What do the 5 stages of grief have to do with sports fans you wonder? Just ask the diehard Wrigley Field denizens and they will provide you with enough angst and anecdote to write a Ph.D. dissertation in clinical psychology.

The five stages of grief were introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in the book On Death and Dying (Scribner, 1969). She posited that the stages of grief are universal and cross all socio-ethnic-economic classifications.

Now I know that losing a World Cup match is in no way comparable to the loss of death—though after losing to Germany 7-1 in Rio, there are Brazilians that might disagree—but our team, MY team winning or losing is so palpable … so visceral … so emotional … why shouldn’t the 5 stages of grief apply to sports fans?

Anyone that grew up with ABC Wild World of Sports on Saturday afternoons—back in the blurry days of television when the only channels we got were from the three major networks and maybe one or two local stations—knows the truth of Jim McKay’s words, when he intoned the immortal phrase, “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports … the thrill of victory … and the agony of defeat … the human drama of athletic competition.” [Read more…]