I would like to share an odd thing I did this weekend. My Dad and I hopped on a plane on Saturday, flew to Atlanta, stayed with some cousins, went to a Falcons game, hopped on a plane in Atlanta, and flew home. What an odd thing to do.

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The section we sat in at Mercedes-Benz Stadium was odd as well. In College and European football, opposing fans are forced to sit in the visitor's section or first box, but for a variety of reasons, the NFL doesn't do this. However, the section that I was in may as well have been the guest box because it was very full of mostly Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans.

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We got to our seats a while before kickoff, and pretty soon, I began chatting with the people around me. We mostly just trash-talked each other's teams, but parts of it were much, much friendlier. Mixed in with yelling that Baker Mayfield probably brings his Bluetooth Speaker on the train and advising Buccaneers fans to bet on the Falcons to win the game were a few genuine comments on players, good and bad, for and against.

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The odd thing is, when the game started, the talking never stopped. I think that's what separates sports from other pieces of entertainment you can watch, like movies or a musical performance. In those mediums, when the entertainment starts, socialization stops. I mean, if you crack a joke in the middle of a concert, you're going to get shushed; when you crack a joke in the middle of a football game, you're going to get laughs. It's a peculiar thing: the entertainment that we paid good money to see has started, yet we still have an interest in each other.

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Plenty of people don't care about sports, and plenty of people don't understand why anybody does. My favorite remark is that since we'll still root for the team in 30 years when all of the players and coaches are gone, we're really rooting for the clothes. (I'll still root for them if they change their clothes; I'm rooting for the business license!)

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But I don't think we're rooting for the clothes, and I don't think we're rooting for the business license. No, I think we're rooting for each other. I think we're rooting for the guy next to me who puts his hands up into the touchdown signal and then lowers them into a prayer symbol after every Falcons touchdown. I think we're rooting for the guy one section over who stood on every third down doing his darn best to get the Falcon faithful as loud as they could. I think we might even be rooting for the Buccaneers fan behind me who spread out his Buccaneers flag for each drive or the one a row ahead of me who always gave the Atlanta fans near him a fist bump after a big gain for the Falcons.

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What makes sports interesting isn't the players or the coaches; it's the people around us. It's not just a way for us to kill an hour or two in the way that BBYO isn't just a way for us to kill an hour or two. If it were, I wouldn't obsess over trade rumors or crack jokes in game threads. If it were, I wouldn't show up to RBoard calls or S’ganim 1:1s for hours a week.

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Sports are a way to create a community. It's an odd thing, but it's true. I could've stayed home and watched the Falcons game from my laptop, but instead, I took a plane to Atlanta and ended up having to do physics homework at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. That's such an odd thing to do, but I did it for the community.

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Sports were often created as ways to avoid war. Instead of violence, The Iroquois and other Native American tribes would use sticks to hit a ball at another tribe's goalpost to score points and settle disputes. Eventually, we got Lacrosse. Sports have never been entertainment. They have always meant so much more. They're a way to connect to a community, to make a community. Wow, sports are odd.