccer club, who said, "When I was a kid I used to go there, when I was married I went, when I was divorced I went, when I was married again I went, when I was divorced again I went, it's the only constant thing in my life."
5. Sports fandom allows others to experience Success:
Finally, being a fan of a sport provides some with a rare experience: success. Feeling victorious, even vicariously, is a precious emotion in troubled times, psychology professor Ronald . Levant of the University of Akron told CantonRep.com.
"Identifying with your sports teams is one of the ways you can vicariously experience success, and in real life, success is hard," Levant said in the 2010 article. "We have ups and downs, a lot of things don't always go our way ... especially in this economy."
And for fans who love the sport enough to play it, that feeling of success is even more crucial. Pringle noted that in his town of Nottingham, hospital services are funding soccer leagues for young men with depression, schizophrenia or drug-related problems to play regularly scheduled matches.
"The interesting thing is that it is one area of their lives where they can experience real success," Pringle wrote to HuffPost. "If you are going to be good at football you have usually developed real skill by around [age] 13 to 14, so lots of these guys struggle badly in many areas of their lives but can play really well, and for the time they are on that field they can engage in an activity [on] which their symptoms can, in many cases, have only a minimal impact."
And I coast on the ecstasy for as long as possible!
