I play basketball on a horrendously bad team in my local men’s rec league. Losing a game by only 7 points has been the highlight of our season so far.
Why do we keep coming back week after week, only to get pummeled again and again? It almost meets the definition of insanity—repeating the same action and expecting a different result. But there’s something at play here that isn’t fully rational, something more elemental than reasonable.
The short answer is that we love the game—as men have always, inexplicably, loved games. There’s something written into our nature that longs for the challenge, competition, and camaraderie of sport.
Competitive Play
It’s a peculiar thing: a bunch of grown men playing a game with all the passion and intensity of a life-or-death conflict. But this phenomenon isn’t restricted to my local league—it has played out throughout the world and throughout history, testifying to an innate tendency in human nature in general and male nature in particular that finds expression in competitive play.
Ancient Greeks invented and engaged in sports—wrestling, racing, hurling the discus—and they’re hardly the only ancient people to have done so. In Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the camaraderie, skill, and strength developed in the games translate directly to the battlefield; what occurs in combat is imitated in the sports in a representation both practical and artistic.
Here we find one of the clues to the significance of sports for men. Sports have long provided an arena in which men could test and fine-tune their physical skills, strength, resilience, and courage. Historically, this form of “play” filled a role similar to that of the play of wild animals—it directly prepared the participants for survival. In eras where young men were consistently called on to defend their people with the literal strength of their arms, sports played a practical and almost sacred role as the training ground for real-life or-death scenarios that were always just around the corner. The very preservation of society depended, in part, on the boxing ring, racetrack, and archery range.
Of course, today’s sports resemble combat less than those of the past, and a smaller percentage of our young men are tasked with the defense of the nation than in many past civilizations. Still, in an analogous way, sports continue to have the potential to help sustain society.
Building Masculine Virtue
Let me explain: even outside of war, the success of society depends on the mental and physical toughness of its male elements. Sports afford men an opportunity for practicing and displaying virtues like resilience, teamwork, commitment, self-sacrifice, and the like—all of which are critical to the proper functioning of society. Without virtuous men (and women too!), society crumbles and collapses. Many a successful businessman, strong father, or courageous politician had their first taste of the persistence and leadership critical to their success on the football field or basketball court when they were young. Sports work on us as much as we work on them.
In addition, men of the past and men of today seek out certain “male spaces” where masculinity can be fortified and male bonds formed. Sports are one of these spaces. Men bond best through shared ordeals and tests. Consider combat veterans, for example, who develop an exclusive and diamond-hard bond with one another through the shared endurance of pain, peril, fear, exhaustion, loss, and the threat of death. Something similar—though, of course, to a much lesser degree—occurs between the members of a sports team. This is something most men desire in some form or another, to be part of a “squad,” “a tribe,” a group of men with shared aspirations who have stood by one another when things were at their worst.
Just as men desire to have companions at their side, they also desire competitors in front of them. Men love the adrenaline surge associated with conflict, a test of skill, the guts, grit, and strategy needed to win. We love to see an unexpected comeback, a Hail Mary pass that finds its mark, the buzzer-beater that wins the game. And we love to witness and pursue greatness and excellence, the excellence embodied by the best athletes, the players who put in the work, stay cool under pressure, take the winning shot, and lead their teams to victory.
Yes, it’s just a game, but within the confines of the game we see a fleeting gleam of glory, of something bigger than a game, the stirring image of a man rising to his full potential. This is inspiration for the real battles that are fought off the court or the field. Men need that kind of inspiration.
Too, there’s a distinctive beauty to be found in someone performing an action they were clearly born to perform—the musician sweeping an audience away along the coursing music, the stallion almost taking flight with speed, or the athlete drawing together all the powers of his body into a single, graceful leap. There’s a fittingness here, a puzzle piece sliding into place, a harmony humming through the air.
The Joy of the Game
In the end, sports are just play. And sometimes people forget this and treat them as more important than they are. But that doesn’t make them meaningless, either. Play is part of what makes us human. Play—in the sense of activities undertaken purely for their own sake, for the love of the thing—is one of the more humanizing things we can do. We play because the mind and heart are free. We play for the sheer joy of it.
Play is an engagement with the world and with others without seeking any concrete gain other than enjoyment, and that’s a psychologically and spiritually necessary act. When approached in the right way, sports—like all true leisure—can make us more fully ourselves, from us in ways that encourage nobility and great-heartedness. They’re one of the things that make life worth living.
