Watching Sports is... Actually Good For Us?
I know, a somewhat puzzling opener for people who know me on a personal level: I don't care much for (generally speaking) watching sports. Sure, I'll cheer on my home team (Go U of O Ducks!), and I will watch an event if they are playing simply to be the lone Ducks fan cheering them on in ACC/SEC-land, but if the channel changes to let us watch the news, a cooking show or How It's Made, I'm far more attentive because those are much more my speed and interests. But a bit I briefly caught in a borrowed copy of The Goodnewspaper (The Sports Edition) (@goodgoodgoodco on IG) made the suggestion that watching sports was good for us.
Mental Health Benefits
From what I remember of this article, it insinuated that watching sports gave our brains some of the benefits like a dopamine hit from seeing a team or a player we're rooting for doing a goal, playing the thing. Perhaps not as much of a hit as the player themselves got for making the try, but it's a teletransmitted drug hit, what do you expect when you have to share your dose with a million viewers? :')
aside: dopamine:
a monoamine neurotransmitter found in the brain and essential for the normal functioning of the central nervous system
The article actually helped me to understand a bit more why there's always a group of humans under the sports television here, hooting, yelling, and screaming (literally, not figuratively) when someone's shoes squeaked, or an oblate spheroid was flung through the air, or some guy got knocked the 👊🦆 out in the Stop Sign cage matches.
They're all engaged in a form of self-care in a place that does nothing else to treat mental illness or care for mental well-being. The Sports TV is an ocular drip that takes the edges off the creeping ring threatening to take over their minds and send them back down darker roads that they are trying to leave behind.
Observation
These guys are... unbearable when there aren't enough sports on. It is simultaneously irritating and relieving that we have Gridiron Football almost year-round now. The NFL starts their tries just before fall, and culminates in a season finale at the top of February. Shortly thereafter, we go into the UFL, who have their season which ends before summer takes off. Then the Canadian Football League (whose field confuses me) are playing these summer months. NFL will have a two week Flag Football thing, just in time for... their preseason to start
right afterward for tackle.
Of course, if football isn't your thing, try Football. Guys here were cheering on teams during the World Cup, and will watch all of the football leagues, even the women's.
Women's Sports
Yes, most of these guys here love them. They are absolutely nuts over the WNBA in this wing, which tells you an important thing:
- They are watching for the sport, not the "eye candy factor" that some would accuse men of.
These guys are spouting off stats about players that I clearly do not understand as a non-sports person while chattering back and forth, and the ladies are not dressed in anything that is demeaning to their ability to play the sport as an "audience booster". This isn't the Lingerie Basketball League. This is Basketball; grab the rock.
They also watch a LOT of the Athletes Unlimited games here, particularly softball.
Other sports?
Oh yes, other sports are watched in general here like baseball (collegiate and professional varieties), men's basketball (College, US NBA and a basketball league in Africa), UFC Fighting (and all the analogues it has spawned), Track and Field, NASCAR, Pickleball, Tennis, the occasional fragment of an F1 race... Heck, one time we even watched a glorious fifteen minutes of the TGL and hours upon hours of The Masters (and other major PGA golfing events).
I even admit to enjoying watching quietly the first inning of Bananaball, though I never got to watch more -- the guys here think it's too out there 🏳️🌈🙄, their words) to watch.
A fervent wish:
... I just really, really wish the rest of these guys could watch their sports a little quieter. :')
This wing has screamers who seem to believe that the louder they scream, the better their player or team will play, and the sports TV is pretty close to my assigned cell -- the holleringreverberates into what should be my quiet place. Ah, well.
Keep taking care of yourselves, fellas. Someone's got to do it, and it won't be Mental Health here.