🏀 Why Sports Have Us By the Throat

We Care an Awful Lot About Things with Little Consequence to Our Own Lives and That is Completely OK — Plus, More Americans Now Own Bitcoin Than They Do Gold

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Katie Perry
May 22, 2025

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The Big Story: The Sacred Stupidity of Sports

It’s midnight. I think I just witnessed the worst loss in the history of sports, although I lived through an era of Notre Dame Football where the Irish fairly consistently lost to Air Force (no disrespect to them), so I’m somewhat built for this.

I saw a grown man collapse to the floor of a bar tonight. Another threw his phone in what I am going to assume was some type of Fanduel-related crash-out. I won’t lie to you: I also produced some choice language that I am not entirely proud of. All of this over a ball that did or didn’t fall into a basket.

Big yikes!

So, as I experienced what can only be described as a Renaissance painting set in Brooklyn 2025, I pondered why we care so much about sports. Why does something so materially meaningless feel like a matter of personal identity, tribal pride, and cosmic betrayal, all at once?

Let’s start with the psychology. This is not just a cultural thing; it’s neurological. Sports, at their core, fulfill a bunch of primal psychological needs. According to Daniel Wann, a professor who has spent decades studying fan behavior, cheering for a team gives us identity. It gives us belonging. It even gives us a boost in self-esteem when the team wins. It’s called “basking in reflected glory,” or BIRGing, which is the academic term for “we won” even though you’ve done nothing but eat bar nachos and yell. (This feels very VC-coded.)

Being a sports fan, it turns out, is one of the few socially acceptable ways to deeply care about something irrational. The American Psychological Association backs this up. Fandom is good for mental health. It creates connection. It gives people a shared language. It helps regulate emotion. It gives structure to a world that often feels like it’s running on chaos. Your team might break your heart, but at least you know when and how it’ll happen. There’s a schedule for your suffering.

Now zoom out. From a sociological perspective, sports are a proxy for everything else: culture, conflict, class, power, gender, race. They are the stage where we play out our values in real time. Sociologist Anthony King describes sports as a “modern totem,” a secular symbol around which we gather, not unlike religion. You wear the jersey, chant the chants, follow the rituals, believe.

Humans have been doing this for thousands of years. The Greeks had the Olympics, of course. The Mayans played high-stakes ball games that sometimes ended in actual human sacrifice (!!!). Across time and geography, we’ve turned physical feats into cultural events. Sports are as embedded in our evolution as language or art. Competition is survival. Celebration is communal.

And we’re not just talking about entertainment. We’re talking about meaning.

Sports offer drama without permanent consequence. They give us permission to feel big feelings about small things. Joy. Rage. Hope. Grief. You can yell, cry, hug a stranger, or swear at your television, and then go to work the next morning like nothing happened.

A 2024 study in BMC Psychology found that both watching and playing sports significantly boost psychological well-being. Part of that is endorphins. But part of it is narrative. You’re following a story. You’re watching heroes rise, fall, and rise again. You’re seeing effort rewarded, and sometimes, heartbreak handed out without explanation. Although in my case, there was an explanation, and that explanation was Aaron Nesmith sinking six 3’s in the last five minutes of regulation.

Which brings me back to tonight.

You don’t win all the games. You can draw up the perfect play, and the shot rolls off the rim. You can be up by 10 points with like 2 minutes left, the crowd roaring, and you start to feel a little smug. Everything’s going your way. Then things start to slip. And before you know it, you’re watching it all fall apart in real time. And yet, you keep watching.

Text credit: Gordo

Because in a world that is often terrifying and confusing and relentlessly serious, sports are not. Usually. They’re self-contained. They’re safe. The stakes feel high, but they’re not life or death.  It’s literally a ball being tossed into a basket. It’s not that deep.

You get to root for people who have dedicated their lives to something. Who are competing at the edge of their abilities, in front of thousands or millions of people. You get to assume they’re trying their absolute hardest. That what you’re seeing is real.

And you get to believe, for 2.5 hours or however long it takes, that it matters.

Even when it doesn’t go your way, you still feel something. That’s why we give a damn. Because sports, for all their absurdity, remind us what it means to care. They’re a microcosm of life. Full of luck, strategy, emotion, chaos, and — sometimes — epic disappointment with the comfort of knowing that you have another chance to turn it all around.

Daily Rip Live: Target Tries to Find Its Footing, Google Wows at I/O, and Stablecoin Bill Passes

Catch us LIVE every weekday M-Th at 9 AM EST!

Every weekday, we cover the biggest market news and events LIVE on Stocktwits’ morning show, The Daily Rip Live.

This has been a bit of a hodge-podge week in the markets. My ADHD brain is loving it! The bond market continues to be on shaky ground, and investors are cautiously optimistic after a nice little green run last week. Google held its big developer event, Google I/O, and announced a million things. Bitcoin hit a new all-time high.

It’s all happening, and we covered a lot of it on Tuesday’s show:

🎤 ICYMI: Check out my recent interview with Kaan Terzioglu, CEO of VEON, a hybrid telco-Internet-fintech company specializing in emerging markets. Watch the 20-minute Q&A here. $VEON ( â–˛ 0.03% )  

Now Here’s a Chart

Everything is coming up Bitcoin. Think crypto is still a small cult of people who have been nagging you to “buy BTC” since 2014? Think again.

More Americans now hold Bitcoin than they do physical gold.

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Tuesday Thursday Saturday is written by Katie Perry, owner of Ursa Major Media, which provides fractional marketing services and strategy in software, tech, consumer products, professional services, and other industries. She is also the co-host of Stocktwits’ Daily Rip Live show.

Disclaimer: The contents here reflect recaps and summaries of pre-reported or published data, news, and trends. I have cited sources and context for the information provided to the best of my ability. The purpose of the newsletter is to inform and educate on larger trends shaping business and culture — this is NOT investment advice. As an investor, you should always do your own research before making any decisions about your money or your portfolio.