Just for Luck
by Zito Madu
One of the great things about watching sports with people who usually don’t watch sports is that they ask obvious-seeming questions that cause knowledgeable sports fans to realize how ridiculous the games and the culture around them can be. This ridiculousness isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just part of the nature of enjoying sports, but it does make you realize how, when you’ve been steeped in the culture for a long time, you stop questioning it.
While watching NFL football, for example, someone may ask why the officials use a chain to measure the position of the ball even though they use cutting-edge technology for everything else. And you just have to tell them that it’s just what they do; starting from the 2025 NFL season, the officials will finally switch to camera technology. Or another famous example, when one is asked to explain the offside rule in soccer. No matter how much sense it makes to you, it sounds so silly telling another person that a goal has been disallowed because the forward’s toe was ahead of the defender as the ball was played. Soccer leagues adding the VAR (video assistant referee) system hasn’t helped; in fact it only revealed just how absurd the rule was, and made everyone even unhappier.
The spotlight of naive interrogation by a non-fan illuminates the culture of fans in all kinds of ways. Watching an Arsenal game at a bar a few weeks ago, a place where I am a regular, a friend expressed curiosity about some of our fellow patrons. She was interested in the jerseys people were wearing, since they were of the same team, but from different seasons. And I explained that mostly for profit reasons, teams in soccer release new jerseys every year. The same way that fashion brands release new collections every year.
Keep us breathing fire!
For $3/month you can read this whole post and get our weekdaily newsletter too!