7 ways to be a better sports fan

4) Stop treating athletes as symbols

It’s unfortunate how often fans (and the media) treat athletes as if those athletes are representations of abstract concepts, as if those athletes “mean” something deep and profound. Sports stir up powerful emotions in fans, and that’s wonderful, but that doesn’t mean the athletes on the field are anything besides athletes on the field. Projecting your societal values onto them is dehumanizing and a bit weird, not to mention the cause of oodles of atrocious sportswriting.

You hear this all the time with so-called “old-school” players, and it’s always obnoxious. The way he hustles and doesn’t talk to the refs and obsequiously bows to the media represents everything good that our society has lost due to Millennials! Worse, this “analysis” often involves ugly racial tones — both under- and over- — as anyone who has ever suffered through a Colin Cowherd rant about John Wall or an MLB pundit’s tsk-tsking of Yasiel Puig can understand. Conversations about sportsmanship devolve into a gross game of respectability politics, and that wouldn’t be as prevalent if athletes were allowed to be athletes, not symbols.

(Actually, it wouldn’t be as prevalent if sports media weren’t so overwhelmingly straight and white and male, but that’s a conversation for a different time.)

There is no problem with loving sports on a deep level, but you should always keep in mind that sports, however exciting they may be, are nothing more than talented people — emphasis intentional — playing a game for your amusement. Athletes aren’t symbols; they are flesh-and-blood humans with insecurities and flaws and shortcomings, and treating them as somehow “more” than that doesn’t elevate them as people, but actually devalues them.

Which brings us to the next piece of advice, one that should definitely help solve some the problems listed above…

Next: 5) Turn off ESPN