Throughout my time as a student journalist at the Technique, some people have asked me why I chose to write about sports. My first answer always had to do with my fandom and how I have watched sports my whole life, but I feel that my perspective has changed. In a world that has continued to move towards a more binge-watching culture, sports have become one of the only true forms of entertainment that everyone watches live. Whether it is the Super Bowl, the Masters or any of your favorite Tech events, you can always find someone with an opinion about what happened.
I have recently had conversations with my friends about the state of media consumption in the world now and how people have started binge-watching more shows on the various streaming platforms. We spoke about how, in the older generations, people would gather around their television to watch The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live or the latest sitcom, and then the very next day, people would go to school or work and talk about what happened. The anticipation surrounding each release led to an increased personal connection with each show and forced people to discuss what happened in the episode the night before. I know that the weekly format has started to come back with shows such as Severance, The White Lotus and Fallout, but the feeling is not quite the same.
Sports have taken up the role of the live event that people can talk about. People often joke about how guys often talk about nothing, which may be true, but when meeting a stranger, you are searching for common ground, and sports talk can take up that role. Even in a work environment, you can turn to a coworker and start chatting about the NFL, NBA or whatever sport may be in season, and they may have an opinion about it. On the first day of my internship in 2023, my boss saw that I wrote about sports for the paper on my resume and immediately started probing about Tech sports, Atlanta United and the English Premier League. Sports can be a common ground or a safe space that people can go to without getting offended, unless you are a Mavericks fan right now.
As traditional media increasingly moves away from weekly releases, sports inherently have to keep the same schedule due to player rest. People know that any Saturday from late August to December, college football will be on, and people will tune in. Every Sunday, the NFL has its whole day of football. When you know when an event is happening, you can enter the next day and automatically talk about that ridiculous shot, insane comeback or devastating collapse. With the fact that a week passes between each game, storylines can take time to form and incur emotion for each event. This past weekend, Rory McIlroy won his first Masters to complete the career golf grand slam, an accomplishment that only five other golfers have ever achieved. McIlroy went hot and cold throughout the tournament and, as a result, tortured the millions of people watching around the world. One man hitting a golf ball swung the emotions of hordes of fans; one outcome can leave people in jubilant highs or devastating lows.Â
The impact of sports on people’s lives extends past emotions, leaving long lasting effects on the community. To showcase this power, let us go to Liverpool, a blue-collar city that is most well known for shipping and Liverpool FC. In the summer of 2017, Egyptian winger Mohamed Salah joined Liverpool and has since become arguably the best Liverpool player in history, tallying 243 goals and 112 assists in just 395 games while collecting an impressive array of trophies. Although his accomplishments on the pitch are noteworthy, his impact on the community is far greater— hate crimes in Liverpool have decreased by 16% and islamophobic tweets from Liverpool fans have halved since he joined. Salah and Liverpool are positive examples, sports can also have a negative impact on people’s lives. When a favorite team is upset in the NFL, there is a 10% uptick in police reports of male-to-female partner violence. Although some lives are made better thanks to sports, others experience negative outcomes and it can make people dread the results.
I first started writing about sports for the love of the game, pardon my jokes. I wanted to write about them to get access to sporting events around Atlanta, which I still definitely did, but I have found that sports have far greater meaning. I have spoken to countless athletes during my time at the Technique, and they have reiterated how important sports are to them. From using athletics as a baseline to get through devastating medical procedures to an escape where everything is under their own control, sports can ground those that participate in them. For both the viewer and the athletes, sports are their life. To steal from the SEC commercials: it just means more.