Behind The Thrill Of Victory

We root like maniacs because we are compelled by our tribal ancestry to do so. And because it's fun

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    The powerful currents of spectator passion--the heady highs after a victory, the lugubrious lows after a defeat--run especially swift and deep in places where there are no professional teams to uphold the local honor. The fervor with which college football is followed at the universities of Nebraska and Oklahoma, two states without a major league pro team, is rivaled only by the ardency with which the basketball team is worshipped at the University of Kentucky, where college hoops is the state's secular religion and parishioners make pilgrimages to Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., to watch their soldiers do battle against all enemies of the tribe. To attend a game at Rupp and watch grownups choke with pride at the close of a hard-fought victory is to begin to understand how fiercely they identify with their warrior children, how deep those ancient taproots really go.

    Cialdini sees fans' happiness trace to what he calls "a perceived superiority and competence" that they feel in the full flush of victory. He first discerned this when, as a visiting professor at Ohio State University, he was walking across campus one autumn day and noticed that many students were decked out in red-and-silver nylon windbreakers--the school colors--with the O.S.U. logo on the back. Reading the campus newspaper, he learned why: "The O.S.U. football team had been ranked the No. 1 team in the country that week," he says. "Everyone was literally dressing themselves in the success of that team."

    His discovery launched him on a study that took him to six other football-frenzied universities. The results were the same everywhere, with one unexpected twist: the tendency of students to dress themselves in school colors was tied not just to victory but also to the size of the victory. "It wasn't the more closely fought contests that produced this powerful phenomenon," Cialdini says. "It was the clear crushing of an opponent that most elicited this tendency to wear clothing that announced your association with the team. It's about power and superiority."

    Power and atavism aside, the pleasure and happiness experienced in the act of watching games is doubtless related to what Michael Mandelbaum, in his book The Meaning of Sports, sees as the three most attractive qualities inherent in athletic competitions: suspense, authenticity and coherence until closure. Indeed, he says, in an often desperately muddled, complex and confusing world, "a world in which we are increasingly beset with spin and hype," authenticity has a powerful, visceral appeal. "While John Wayne was not a war hero and Arnold Schwarzenegger did not do the things we saw the Terminator do on the screen," Mandelbaum says, "Michael Jordan really did make all those shots."

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