Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Religion and Sports
When asked to write about religion for this blog, I thought it would be somewhat easy considering all the different aspects of religion that we have covered in class. This task became a lot harder than I thought it would be as I considered different topics. Soon I found myself thinking about college basketball rather than the blog; this is when I realized how sports and religion are very similar and how religion plays a large role for many athletes and teams. Being a big sports fan I know how it can be following teams from season to season, watching almost all the games, checking updates and reading articles online, as well as debating over topics. This is behavior that somewhat mirrors what is done in religion, the total dedication and constantly being involved. It seems somewhat ironic that football games are on Sundays. Also, you always hear about sports teams being cursed and unable to win the World Series for whatever reason. This type of superstitious thinking reminds me of how people think about religion. Another comparison of how religion and sports are similar is the idea that if your parents are Catholic you’re going to be raised Catholic and share similar views. If your parents are die hard Yankees fans there is a good chance that you will be brought up to be a Yankee fan. Just like the feeling of being part of a sports team, being part of a religion group offers the same sense of belongingness. The idea of baseball players being extremely superstitious also reminds me of religion in the sense that one’s actions will have an effect on their future. In general I think it is surprising how many comparisons can be drawn between religion and sports.
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I totally agree with the similarities. People do practice spectatorship like a religion. And thus far into this course I'm starting to believe concretely that religion is shares the same sort of superstitions that sports fans and athletes practice today. Overall you can pretty much say in this case that we've shifted from spiritual faith in nature and gods to sports-athlete icons.
ReplyDeleteThe religious similarities Nick discusses above hold true with freestyle skiing as well. There is always one skier on top of the game who is idolized by the majority of the freestyle skiing community; and imitated. The first ski rebel was Shane McKonkey who did sketchy back flips off of cliffs in 1996. The next big icon was gold medalist Johnny Mosley, who was the first person to grab his skis in the 1998 winter Olympics. The sport has evolved drastically since then and is now more of an art form than an extreme sport.
ReplyDeleteThe top skier today, Tom Wallisch, is nineteen and has a very distinct fashion sense and trick style. Young skiers today imitate everything from his baggy clothing and apathetic trick style to his inventive lingo and rebellious lifestyle.
The point I'm trying to make is that great athletes are idolized and followed like messiahs (i.e. Jesus).
By the way, I think football games are on Sunday because that is the day when most people don't have work, and since it is the most popular sport in America, marketers can get their ad's shown to a large audience.