#sport + place

[seastoried]

Given that their composition changes so regularly, any team I currently support may be made up of completely different players, coaches, and administrators in five years. In what sense, then, will I be supporting the same team that I support now?

adam kadlac, the ethics of sports fandom

been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in relation to the growing trend of fans (in a variety team sports) supporting individual players as opposed to teams. what compels us to continue supporting a team even after the youngest player at the first match we watched has retired? what identity, independent of the players who make it up, does a team posses? even after players have been traded, coaches have been hired and fired, and ownership has changed hands, there remains some spirit so foundational to the being of the club that allows us to identify it as the same. this, i believe, is it's grounding in and connection to a particular place.

i find it particularly telling that the practice of supporting individuals over teams is perhaps most prevalent in sports where there is a concerted effort made to scrub away a team's sense of place to make way for sponsor based identities, such as formula 1. the sport's international nature and high team turnover rate (tied to sponsors, of course) likely also plays a part. what, then, is driving this change in other sports?

football has always been a sport where teams have been intrinsically tied to a place. while the player over team support trend has yet to become as prevalent in football as it is in some other sports, it does seem to be creeping in. this could be potentially chalked up to a number of factors. perhaps it's the globalization (read: mostly increased american interest, as the rest of the world has been playing football happily for years) of the sports, introducing fans who have no personal connection to the place a club is from, and therefore lack allegiance to the club. maybe it's the steady increase in foreign ownership of teams, to an extent where this erodes away at fan's visions of a club as a physical manifestation of the spirit of their hometown. perhaps stronger personal branding of players is a part of it; they're no longer simply an agent of the team, but an individual in their own right, worthy of being followed no matter where they go (there is something to be said here about the relationship between personal branding, increased sponsor opportunities, and the fact that having ten individual players shill your product is better than the singular entity that is the team). whatever it is, i do find it a little sad - it renders teams somewhat purposeless, empty husks whose only purpose is to house players, otherwise devoid of value.

[hinamie]

quick megumi style study

[ashtonsunshine]

Do tell us the sport in the tags.

[pucksandpower]

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

I'm sorry but the irony of Nico calling Max unprofessional is sending me so bad like sir there's an entire garage full of people, who were literally in the trenches trying to survive the Brocedes fallout while just doing their jobs, who might have a few things to say about your (& Lewis') level of professionalism at that time 😭✋️

[slutforpringles]

"Formula 1 should be very grateful that Daniel Ricciardo stopped by and drove his heart out. It was wonderful to watch."

Drive Daniel to Survive season 1 -> season 7

[apparently-artless]

I don't like where I am now. I wanted to skate no matter what. I know skating is so hard that my sister had to quit. I know that much. And I know that I'm causing a lot of trouble for you, Mom. I've always felt bad. I didn't want to make you worry. I didn't want to complain. Even then, I've always wanted to skate. It's been my saving grace! As long as I was thinking about skating, I didn't care about my bad time at school. It made me feel like there was something I could do that everyone else couldn't. But the truth is, that was just pretend.

Medalist E01: A Genius on the Ice - Yuitsuka Inori

[untangling-my-headphones]

to ME free! is about having to grow up too fast and make decisions too early, it's about wishing the summer and school days could last a little longer, it's about wanting to put your all, your whole self into your dreams and aspirations, to lose yourself in your passions but life and expectations and responsibilities keep pulling you back to reality, it's about being thrown into a capitalistic society and told your hobbies are only worth something if you can monetise them or be the best at them, it's about being told to grow up and move on and be realistic when that's the last thing you want to do, it's about wanting to be young and eternal and splashing in the water with your friends forever, it's about all of that being impossible and yet there is still light at the end of the tunnel, hope is not lost

but it's not really about all that (it is) because it's a sports anime about swimming

[seastoried]

gonna start spewing sport + place ramblings here bc they keep getting lost in my notes/email to self/notion capture systems and i would like to find them for thesis stuff/articles later. anyways today's thought was that i find the he's from x he plays for x chant structure interesting. acknowledgement of the players actual home/origin followed immediately by a claiming/rehoming/owning, depending on how u wanna look at it, but basically various connitations of 'he's ours'. i started reading an interesting article a couple months ago about the politics of football based migration esp from africa and the talent drain this produces. it doesnt really denounce this move, but talks about the various push and pull factors at play. obv the chants come from a place of love and the Intention imo is very much a positive claiming But i think its interesting to consider the shadow of colonialism that's perhaps just barely creeping into the picture. not, in this case, because of actual colonial idealogy on the part of the fans, but because if the way colonialism has shaped international sports development + drives all sorts of economic migration ect. this other article by david storey shed's some light on the influence colonialism has had on these migration patterns in a more specific sense.

" While we can point to the Premier League in England as an apparent example of globalisation, this does not mean that geography is redundant or that borders have disappeared from this aspect of football. There may be a general drift of players to countries with stronger leagues (Spain and Italy, as well as England) but the precise composition of such moves may also be influenced by colonial or cultural (including linguistic) linkages. Thus, many players from Senegal, Togo, Cameroon and Tunisia play in France; while a number of South Americans (particularly Argentinians) play in Spain."

hes also got an interesting quote on fan relationships to foreign players which Really speaks to the percieved importance of attachment to place but ive gone on enough. (also a fun bit about how the clubs w the highest proportion of foreign players make up 3 of the big 4 - chelsea liverpool and arsenal + man u, as u can see this is a somewhat dated piece)

[rarepears]

I don't know if Korea does couponing to the extreme like the US does, but let's say it does in Solo Leveling's version of Earth.

Sung Jinwoo would 100% be that guy who treats it like an extreme sport with 10 books of coupons stashed on his desk and when he goes to check out his $250 worth of groceries, he whips out his coupon BINDER and the cashier starts crying.

And then Jinwoo's receipt shows that he paid $2.14 for all of that.

That's the story of how Jinwoo and Jinah scraped by when he was still an E ranked hunter.

[tinfoil-jones]

Jerk Ford AU: Twinstinct

[ @rayyanishere1 you know why you're being tagged]

The Stan twins can see right through each other. Easily. As long as they are in the same dimension, there isn't anything one can hide from the other, some strong twinstinct right there.

Particularly, they are pretty in tune to each others present emotional state.

If you were to boil these two down a meme, imagine this;

Jerk Ford is the yellow one, and S1/S2 represents pre-Weirdmageddon and post-Weirdmageddon respectively. Note, Stanley in this AU might be represented by the blue figure here, but he is not miserable, he's pretty happy overall. But he really wanted his twin back.

And yes, they're both tactile. They mostly showed this to the younger Mystery Twins and not necessarily each other, but they had their moments.

Pre-Weirdmageddon:

Stan: *minding his own business alone on the porch, staring out into the woods*

Jerk Ford: *comes out of nowhere and randomly hugs Stan*

Stan: What's with the touchy-feely all of a sudden, somethin' wrong?

Jerk Ford: You're doing great, Stanley.

Stan:

Stan: ...Thanks, bro.

[dialogue by @tearosepedall]

Post-Weirdmageddon (Sea Grunks Era):

Stanford: *minding his own business alone on the deck of the Stan O'War, staring out a thousand yards into the ocean*

Stan: *comes out of nowhere and randomly hugs Stanford*

Stanford: Nothing's wrong.

Stan:...

Stanford: *tearing up* I said nothing's wrong, Stanley!

Stan: You're home now. You're here, and I'm here with you. You're safe.

Stanford: *breaks down sobbing*

[phoenixyfriend]

I was trying to find if/when the word soccer was used in New Zealand (for a fic) and I. I'm laughing.

"Why do Americans have to be so special calling it soccer" It looks like all anglophone countries EXCEPT the UK call it that?

Even Ireland???

(Source)

Granted this map is from 2013 but I'm losing it. UK calling the US special when it's THEM. It's them. Losing my mind this is hilarious.

EDIT: Yes, I know the term originated from Associated Football in Oxford, that's why I thought it might have been in use in NZ in the first place.

[verstappenalty]

can people not comprehend the difference between booing a driver at a racetrack shortly after they were involved in a major collision with another driver and booing a driver at a mandatory work event they don't even want to be at

[francy-sketches]

weird little guy

[deathnotepolls]

hottest death note woman