Our love for the NFL
We love the NFL, there is no doubt about that. However, just how much do we love the NFL? Well, this can be seen in the thousands that attend the games, and the millions who watch the Super Bowl each year. We see the fans' love for the game in the sportsbooks, looking at the NFL betting odds, and the millions, or even billions betting on the sport each year!
Is it just the game, or is it the players too? Well, it is both. We often idolize our favorite NFL players, but why is this? What is it about these players that draws us in enough to call them our idols?
Our love for the players
Our love for the players comes from similar reasons that people idolize celebrities. Why someone might idolize Kim Kardashian is not so different as to why someone might idolize Tom Brady.
While these two could not be more different, people idolize them for similar reasons. In sport, people will always have a favorite, yet idolizing them is slightly different. They are our heroes, someone we look up to, and love.
Let's see a few reasons why we idolize these athletes.
1. Skills
Their skills are the first reason. Most of us are working desk jobs 9- 5, or work in stores or warehouses, while these players work in a sport we love. Their skills make them seem so strong and powerful, and we look at them and see what we wish we were. A career we wish we had, and a physical prowess that we dream of. Of course, they are paid to train, work out, and stay fit and healthy, while we have to pay out for a gym membership and try to fit it in around our work lives.
Their skills are unique to their careers, and we love that and idolize it.
2. Living the dream
Not only do these players get to live the dream we had as kids, but they get paid for it, and they get paid a lot. Imagine doing something you love for your job and getting paid a massive check to do it. It’s a dream. These players are exactly who we dreamed of being as kids.
3. The teams
There’s something magical about teamwork in a game of football. They work so well together, a good team is coordinated, calculating, and communicates so well. We cannot help but feel a little envious about how well they work together. Quarterbacks head these teams, they’re like leaders of these groups, and we so often idolize them because they are so good at organizing each person and communicating well. Something we often lack in our own lives in some way, it's inspirational. If they can do it, why can’t we!
4. Reflection
The players reflect their fans and their region. If a player does well, this good performance is a mirror image of their fan base. So, not only do we feel pride in the players, but we feel pride in ourselves as them being a member of our team. When Brady won the Super Bowl for the Patriots, New England fans did not only feel pride in him, but in ourselves for having such an amazing player on our team.
5. Pride
Following on from that point, there is something to be said for how significantly pride plays a part. When a player or team performs well, there is a shared pride between both parties, fans, and athletes. This shared pride gives the two parties a feeling of unity.
6. Superiority
It has been said in the past that people worship well known sports figures because they are seen as having superior genes, we can’t be like them, so instead we idolize them. While their genetics are the same, they have instead simply worked hard to get where they are. We still see them as superior, not unlike many famous figures.
7. Representation
The players' representation of the team and area they represent plays a big part too. Any team represents these fans and areas, and when an athlete gives a great performance, fans share in their joy as it is a positive representation of themselves as well. This can work the other way around too, if a player were to give a bad performance, it would reflect on the fans and area.
8. The game
Of course, if you love the game, you will love the players, and if you love the game, you will always have a favorite, and sometimes the idolization of a player is just as simple as "they're my favorite player, in my favorite game."