Virtually all spectator sports are heavily saturated with statistics. Even before the advent of fantasy sports, which allowed fans to put statistics ahead of the outcomes of actual games, sports broadcasts were filled with numbers and data, as if all the solemn and ritualistic tabulation guaranteed the game’s facticity and the objectivity of its administrators. It's as if the thoroughness of the accounting is its own form of athleticism on display. In team sports, the stats for each individual player are duly reported over and over again, apropos of nothing, foregrounding the tension between individual and team achievement, echoing a tension in viewers between vicarious identification with specific heroic players and assimilation into the mass of the team’s fans, losing oneself to the collective enthusiasm. The litany of statistics continually reassert individual accountability within a fundamentally collaborative context, prodding spectators to consider again and again how one might belong while also standing out and how to differentiate one’s personal performance from the overall performance of the organization. Star players are always at once "great teammates" and "clutch performers" who can "carry their team." The way they are discussed often makes them symbols of a resolved contradiction; they stand as seeming proof that one can lift others by accruing glory for oneself. Everyone loves a winner.
Not Relevant for Fantasy Purposes
Not Relevant for Fantasy Purposes
Not Relevant for Fantasy Purposes
Virtually all spectator sports are heavily saturated with statistics. Even before the advent of fantasy sports, which allowed fans to put statistics ahead of the outcomes of actual games, sports broadcasts were filled with numbers and data, as if all the solemn and ritualistic tabulation guaranteed the game’s facticity and the objectivity of its administrators. It's as if the thoroughness of the accounting is its own form of athleticism on display. In team sports, the stats for each individual player are duly reported over and over again, apropos of nothing, foregrounding the tension between individual and team achievement, echoing a tension in viewers between vicarious identification with specific heroic players and assimilation into the mass of the team’s fans, losing oneself to the collective enthusiasm. The litany of statistics continually reassert individual accountability within a fundamentally collaborative context, prodding spectators to consider again and again how one might belong while also standing out and how to differentiate one’s personal performance from the overall performance of the organization. Star players are always at once "great teammates" and "clutch performers" who can "carry their team." The way they are discussed often makes them symbols of a resolved contradiction; they stand as seeming proof that one can lift others by accruing glory for oneself. Everyone loves a winner.