Play is a big time business. Lots of people take it very, very seriously. Television usually gets the credit, or blame, for this state of affairs. Cheap and wide access to televised events raises their visibility and public interest. But we think, sometimes, there is another reason for sports fanaticism.
Television is only the vehicle for making sports accessible.
Appetite is the real reason for their followings. They live in a very complex world, in which morality has become gray and heroes opaque and achievement nebulous. Sports give them winners and losers, excitement and thrills, at no cost to their jobs or to the social fabric. Government, work places, schools, churches, courthouses, and families have become so enmeshed in ambiguities and intricacies that sports represent an arena to which people, in private and in public, can retreat for solace and definitive outcomes. What we mistake for March Madness or October Obsession is only an instinct for simplicity and sanity.