Why Your Favorite Sports Team Is Slowly Killing You

Or at least it feels that way. A suffering Eagles diehard explores the real stress of being a sports fan

I couldn’t sleep Tuesday night because of goddamn Chip Kelly.  

That afternoon, the Philadelphia Eagles—my pride, my joy, the eternal source of my deepest frustrations—continued their perplexing offseason when they pulled off a trade that seemed nonsensical at the time, and looks downright indefensible a day later: Gone was young, cheap quarterback Nick Foles (The NFL Hero for Introverts Everywhere!) to the St. Louis Rams, in exchange for the aging, expensive, and oft-injured QB Sam Bradford. (He probably tore his ACL in the time it took to write this sentence.) 

So now Eagles Head Coach and General Manager Chip Kelly, a football mad scientist, appears to have bet the farm on Bradford. In one fell swoop, he laid out the potentially scary future for Birds fans—and more immediately, set me up for a lousy night’s sleep. 

You know how they say you shouldn’t go to bed angry with your wife? Well, I went to bed angry with my football team.

I tossed and turned last night agonizing over the trade, like the many nights I’ve restlessly wrestled with major life moves. But those were my moves—not the ones of a coach I’ve never met before. Was this really worth losing hours of shuteye over?

I fire off the question to Dan Wann, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Murray State University and an expert on fan behavior.

“It’s worse than when you make a bad decision because with sports fandom, we love our teams, we live and die with our teams, and have our well-being tied up in our teams,” he says. “But we are helpless to do anything about it. When we toss and turn over a bad decision, at least it was our bad decision.”

That’s the worst part: I can’t hit up the Rams, say the trade was a goof, and offer up a “We cool?” while I ask for Foles back. I can’t kick in a couple extra million bucks to keep now-departed receiver Jeremy Maclin in midnight green. Instead, I have to watch the ramifications from afar. 

Eric Simons, author of The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession, floats another explanation: “There’s a part of your brain that knows you had nothing to do with those decisions. But there’s another part that doesn’t know that—that thinks, in fact, it was you that made these decisions.”

In a way, your brain is kind of like an idiot GM. “The particular way you attach to a team as a fan leaves your brain confused, on a very literal level, about who’s doing the coaching and playing and who’s sitting in an office chair clicking through articles on their computer,” Simons says. “The longer the attachment, and the more the team represents to you—if, say, you grew up with the Eagles and you love Philadelphia and green happens to be your favorite color—the stronger the confusion will become.”

But the relationship between fan and team is much stronger and more complicated than your brain tells you it ought to be, says Simons. Consider, for example, how some guys take itreally hard when they watch their squads lose.

In a study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, researchers found a 10-percent spike in domestic violence reports in areas where the local NFL team lost a close game from 1995-2006. 

Okay, that’s extreme. But regular guys let tough defeats and boneheaded roster moves affect their health and well-being, too. So why do we do this to ourselves? I mean, it’s just a game—right?

“It’s more than just a game,” Wann says. “Because the role of a team follower is a central part of our social identity. It’s part of who we are. And with that much of who we are tied up in the team, the things the team does (both good and bad) will have a huge effect on us.”

I tell Wann that it’s silly to get worked up over something that’s ultimately so trivial, but again, he firmly disagrees. 

“It’s not silly,” he insists. “It’s not silly at all to care about something. We have a powerful need to identify with something grander than ourselves—and fandom can help satisfy that. Plus, we’re social creatures. And fandom helps bring out our need to belong. So it’s evolutionary. It’s natural.”

Nevertheless, if you feel like your fandom sometimes takes you too far, remember to put sports in its proper place. "Do you have a job? Is your family healthy? Ask yourself these questions,” Wann recommends. “It helps you keep things in perspective.”

Look: I’ll never quit the Eagles. If I’ve put up with their shit for 27 years, there’s no use in jumping ship now.

“At the end of the day, you’re helpless,” says Wann, affirming what I’ll always know. “Even if you wanted to stop following the team, you probably can’t, because so much of who you are is wrapped up in the team.”

Still, one Men’s Health coworker (and fellow angry Birds fan) has pledged to give it a try. He says the Bradford trade was the final nail in the coffin, and that he’s in the market for a new team.

But the better move, Wann says, is finding another team to root for instead of making an outright swap. 

“One of the best ways to cope as a fan is to have multiple favorites—although it’s safer if they play in different leagues.”

Besides, “bandwagon fans enjoy championships just about as much as lifers,” says Simons.