Football Fans and Depression

It is playoff time again, the time when football fans try to cheer their favorite team on to the greatest victory. Experience is showing that upsets and unexpected losses can have a real impact on fans.

Invested in the Game

Fans these days tend to get emotionally attached to their football team. More than just cheering on the team and really hoping they do well, some people base their happiness on whether their team wins or not. Of course, this is not healthy, but more and more people seem to be overly invested in a sports team. There have always been the die hards out there, but now we have people becoming depressed and anxious during the football season. “Americans are extremely passionate and loyal to their favorite football teams, but when they’re beloved team loses, fails in the biggest of games or just plain underachieves, it’s not uncommon for them to be depressed or melancholy,” said Mark Britton, founder and CEO of advice website Avvo. (1)

Depressed Over Losses

Some losses are just hard to take. Losses to rival teams, season-ending losses, and losses contrary to pre-game score predictors are especially hard to swallow. There are a few teams mourning a defeat this week because the loss was so unexpected. Other fans at this time of year feel the same – the closer we get to the big game and the greater our expectations, the harder a defeat is.

A loss like this can bring everyone’s mood down and cause great disappointment. It can also cause depression. To many who are not sports-watchers this might seem a bit outrageous, but post-loss depression is turning out to be a very real thing. Often, someone who becomes depressed after a football loss will have struggled with depression or some mental illness before, but the depression is very real and may even require some help to get past.

Watch Out for Expectations

Researchers have studied this and found that people’s expectations really matter. If a big fan expected their team to win and they lose, the loss is harder to take. Researchers from the University of California hypothesize that “an individual’s happiness depends not on actual outcomes, but on outcomes judged relative to expectations,” and that “unexpected disappointments have a larger impact compared to pleasant surprises.” (2)

One way to curb our depression over a football season gone wrong is to look at things with a different perspective from the beginning. For example, whether a team wins or loses is not as important as the safety of our families. A team loss, even the most gut-wrenching, unexpected defeat, can’t compare with the devastation and hurt of losing a loved one. After all, football is just a game, and while many people love to stand behind their team and watch them go all the way, we need to not set ourselves up to fall to depression because we set our expectations too high.