Wrexham, The Olympics, and Crying at Sports

Why we need sports to create community across cultures

Let me start off by saying that, yes, I did cry at the Olympics. Regardless of country, when I saw an Olympian reach their lifelong dream, I couldn’t help myself.

It was two weeks of bliss for me as an avid sports fan. The backstories, the memes, the constant feed of people doing crazy things with their bodies in an orchestrated manner — it’s my favorite part of every four years. I will likely sell a kidney to attend LA 2028.

Since the dark day of the closing ceremony, I’ve been thinking about the reason why sports are such a soft spot for me and why my TV logs so many hours watching tennis tournaments and football games and Formula 1 races and a behind-the-scenes documentary about some random soccer team in Wales (more on Wrexham in a minute).

Distilling those thoughts led me back here, to the idea that media makes culture as much as culture makes media. How we think and talk about sports shapes how we see the comradery of cheering for random strangers being paid to play.

The Football Dad Bit

I think many of us understand the idea of the “football dad.” He’s an enigma, rarely removed from his Lazy Boy chair, found sometimes in front of the grill, a cheap beer constantly in…