Recently, I was on spring break. A lot of my friends from here at UM went to the Bahamas, skiing or just went home. People from back home took in the week in the Florida Panhandle. So it came to surprise some people when I told people I would be spending the week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Rio has always been on my bucket list and watching movies like "Rio" as a kid and watching the World Cup in 2014 made me wanted to go even more. I was really excited to finally get to see it.
And as with every destination I find myself in, I try and immerse myself in the local sports culture.
Understand
Before I went to Brazil, I had been in the United States (Obviously), Canada and Western Europe. The Brazilian people were the nicest I've been around anywhere in the world, and the actual city of Rio exceeded my sky-high expectations, but to put things in perspective, this was the poorest country and major city I had ever been too. However, some areas of the city are not poor at all and have living standards roughly in line with the United States and Western Europe. But on average, the city and country are still developing.
How do sport play into this?
Some people in Rio have very little. I hate cliches but the one about sports being an "escape from reality" is very true in some cases. When someone lives a tough life, an athletic triumph can fulfill the lives of many people who may not have much else. Such an achievement, like if Brazil were to win the FIFA World Cup in Russia this summer, would spiritually uplift millions of people who have not much else in life.
Does this reflect a broader trend?
Many of people have seen Friday Night Lights, a sports drama about Odessa Permian High School football in rural Texas. In small cities and towns like Odessa all over Texas and other states, sports -- often local sports -- rule. Often times it's the poorer communities that get behind their local teams more than the suburban ones. This is because, for people in many small towns, the county football or basketball team is the community and everything it represents. On a smaller scale, a local or state championship may uplift residents in America's small, rural towns.
How does rural Texas compare to parts of inner-city Rio?
This is not an article comparing incomes or standards of living between two vastly different countries or areas within countries. What this piece is doing is identifying a pattern between how types of communities support their sports teams. The fact of the matter is the many areas of Brazil happen to be less fortunate than other areas in Brazil, and many areas of America are also less fortunate compared with other parts of America. Maybe the poorer areas of Brazil are poorer than the poorer areas of the States, but each country has many of their own areas that are poorer than their respective national median income.
My theory is that when an area is poorer, community pride increases. That may seem ironic to some people, but this trend shows when you observe how people support their favorite respective sports teams. A cause of this may be when times are hard, people support each other more than neighbors in a wealthy area, and this includes support of sports teams.
Sports can be a way out
Most importantly, especially for the children, sports can be a way to get out of the tough hand life dealt them. Players like Neymar and Dani Alvez grew up in Brazil and were poor until they made it huge in soccer and became very successful and wealthy.
American Football players who you see play in the NFL often grew up very poor as well. For example, Micheal Oher and Jimmy Graham had hard childhoods without parental stability. It was the athletic ability that got them out of their hardship.
In poor areas, sports can be an escape from daily life. Sometimes that escape is only for the length of a game-- other times it's for an entire life. But sports is an escape nonetheless, regardless of the depth of poverty, the wealth of the country as a whole, or what sport is even popular in the first place, sports are different in underprivileged areas, and the passion of these communities is strong enough to be movie material.
