Post-Defeat, Part II: Why Do I/We Care So Much about Athletics?

Reading what a big scar losing a race in an obscure high school track meet left on my psyche has left me a bit, well, embarrassed.  After a wrenching end to a marriage and other close relationships, being a single foster parent, watching my parents and two close friends my age die from cancer, learning how to be a loving husband, adopting and parenting an amazing son and watching him become a man before my eyes, and so forth and so forth and so forth I have to wonder: Why did I care so much about getting second place in a race?  Why was running at the center of my life for so many years?  And why did I immediately translate the competitive drive behind my running to fields like Evangelical Christianity and academia, prompting me to in a few years burn out from each?  My desire to be the best would plunge me into an activity for hours, weeks, even years, then spit my back up on the beach of life, exhausted and confused well into middle age.

And why do so many men, especially, care so much about how our sports teams do?  Why are we so depressed and angry when people we don't even know playing in games we have absolutely no control over "fail us"?

And why do so many adults who appear otherwise reasonable spend hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars making sure that their children have every imaginable advantage in soccer, basketball, gymnastics, or other sports?  And this even--or especially--when the children themselves don't seem very interested?

The answer: I don't know.

OK, I'm enough of a real man to not be able and willing to stop there.  So here goes:

1) Modern men get so fixated on sports in part because we can.  We have the time and money for hobbies, and sports--especially if it involves ourselves or our children--is a compelling hobby.

2) We are also bored.  Most of us have pretty routine lives, and the opportunity to compete vicariously through out children or even our sports team gives us something to look forward to and to savor.  With children, too, the future seems endless.  They dream of  playing professionally, and we are excited to see how far they can go.

But is all of this really necessary?