Well, it’s upon us again – tomorrow night is the start of the ’26-‘27 NFL season. And while I’m an ardent football fan, I have always found interesting how grown men—otherwise rational and grounded will express behave in ways during the football season they would never dream of in their daily lives. Many men even structure their entire Sunday around a football game – imagine that! And when the playoffs arrive – well fuhgeddaboudit because the playoff seedings become an obsession.
Why do we care so much about what are in the end, corporate entities? And why is rooting for The Pittsburgh Steelers against the LA Rams not the same as rooting for Pepsi to outsell Coke? The answer is simple – soft drinks aren’t a part of our identity. Sociologists tell us a part of a person’s self-image comes from belonging to particular groups in what is known as social identity – the theory that describes how people define themselves partly through the groups to which they belong.
Family, profession, clubs, nation—and yes, sports teams. To a fan, when his or her team wins on Sunday he or she embraces a degree of psychological ownership. The team becomes a proxy for the self.
But identity doesn’t explain the intensity. Geography plays a significant role. Teams are anchored to cities, and a person’s hometown carries with it history, pride, and memories. When local fans roots for the Green Bay Packers or the Dallas Cowboys, in most cases they are aligning with a place, a culture, a tribe. In evolutionary terms the instinct to belong to a group and to compete with other groups has been present for most of human history, and today it finds a safe outlet on the gridiron.
Football is a kind of low-stakes warfare—competition without the cost. Territory is gained and lost, strategy is deployed, opponents are studied and countered. It mirrors military precision with coordinated movement, and moments of controlled violence. It engages the same psychological machinery that once prepared groups for conflict, but channels it into a spectacle of combat – but with attractive young cheerleaders!
People love stories. We view the world through arcs—struggle, setback, resilience, redemption. And sports provide such narratives in spades. So, beginning tomorrow night, the season becomes a story. The opening game is the first chapter. And a down to the wire fourth-quarter drive becomes a moment that lives on in memory.
Sunday games. Tailgating. Lucky jerseys. The same seat on the couch, the same snacks, the same group of friends. Over time, these patterns become tradition, and tradition deepens attachment. What begins as entertainment becomes something closer to a social compact—a quiet, unspoken agreement about how we gather, what we value, and how we share experience.
It is not unlike the broader cultural habits we once took for granted: dressing for the occasion, showing up in a certain way because the moment required it. Sports, in this sense, preserves a form of collective participation.
There is also a neurological dimension. Studies show that watching sports activates the brain’s reward systems—dopamine when things go well, cortisol when they don’t. More interestingly, shared viewing experiences increase oxytocin, the hormone associated with bonding – fandom literally brings people together at a biological level. The highs are higher because they are shared; the lows are more bearable for the same reason.
Perhaps the most curious element of all is the illusion of participation. Fans speak as if they are part of the enterprise – “we’ve got a tough schedule this year.” Fans have no influence over 99.9% of what happens on the field, yet the brain grants them a sense of involvement. It is a harmless fiction, but a powerful one. It transforms spectators into stakeholders.
It’s identity, tribe, narrative, ritual, biology, and shared experience wrapped into one, and that’s why the apparent absurdity is really not absurd at all.
Strip away the uniforms, the stadiums, and the television contracts, and what remains is something deeply human: the desire to belong to something, to share in its fortunes, and to find meaning in the collective experience. The franchise may be a corporation on paper, but in the minds of its fans, it is something closer to a community—imperfect for sure, but emotional and enduring nonetheless – and that’s what people are really cheering for.
Go Broncos!