Sports are such a powerful force in human society precisely because they harness primal instincts that pulse through our psyche. The fact that teams can command such deep, violent loyalty based on nothing but being in the same town as fans—even as professional sports teams are transparently cynical in their loyalties, even as they demand stadium subsidies to locate and tax breaks to remain in the towns they profess to love, even as the players leave the moment another team offers a better deal—shows that we are no different from Tajfel’s boys: a group does not have to be based on objectively
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