TLDR Version: Following sports is an expensive endeavor from a time commitment perspective. When we were kids, sports served the purpose of identity, role model, and building friendships. However, as boys become men, sports no longer serves those purposes, and there are far superior means for achieving those goals.
The other day my wife Charis and I were discussing whether we should restart our Sling TV subscriptions, since the 49ers have surprisingly gotten to fairly deep in the NFL playoffs, plus there were a number college games that we missed that turned out to be pretty good. It got me thinking, we actually rarely watch our TV at all.
A little over two years ago, when we first moved to our house, the very first big purchase we got was a 75 Sony Bravia 4K TV for a lofty 2000 USD after discount on Black Friday. The intention was clear, college football. Charis went to USC and I attended Stanford. School spirit runs deep in our veins where only through the smoky tailgating parties and the smell of beer did the aura of camaraderie, brotherhood, and most of all, winning as a team radiate through the mild fall Californian Saturday afternoons back in the grad school days. It was a way for us to stay connected with school and rekindle friendships we’ve made while I was in school. We went all out and purchased the Xfinity Sports Package, routed the coaxial cables in the crawl space underneath our house, and finally sat swimmingly at our living room couch and watched a solid 2 and half hours of non-stop Dr. Pepper and beer commercials and maybe no more than 15 minutes of our quarterback taking sacks from the opposing team. For the subsequent times the TV was on, I noticed that both Charis and I were often on our phones, I checking emails and responding slack messages and only looked up after a roar and still having needed to watch replays in the evenings. And before long, the TV just sat in the middle of our living room, turned off, lifeless, and probably only was on when the in-laws came during holidays and I had to teach them how to watch Netflix.
When I was a child growing up in Toronto, Canada. My buddies and I watched every Leafs game. It was almost a rite of passage. Hockey was the only thing kids talked about in elementary and middle school. Having known what the score the night before was a passcode at the cafeteria. Sports meant an identity, meant role models, and mostly meant the fabric of how we as kids connected with each other. We would imitate the toe-drag and deke put on by Sergei Berezin the night before, dream that one day we would put on the skates and perhaps even one day own a sports franchise.
But as I sit in my living room in front of the TV that has been turned off for ages, reflecting on why it is off, it’s more and more apparent that it no longer serves the purpose it intended to. First overall, there is no such thing as identity based on the sports team. Charis and I live in Silicon Valley, where majority of the population come from abroad and never really were raised in the culture of identity based on a sports team. There is no sense of loyalty or a classification of our values based on the sports team we root for (or for that matter, where we were from originally). Conversations on football or hockey with colleagues or strangers often involve explaining the rules and positional responsibilities, and never on the nuanced topics such as tactics and strategies. More often or not, I would also get a question from one of these conversations asking, “why don’t you just play the sports yourself?” Why yes, I should. It’s probably much healthier to put on my cleats and go throw the pigskin with my friends in the park and sitting in front the TV.
Secondly, if you asked me who my role models were 20 years ago, chances are I would’ve said one of the players on the Toronto Maple Leafs. I drew inspirations from their toughness, perseverance, and loyalty. However, as I just turned 30 last September, I realize that the folks who I look up to today are vastly different compared to those who play at the professional level. Reasons? I could never put on a pair of skates and deke around defenders like Mitch Marner. I could never throw a pass more than 20 yards without blowing out my shoulder. These professional athletes at the highest level did not only work hard to get to where they are today, but they were also genetically gifted with exceptional vision, endurance, flexibility, and explosiveness that even if I could not dream of achieving even if I did nothing but training. As of today, the folks who I look up to typically are self-made entrepreneurs who in fact are achievable in life. They work hard, continuously study and learn new things, work tirelessly on their craft whether that’d be building products, building teams, or building companies for that matter. And to draw inspirations from these newly found role models, it’s through reading and not watching live sports.
Finally, as you might have discovered by this point, sports for me had always been a proxy for making friends and building relationships. I actually could care less who scored the winning touchdown at the 49ers divisional round than who I haven’t I talked to or met in a while that I should really catch up on. How are their families, how are their jobs, and what can I do to be helpful in their lives. It no longer needed to be through sports. Charis and I have been taking walks on a nightly basis and we found that much more effective use of time to catch up on our days. Both of us lead extremely busy work lives and we only have about an hour or so of time together without interruption each day. Instead of sitting in front of a TV together and follow some sporting event, we’d rather spend that time sauntering around the neighborhood and sharing how our days went down and what were some of the decisions that we were struggling to make. For my friends and acquaintances who like to catch up, I’ve suggested that we go for walks or catchup over coffee/beer, and let’s build meaningful relationships without the clamor of a LED screen.
// Derek Z. H. Yan is the Co-founder & CTO of Polarr, Inc., a Series-A stage tech startup in the photography and artificial intelligence space based in Downtown San Jose. Please visit polarr.co/careers for job postings or email directly to stay in touch.
