Sport as Religion

Many times, in this class and elsewhere, the idea of sport being a religion comes up. It’s been looked at in Trothen’s, Scholes’ and Bain-Selbo’s articles, and discussed in this class. The idea of sports taking a position in people’s lives, comparable to religion, has been greatly studied and many connections made.

I think it’s fair to say sports can play a huge role in people’s lives, something similarly seen by looking at the importance of religion in one’s life, however these several parallels made between the two does not necessarily mean sport takes over and acts as religion. In most cultures, because religion is such a dominant factor, many things, like sports, stem out from it. A basic definition of religion explains three functions of religion being its social function, hermeneutic function, and transcendence function. (From Lynch’s article).

Sport definitely plays quite a social function for most people who follow or have an interest in sports. Sport creates social communities, where a collective experience drives a large amount of energy, most participants involved as a group. As a fan of sports, I love being at hockey, baseball, or football games. It’s one of the best ways for me to socially connect with my own brother. On the other hand, the idea of sports providing meaning, as a hermeneutic function, is not something I can relate to. Yes, I am a sports fan, but a sport is not my life. The argument is often made that sports become the life of their fans, and that sports teach life lessons on winning, losing, struggles, challenges, etc. Even though this may be true of some sports followers, I do not think it is the case with all or most sport fans (including myself). This makes is a lot harder for me to believe sport can act as a religion in my life. The last role of religion, of a transcendent being is something I definitely do not agree sport has. Does sport really experience any transcendence?

Bain-Selbo wrote about all words that described sports and depicted that they were similar words to describe any religious experiences with transcendence. In spite of this, there are numerous and countless other situations or experiences where equivalent words can be used to illustrate or express quite different things. I believe this shows an ineffective and weak argument, which is why I cannot perceive that sports can function completely like religion.

I believe all these parallels and connections between sports and religion can cover and explain part of religion, but not religion as a whole.