Till Death Do Us Part: Why People Marry Sports Teams

On-field rivalries reveal our off-field humanity

By Davis Harper

When you become a fan of a team entrenched in a longstanding rivalry, you are indoctrinated not only to love your team but to hate the enemy. Even the most mature, reasonable fan can experience more glee from a rival’s failure than their own team’s success. And from USC vs. UCLA in college sports, to Chicago Bears vs. Green Bay in the National Football League, to Red Sox vs. Yankees in Major League Baseball, it’s also true that the opposition’s most loathed players are sometimes remembered longer than their own beloved stars of yore. Sports fandom offers a chance to love and hate simultaneously.

The Spurs’ winning roster for 1901’s FA Cup Final, the world’s oldest football competition Public Domain via Wiki Commons

So it is for English Premier League soccer rivals Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal.

The teams are based just four miles apart in the north London suburbs, and their biannual North London derby is one of the fiercest and most famous sports rivalries on earth. The matchup dates back to 1887, with the 183 meetings between the two teams creating a mutual hostility that endures. The modern realities of global audiences, ballooning ticket prices, and superstar athletes has only made the rivalry more bitter.

I arrived in London the day before the teams’ 183rd meeting on March 5, ticket in hand, with two goals in mind. As a diehard fan of the Tottenham Hotspur — or Spurs, as they’re often called — I planned to rupture a lung cheering for them. As a sports journalist, I was hoping to discover something deeper about the nature of sports fandom by assessing my experience and observing everyone else’s throughout the events surrounding this battle of hated rivals.

I picked a good time for a visit. Before the match, pundits were calling it the biggest game in the history of the derby. As I emerged from the Seven Sisters Tube station onto the cracked pavement of Tottenham High Road, it was hard not to wonder what all the fuss was about. During the week, you’d be forgiven for assuming this forgotten borough of London inspires little pride. On weekends, however, the Tottenham High Road is a hive of raucous activity as tens of thousands of football supporters descend upon it from all over the world.

Just a few minutes’ walk down the High Road from the White Hart Lane stadium, the fans whipped themselves into a frenzy before the match. A succession of chants — nearly an even split between hymns to Spurs and damnations of Arsenal — shook The Bricklayers pub. The back patio had the atmosphere of a rave, with strangers rubbing shoulders amid sloshing beer and bellowing voices. Except, it was 10 AM and this was a different type of ecstasy.

“In sports stadiums, there are changes in what is socially acceptable,” said Alan Pringle, a University of Nottingham professor who has focused on the positive impact that sports fandom has on mental health. “At football stadiums, fans dress in team colors, sing offensive songs, goad opposing fans, and believe in their own invincibility. But what is displayed there is usually left at the ground, by people who return to their normal lives having discharged huge amounts of emotion in a safe environment.”

Once inside the stadium, my back-row seat gave me a full view of the disciples (us) and the usurpers (them). A full-throated chorus of “We are Tottenham! Mighty Tottenham! We are Tottenham, from the Lane!” ripped through the crowd like an electrical current. Almost everyone I spoke to ahead of the match referred to Tottenham as “we” and “us.” I did it too.

Psychologists have found that fans actually trick their brains into losing the distinction between themselves and their teams

The old trope about a team being “part of my DNA”? That’s actually true. Psychologists have found that fans actually trick their brains into losing the distinction between themselves and their teams. We allow our identities to be shaped, to varying extent, by the identity of our team. An example is Spurs fans, whose team has a history of playing with flair but faltering at the worst moments. This history has created a humble, self-deprecating, but strangely positive and ambitious fan base.

“It’s not necessarily conscious, not something you sit down and think about,” Eric Simons, author of “The Secret Lives of Sports Fans,” told me. “The more ways you align your identity with a team — through your hobbies, your friends, your family — the stronger that connection becomes. When you connect to other people, fellow fans, they protect and expand that identity.”

I felt confident before kickoff, but immediately afterward a sense of fear mixed with anxiety and a dash of dread washed over me. I would soon learn that derbies (the British term used to refer to all manner of rivalry matches) are despised by many diehards precisely because everything is on the line: victory, points, league position, bragging rights, all of it. The pressure is immense, and the fan who identifies with his team naturally empathizes with it as well.

Every year hordes of dedicated Arsenal fans journey to watch the team train in north London. Members’ Day 2015 Courtesy of joshjdss via Wiki Commons

Arsenal took an early 1–0 lead all the way to halftime, which had Spurs fans fearing the worst. In the second half, Arsenal’s Francis Coquelin was ejected from the match for his second hard foul, leaving the team with 10 men to Spurs’ 11. Arsenal fans went apoplectic. Spurs fans rejoiced.

This polarized reaction — and the debate that would rage in the days following the match — is an example of selective perception. It’s a concept that argues humans filter external stimuli through a prism of our experiences. It’s what empowers Republicans to immediately disregard President Obama’s policies, or Democrats to distrust everything Ted Cruz says. And it’s what makes even the most otherwise rational humans into irrational cheerleaders for their teams.

“How do you change a person’s mind about what’s happening in the world using evidence, when those same people are immune to evidence?” Simons said, noting that the foundational study in perceptual bias was actually based on fans attending an American college football game between Dartmouth and Princeton in 1951. “You can go back and show that evidence a million times, but there will still be debate. And the positions just get deeper over time!”

Following Coquelin’s exit, Spurs struck twice in quick succession, the second a stunning goal from Tottenham star striker Harry Kane. All at once, a crowd of 30,000 people coiled with anxiety experienced a sudden release, a unique kind of communal euphoria. To take the lead against Arsenal, on a goal like that, was unthinkable. (After the match, regulars of the Spurs podcast, The Fighting Cock, would agree that, in those moments, White Hart Lane stadium was the loudest they had ever heard it.)

Harry Kane playing against Colchester United on January 30, 2016/ Courtesy of Enviro Warrior via Wiki Commons

It was a special moment, but short-lived. Arsenal sneaked in a goal near the end of the match and it ended, 2–2, leaving multiple fans on both sides in need of an emergency heart transplant. The swell of emotions, wave after unpredictable wave, was like squeezing a mushroom trip into 90 minutes. We piled out of the stadium, exhausted, loopy, still unsure of what just took place, but certain we wouldn’t soon forget it.

So, what is it about sports fandom that keeps us coming back again and again? Is it the camaraderie, the emotional release, the escape from the mundanities of everyday life, or the power of group identity? Is it for the conflict, real or imagined?

Or is it maybe because sports will always be there? Relationships end, jobs terminate, friends move and mature, people grow apart. There’s also, you know, birth and death. Life is full of terrifying, unavoidable change. But your club doesn’t change. It’s one of the few durable, consistent facts of life. And for that reason, fans of these teams love them unconditionally.

“In terms of consistency, one of the things that came from our research was that allegiance to a team never changed, despite massive life changes,” Pringle said. “People often went to the same part of the ground, by the same route they had done all their lives.”

This is not mindless adherence to routine. It’s tradition, it’s family, it’s honor. And it’s not limited to the Spurs and Arsenal, or even to soccer. An expat living in Kigali, Rwanda, recently told me she was visiting Chicago and had scheduled her trip around Cubs’ opening day, certain that this was their year. In Reykjavik, Iceland, I met a group of rabid Iceland soccer supporters who had chartered their own jet to follow their team to the Czech Republic. People even regularly drop the equivalent of their kids’ college tuition on Super Bowl tickets, some without telling their wife. It might sound crazy, but somehow it made perfect sense to me to spend $1,000 of my precious freelance-writer’s salary on room, board, and tickets to the North London derby, where I sacrificed my personal safety, lost my voice, and decimated my liver all in the noble pursuit of fanhood.

And you know what? I regret nothing.

Davis Harper is a freelance writer based in Durham, NC. His work has appeared in VICE, Noisey, Howler Magazine, KickTV, and Nieman Storyboard. He is the curator of the weekly longform newsletter YouAreWhatYouRead. Follow him on Twitter.

Featured image courtesy of Mousa Dembele of Spurs and Aaron Ramsey of Arsenal. Tottenham Hotspur vs Arsenal , March 5, 2016 (Rex Features via AP Images).