Cope: Finding collective effervescence
Dueling game 7s this past Saturday, with the Avs and Nuggets playing at the same time, found me at a bar with two big screens to watch these games. We have the technology to do this at home with tablets and TVs but it involves remembering passwords and leaves out a crucial ingredient for enjoying sports — strangers!
Over 30 years ago, Kathleen and I met two of our closest friends, Brauschie and Kelli, while watching the Penguins win two Stanley Cups at bars throughout the valley. Paddy’s, the Jackalope and Bob’s Place were our venues, but I can assure you that Bob Doyle and Ralph Dockery didn’t get rich off our tabs. It was the offseason, we were all poor, basic cable subscribers and couldn’t watch the games at home.
We could make an order of wings last through an entire hockey game, though, more celery and another water, please! It became a ritual to find the game on in some corner of the bar, away from the glamour teams (Bruins, Rangers, Blackhawks, etc.) and watch our previously hapless Penguins defy all expectations and win the cup, twice.
At the end of each game, we’d ask the others clustered around our corner of the bar: “Are you coming back Wednesday? See you then!” By the time Mario, Jaromir, and the boys lifted that cup in June, we knew them and our new friends.
Over 30 years later, as my friend Jeff was in the last throes of a brutal fight with cancer, we shared a laugh about how we met and the good times we had during and later, because of those Penguins games. The collective experience of watching those games sparked a deep and powerful friendship between the two families.
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Watching sports with other people allows for the “collective effervescence” described by the great Brené Brown in numerous TED Talks and articles. She credits the French Sociologist, Émile Durkheim, with inventing the term in 1912 to describe the connection and emotion among people during religious ceremonies. Brown describes feeling it at church, funerals, concerts, protests and sporting events. It’s that moment where you can feel that your joy, grief, elation and pain is being experienced by others at the same time. I am sure that if Brene Brown lived here, she wouldn’t miss closing day at PHQ, for all of its effervescence, exuberance and debauchery.
Instead of watching our semifinals on a computer, Huskies fans have gathered at Riverwalk Theater the last couple of years to collectively experience the agony (2024) and the ecstasy (2023) of overtime soccer games, with their friends, classmates and community. The reactions and memories, and the videos sent to us on the bus, will last much longer than the details of the games.
World Cup games continue to be screened in town squares and plazas all over the world, long after fans acquired televisions in every home, even in the poorest countries. We want to experience things together. My Mum and Dad attended the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley and we continue to watch games or connect by phone every time that England plays.
At the European Championships in 2004, I travelled with my father to Portugal to see this young phenom, Wayne Rooney, for ourselves. After he scored an incredible goal, our Portuguese friends (strangers) told us that it was lucky, to which my Dad replied, “They don’t rate goals, they count them!” After the hosts beat England on penalties (of course they did), we ended up sharing a toast with our new friends to the incredible spectacle we had all just witnessed together.
It’s why we keep the TV on to see the awards ceremony after the championship game. We want to experience, vicariously, what those people in the arena are feeling at that moment. I had the joy of watching Wrexham promoted and Liverpool win the Premier League last weekend through my television screen. The people in the streets and the stadiums were loving the experience and relishing the reflective glory washing over their communities.
The offseason can feel isolating around here. The highway feels like a lifeline to the world during the season. It brings our friends, family and the people with the hundred-dollar bills who all come to visit us and enjoy our lifestyle for a brief time. As the late, great Jimmy Buffett sang, ” … but the money’s good in the season, helps to lighten up her load.”
In the offseason the highway takes on a different character, reflecting the transient nature of our community with more cars just passing through on their way to the desert or the big city, friends moving away after getting their mountain fix for a winter or 10 (what’s the over/under on how many months until they come back?)
We’ll be busy again in a few weeks but until then, hold onto each other, reach out to a friend you haven’t heard from in a while and, yes, get out to a local church, high school playoff game, watch an NHL or NBA playoff game with a room full of strangers and get ready for a great summer of live music. Let’s enjoy some “collective effervescence!”
David Cope is a husband, dad, coach, retired teacher and general loudmouth. His wife, kids and dog don’t listen to him, but maybe you will.
