Understanding Sport as a Religious Phenomenon: An Introduction by Bain-Selbo Eric & Sapp D. Gregory

Author:Bain-Selbo, Eric & Sapp, D. Gregory [Bain-Selbo, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

Fig. 5.1 Racially diverse Arsenal fans singing.

Hornby identifies a “sense of belonging” as critical to what it means to be a fan.41 “I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control,” he writes, “and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically.”42 Hornby describes Highbury, Arsenal’s home pitch, as “the place I know best in the world, the one spot outside my own home where I feel I belong absolutely and unquestionably.”43 Highbury is sacred for Hornby, a place of comfort and acceptance. His experience undoubtedly is like that of many more stereotypical religious adherents in regard to their church, temple, or other spiritual home.

For Hornby, the pervasiveness of Arsenal in his life and the effects the team has on him are part of the reason that he insists that soccer is more than just a game—at least for him and fans like him. To describe soccer as just a game for someone like Hornby would be like describing religion as just a social club for a devout Catholic. As Hornby insists, soccer “is not an escape, or a form of entertainment, but a different version of the world.”44 It is a version of the world that makes sense of the fan’s behavior and orients the fan to his or her environment. And though soccer, like most sports, has its winners and losers, for the true fan the results do not matter. Hornby makes clear that “it simply doesn’t matter to me how bad things get … results have nothing to do with anything,” adding that for fans like him, “the quality of the product is immaterial.”45

The world that revolves around Arsenal is one that shapes the attitudes and behavior of its fans. In terms of behavior, it is important to note that fans do not sit passively and watch games (either in person or on television). They very much are active participants. For Hornby, soccer “is a context where watching becomes doing.”46 The watching and the actions revolving around the watching are rituals that shape the experience. These rituals might be considered, to use Durkheim’s terminology, part of a positive cult.

Hornby writes about how, for each game, he ritually bought a program from the same seller and entered the stadium through the same turnstile.47 He remembers purchasing a new team shirt before a particularly important game “because I felt I had to do something.”48 Such rituals give us a sense of control in regard to events over which we have little or no control.49 Which team wins the game is something that, ultimately, we know is out of our control. Indeed, sometimes it even seems like a complete mystery why one team wins and another loses—there are so many funny bounces of the ball, gusts of wind that come at inopportune (or opportune) times, and a myriad of other variables that are inexplicable. Thus, as Hornby explains, it is understandable that “we are reduced to creating ingenious but bizarre

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