College football fans and their “Quest for Community”
I’d like to think I know a thing or two about college football. I’ve grown up in Alabama around arguably the most successful college football team of all time, I watch football religiously and I am never at a loss for words during any game (except when Jordan Reed fumbled the ball in the end zone in last year’s match-up between the Florida Gators and the Georgia Bulldogs.) Even compared to a devout fan like me, there are others who outshine me in their love for their team.
Why are so many people clinically obsessed with college football? I think Robert Nisbet had it figured out:
“The historic triumph of secularism and individualism has presented a set of problems that looms large in contemporary thought. The modern release of the individual from traditional ties of class, religion and kinship have made him free…this freedom is accompanied not by the sense of creative release but by the sense of disenchantment and alienation.”
Has the break-down of normal societal structures, such as the family, pushed people to find solace and comfort in other institutions?
Absolutely.
We see this with those who follow football (and futbol), fraternities, sororities and various other organizations and causes. Humans have a natural longing for the nurturing and love which stems from the traditional structure of society, and when they cannot find them within the family, they will seek endlessly for what they are lacking. In the words of Nisbet, man “is the consequence…not of moral progress but of social disintegration.”
More and more people are growing up without the proper family structure of one man and one woman. And when they are let loose in the world they have nothing to hold on to. They settle for anything that can provide a framework and give them a sense of belonging. Pseudo-families (like college football cults) are a sad substitute for the individual longing for an association of meaning. In a society removed from the family, we will find more of the same.