Sports Culture Bias Takes Work to Balance

MHS+students+cheer+for+the+baseball+team+during+the+team%E2%80%99s+2016+summer+playoff+run.+Photo+by+VIP.

MHS students cheer for the baseball team during the team’s 2016 summer playoff run. Photo by VIP.

Carson Beck, Staff Reporter

In today’s American society, we see a popular interest in sports, but some sports can be seen as more popular than others. There is one sport that is dominating the popularity ranks compared to other sports, and that sport is football.

A 2008 ESPN poll surveyed sports fans about what their favorite sport was. The results showed NFL as the most popular sport with a crushing 24.4 percent of those polled. Second place was MLB with just 11 percent. Third place was college football with 9.5 percent, and NBA took fourth place with 6.3 percent.

In the same poll, high school football ranked with 1.8 percent, and in 12th place with 1.3 percent was high school basketball.

Other high school sports didn’t even make the list.

These results suggest that in today’s society there is some sort of sports cultural bias. Some sports gain more support than others, which can be seen by the number of fans in attendance at their games.

This sports bias has trickled down to the high school level, even here at MHS, as seen by which sporting events fans attend and which ones they don’t.

But fans should consider supporting all sports because a large crowd at any sporting event can have an impact on the team’s game.  Positive crowd reaction can affect how players perform.

“We really feed off the crowd, and [fan presence] is more of a motivation to win more games and honestly makes the games more fun,” said Senior Brendan Murphy, varsity baseball pitcher.

Part of the reason for attendance being higher among some sports is because of the game’s tempo or the physical aspect of that sport.  Games that are faster pace and require more physical contact seem to attract more fans when compared to a slower, less physical game.

“Football is louder and [has more] physical games; baseball is often times slow like soccer. It’s a big difference between a big hit on the football field compared to a hit in a baseball game,” said Junior Anthony Norris, varsity football quarterback.

Among others that agree with Norris is the Athletic Director Troy Parola.

“Football builds an environment that’s fun with the fans, the band and the Friday night lights,” he said.

Part of the reason football receives more attendance than baseball or soccer is that football has its own unique atmosphere that attracts more people.

But Red Rage could help build atmosphere at other games. Strong promotion of a sporting event by Red Rage could increase a sporting event’s attendance.

“Red Rage really needs to balance the word that’s out for all sports. We need more people to take initiative and get really hyped up for all sports all the time,” said Alex Loding, senior offensive lineman for football.

This has been a frustrating situation from a player’s perspective, and it’s very easy to point blame toward the Red Rage leaders, but the Red Rage leaders have taken an initiative to attend more games.

“We tried going to the most fall and winter sports as much as we can more than previous years, starting this year. We tried attending golf team events on their way to state, and we plan on attending some baseball games to balance the attendance more,” said Senior Stephan Hatchett, one of the Red Rage leaders.

In the end, coaches like Varsity Head Baseball Coach Todd Parola acknowledges that sports attendance bias is often a natural result of winning, and that he, as well as the baseball team, doesn’t worry about attendance at all.

“I hope our guys aren’t worried about the crowds; the more the quality of baseball we get, the more fans should attend naturally as time goes on,” said Coach Todd Parola.

He also mentioned that “the further [a team] gets in the tournament and improve[s] as a team, the better the crowd gets.”

To most coaches, then, sports attendance bias is not a major concern, and they find that fans will come as a natural result of success.

However, sometimes coaches take notice of ways to improve a game’s environment for fans, which can help build attendance.

“We tried adding seats near the field, and fans really enjoyed the experience being close to the field and the comfortability and being able to relax with group of friends and watch some baseball,” said Coach Todd Parola.

In the end, as much as there is an imbalance in sports attendance, this imbalance can be fixed if coaches, players and fans come together to create an environment worthy of attendance.  Sports attendance, then, comes down to community effort in creating fun atmospheres, as teams work to perform successfully and fans make an effort to show up to all sporting events, not just the most popular one– football.