Triumphant wins, gut-wrenching losses, last-second shots, underdogs, competition, and loyalty—it’s fun to be a fan. But when a football player takes a hit to the head after yet another study has warned of the dangers of CTE, or when a team whose mascot was born in an era of racism and bigotry takes the field, or when a relief pitcher accused of domestic violence saves the game, how is one to cheer? Welcome to the club for sports fans who care too much.
In Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, acclaimed sports writers Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. Davidson tackle the most pressing issues in sports, why they matter, and how we can do better. For the authors, “sticking to sports” is not an option—not when our taxes are paying for the stadiums, and college athletes aren’t getting paid at all. But simply quitting a favorite team won’t change corrupt and deplorable practices, and the root causes of many of these problems are endemic in our wider society. An essential read for modern fans, Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back challenges the status quo and explores how we might begin to reconcile our conscience with our fandom.
Jessica Luther is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Texas Monthly, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vice Sports, among others. She is the author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape and has written extensively on the intersection of sports and violence off the field.
Kavitha A. Davidson is a sportswriter and host of The Lead, an in-depth daily sports news podcast produced by The Athletic. She is on the board of directors at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center. She was a writer with ESPNW and ESPN The Magazine and a sports columnist at Bloomberg covering the intersections of sports and society, culture, politics, race, gender, and business. Her work has also appeared in NBC THINK, the Guardian, and Rolling Stone.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1. Watching Football When We Know (Even a Little) about Brain Trauma 2. Forgiving the Doper You Love 3. Cheering for a Team with a Racist Mascot 4. Embracing Tennis despite Its Inequities 5. Coping When the Sports You Love Are Anti-LGBTQ+ 6. Watching Women’s Basketball When People Tell You You’re the Only One 7. Consuming Sports Media . . . Even If You Don’t Look Like the People on TV 8. Rooting for Your Team When the Star Is Accused of Domestic Violence 9. Loving Your Team When You Hate the Owner 10. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Baseball’s Free Market 11. Doubling Down on Your March Madness Bracket Even If the Athletes Don’t Make a Dime 12. Living with the New Stadium You Didn’t Want to Pay For 13. Enjoying the Olympics Despite the Harm to Your Community 14. Embracing That Athletes—and Sports—Are Political Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index
For some of us, this has been a long-standing question: How to reconcile our love of sports with the undeniable ethical issues and conflicts of conscience that often surround them? On these pages Kavitha Davidson and Jessica Luther make an honest and interesting attempt to answer that question.
Hanif Abdurraqib
I am thankful for this text as a reminder, among a great many other things, that affection can come with a responsibility. Luther and Davidson thoughtfully reckon with sports and their long history of inequity, seeking accountability without dimming the impact that sports have had on their lives, and many lives beyond theirs. This is a generous book, one that I will sit with for years to come.
