Sportsiology

I’ve spoken before about dramaturgy and the fact that we represent ourselves the way we want to be seen. I mentioned the NFL owners and unions who wanted to make sure that the other person is seen as the bad guy. But what about players? What kind of impression management do they participate in? Masculinity seems to be a big one. I was surprised by the number of stories that came out, one after another, about players not seeming tough or hard or participating in some kind of behavior that is deemed not manly enough. But there are other things. What about Jay Cutler not seeming upset when he couldn’t get back into the game? Or all the times announcers say that they can tell when the team or players aren’t into it? The most recent example was last night’s game. I heard on the radio that some people felt that LeBron’s pregame speech was faked, that he was playing to the cameras. Is this something else that athletes have to do? Do they have to take each game as life and death because we fans see it that way and we want to know that they do too? And when they don’t, when they seem tired or don’t play as we expected, do we decide that they don’t take the game seriously and will therefore not have success? I wonder if this encourages them to pretend and play their role so they audience will come to their games and buy their jerseys. And if it doesn’t, why not?