The Sensitive Man and Sports – Tales in Fanaticism

Do sports and the HSP male mix well?
As I have gotten older, I have mellowed on my love all things related to University of North Carolina athletics. I never attended the school but was born in the state, Alumni via propinquitate. My children truly feared a Carolina loss, and often hid when they could see things going south. We laugh about it now, but I’m sure it was terrifying seeing the old man, rant at amplitude for a missed free throw or a squandered scoring opportunity.

That was about as freewheeling with my emotions as I got. And I would let loose. Today, not so much, I am more tempered by age and realize, wisely, the going ons of twenty something athletes, is nothing to get bent up about. And in my reflection, I wonder, as an older HSP male, why I allow this to happen in the first place.
 
After all what is a fan, but an emotional fanatic?
As sport fans, HSP or non-HSP, we are tragically tied to the fates of our teams. I mean, a fan is a fanatic and typically emotionally vested in the outcome of their favorite team’s performance. We all become emotional; we all channel the inner HSP, full of rich, deep and strong emotion viewing our sporting event of choice. Of course, fueled by alcohol or some other such social lubricant, we can intensify that emotion, making the small fan into a large and emboldened FAN.
As HSMs we can overcome our reluctance for emotional public display, by joining in with others, like minded fans, shout and scream, rant and rave and feel like part of something bigger. Perhaps for some HSMs the roar of the crowd, the rowdiness of seatmates, the blaring bands, the PA blasting is a bit much in person, but safer to follow on the big screen at home, with the touch of a remote control.

Even still, I have often found that moments of heart pounding sports action, can find me slipping into another room, waiting on the outcome, signaled by the crowds roar or silence, to clue me in on the outcome. Not being able to watch is throttling my support, I suppose, but makes it easier. Nevertheless, being a fan can be linked to feelings of well-being, happiness, less loneliness and isolation, by giving you community, a common communication language, an inner generational connection, and the freedom to express emotion in public with reckless abandon, especially for men. Maybe even more so for HSMs.

Following a team is like begin in love, n'est-ce pas?
 It really is like being in love. The range of emotions is almost identical. Up and down with a team’s fortunes, heartbreak and ecstasy, winning and losing, sometimes all in a neat two hour drama or a months long season. And at the end of the season, if your team makes the final round of action, you either soar into the following year with a victory or you sink with disappointment in a loss that lingers and is re-triggered with every Sportscenter highlight or YouTube video clip. It can be agonizing.
 
So why would an HSM male, put themselves through this. Typically, we are not the best athletes.  We are not often drawn to competitive sport, as players or as viewers (alright maybe more of the latter). Why do some of us do this?
 
 A place to vent, be aggressive and walk out with all of your teeth / or releasing the beast within.
Like most young males, HSM males, are socialized into sport. It is the manly thing to do, to engage in competition, to test our strength against other males, to foster the warrior within and to progress towards a masculine archetype, defined by our culture. It is the staging area to grow the ambiguous boy and transform him into the man society expects him to be.  Right. Sport, especially in America is a place to vent, to be aggressive and to release the inner beast within – doing it in nice timed quarters, with zebra shirted referees, and then to return to the real world as a hero, or at least role model. Again, right.

The paradox of watching violent sports and being a sensitive male.
As HSMs we generally refrain from violence as a first resort, but watching particularly violent sports, such as hockey, football and even baseball would seem to be the antithesis of what HSMs would find entertaining. But you can’t take the HSM out of the context of the culture we reside in. In America, football is religion, and no one can say this sport is not about snot knocking violence. As fans we hoot and holler about a great hit, a bone jarring tackle or a bruising run by a halfback.

And many studies have shown that violence modeled even for adults watching away from the action, can lead to violence away from the game.  Where does that lead HSM sport fans? Is this some vestige of our early childhood training? Are we proving our manhood by watching or participating in such games or are we simply getting along to save face with our male cohorts? It would seem not to make sense, but I know there are many among us, myself included that pass through this ritual every Fall.

As George Orwell describes it, “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in violence. In other words, it is war without shooting.”
How can we not be affected by it? Where is the balance?

Does sensitivity affect athletic ability?
As for the athletes involved, how many of them are HSMs? If HSMs are twenty percent of the population it stands to reason, that there has to be some of the college and pro athletes representing. And if so, how does that affect their sports performance? Does criticism mess with their heads, hence impacting performance? Do they get TOO emotional during losses or during stages of defeat that would impact the team? Or are they more passionate, more driven, and more conscientious about their game and tend to excel?

I can’t imagine there being any mutual exclusivity to being sensitive or highly sensing and athletic ability.  In fact, many top athletes are not above showing that sensitivity in reflection of a completed game/match/meet. I would point to athletes that show a great deal of passion and compassion, as possible HSM model athletes – Michael Jordan, Tim Tebow, LeBron James, and Tiger Woods.

I still love sports.
Regardless, of where you stand on this topic, since HSM males are a wide spectrum, and yes I believe that HSPness goes from moderate sensitivity to extreme sensitivity, we males can fall out anywhere on that strata. I can’t speak for the whole, but I can say for me, I still love sports. I play less of the team variety these days, but love to participate when I can. I do watch my teams and vicariously enjoy their success and failures. I does put me in touch with something greater, a sense of belonging (even remotely), and I do relish that.

But, I do wonder sometimes, how I can be so variegated with HSM interests – art, music, writing, spirituality and enjoying the natural wonders around me;  and still be drawn to combative, competitive, and yes, sometimes violent world of sports. Perhaps, it’s my blood type – type O. A friend told me that type O is an ancient hunter-gatherer blood type. Maybe that predisposes me toward some instinctive bloodletting activities.

Who knows. I know this,  I’ll be tuned in this Saturday for college football, my day to raise hell and ride that wild roller coaster of emotion. As we used to say in the South, see ya’ll there. Go Heels!
Thanks for dropping by, until next week…
  
 
References:
www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/30/sports-fan-mental-health-benefits_n_6565314.html
www.ukessays.com/essays/psychology/effects-of-violence-in-sports-psychology-essay.php
www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2014/03/18/sports-violence-psychology-leonard-l-glass
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-shrink-tank/201201/the-crying-game-male-athletes-shedding-tears