Sophia Week 3: Football Fans Unite

    When most people think about football, they visualize a bunch of meatheads tackling each other and throwing around an oddly shaped ball. Even devoted football fans never think of football as more than a sport for mere entertainment purposes and enjoyment. Growing up, this was the same misconception that I fell for. This past weekend though, my family went up to Gainesville for our yearly Florida Gator football game, and something resonated with me that had never before. As over 90,000 people who had never met each other sat in the stadium watching the game in suspense, laughing and talking game with each other, I came to realize that fan bases for football, and all sports in general, help bring us as humans together.  

In my opinion, Gainesville has always been a friendly environment. I might have encountered some drunk frat brothers in my time there, but no one has ever been anything except nice to my family and me. I’ve come to realize that it’s because people tend to think the best of us, at least the majority of Gator fans who see us walking around in our orange and blue. We might be complete strangers to most people there, but other fans feel as though we are trustworthy since they feel a familiarity amongst us due to our common support for the Gators. Although this might seem strange, the funny thing is, as an anxiety-driven person, I feel more of a sense of comfort among strangers in Gainesville than I do with strangers in Boca Raton. I can already detect something I have in common with these people, and therefore, to me, they don’t seem to be complete and utter newcomers. This goes the other way around too, although on a whole different and extreme level. Seriously, while we were at the Alumni Store, some random guy asked my dad to watch his young daughter in line while he went to look around one last time. No matter how weird this might have seemed to us, it shows that devoted fans of a sport’s teams feel united with one another. 

When it comes to games, you can see unity amongst sports fans even more than in any other circumstances. During the Florida Gators game against the Utah Utes, the stadium was deafeningly loud, especially after the game-winning interception. Literally, my mom couldn’t hear out of her left ear the next day (she’s okay now though). All the fans cheered and booed at the same moments, conversed with each other during breaks, and shared commentary in between plays. Around us everyone was getting into the most random of conversations, discussing anything from future travel plans to personal life topics. Everyone felt comfortable around each other, which was easy for me to recognize due to the fact that a random 3-year-old girl was fanning me with a paper fan and kept babbling about her life. In the end, after the game was over, when the entire crowd was walking out of the stadium, everyone chanting “it’s great to be a Florida Gator” in sync, I realized just how normal I felt with these people unknown to me. The sense of unity was easy to understand, even for the onlookers. Not only can sports unite players on the field but fans off the field as well. 

Thinking about the game after, I realized just how essential a sense of community is to the feeling of belonging. Every fan played their piece that night, the starting quarterback even mentioning how the fans encouraged the team to move forward. Therefore, I came to the conclusion that football is not just some seemingly unimportant sporting event that is fun to watch; it’s a uniting factor. Fans from all over the country come together for a few hours, some of whom might hate each other under different circumstances, for a common purpose, supporting one of their favorite sports teams. Additionally, in those few hours, these strangers turn into united allies and a sense of belonging comes to light.