I'm a huge football fan, and, each year after the Super Bowl, I come away with a sense of loss. Up to that point, between August and January, I likely spent each and every weekend watching at least one NFL game. The void left by no football is non-trivial. I try to salvage something and pathetically watch the Pro-Bowl the following weekend, only to be disappointed by it's total vapidity. (This "priceless pep-talk' by Peyton Manning describes this feeling much better than I just did.)
The post-NFL funk last about a month for me, at the end of which the inevitable March madness comes by to get my spirits up again. As such, February is my least favorite month of the year, and I estimate that my mood and productivity both tank during this time.
I wonder if this holds more generally across the population of football fans. Almost everyone I know feels depressed after the NFL (or college) seasons. Does this have consequences for their health, productivity and happiness, too? How important are these consequences to population health and the economy at large?
I don't think anyone has done a study on this yet. Obviously, establishing causality would be difficult. You'd need some kind of before and after Super Bowl measurement(s) on these various outcomes among NFL fans as well as a control group to difference out general non-NFL trends (like "wow, I'm a bit sick of winter now", etc). But finding a control group would be hard. I'd suggest NBA fans, but they are a little weird.
Cleaner identification is possible by looking fans of opposing teams playing each other in a single-elimination game. For example, an enterprising soul could look at Patriots and Giants fans before and after the Super Bowl. This article uses a similarly themed strategy for soccer matches and finds that Premier League home team losses are associated with increased incidence of death due to acute myocardial infarctions and strokes.
With the Steelers out of the playoffs, my arch enemies the Patriots poised to go undefeated, and eight months of no NFL in front of me, I am poised to have a pretty dumb February.
But what's that? Duke basketball in the top 5? Maybe the funk will be tempered somewhat.
4 comments:
"Obviously, establishing causality would be difficult. You'd need some kind of before and after Super Bowl measurement(s) on these various outcomes among NFL fans as well as a control group to difference out general non-NFL trends"
Off the top of my head, how about looking at the difference between men and women? I would also imagine that people from certain ethnic backgrounds simply don't care for American football.
How about comparing the blood pressures of hospital in-patients? (those with TV in their rooms and those without)
Tim,
Yes, those are interesting thoughts also. The key assumption though is that these groups experience similar "secular" trends. Someone can always come up with a story to the contrary. Perhaps the best approach would be to explore robustness across multiple control groups, such as the ones you and I suggested.
I like the hospital idea. Are beds with TVs typically randomly assigned?
Another option would be to use "triple differences." Go with a treatment and control group, and differences out outcome changes across other weekends (say, Sunday-Monday at other points of the year).
-A
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