Why It Hurts When Your Football Team Loses. A Neurosurgeon And Notre Dame Fan Explains

Every autumn Saturday, our family becomes immersed in the electrifying allure of college football, whether we are cheering in the stadium or glued to the screen at home. Our kids proudly chant the Notre Dame fight song, showcasing their deep-rooted enthusiasm. However, the agony of seeing the Irish stumble in crucial moments is a palpable pain we all feel.

My journey to this devotion started at an all-boys Catholic high school, while my wife hails from a family tree rich with Notre Dame and St. Mary’s alumni. She has vivid memories of the infamous “Bush Push” game, which left many in tears at the university’s dining hall after witnessing USC’s last-minute victory in 2005. Our family was also present for the chilling loss to Alabama in the 2012 BCS National Championship and just two years ago, we experienced the last-second heartbreak against Ohio State in South Bend.

The most recent setback against Texas A&M — a gut-wrenching 41-40 defeat with mere seconds on the clock — compelled me to question the neuroscience behind the emotional turmoil of these losses. Understanding why such heartaches feel so intense may help cushion the blow should this Saturday’s game against Purdue take a turn for the worse.

The Neuroscience Of Winning

Being a sports fan activates the brain’s pleasure and pain centers, mirroring the emotional highs and lows of personal victories and defeats. The stronger your bond with a team, the more profound your emotional experience. Supporting a team cultivates a strong community bond, which has been shown to alleviate feelings of loneliness and enhance self-esteem.

Your team often embodies your identity, your home, your connections, and in the unique context of Notre Dame, perhaps even your faith. This dynamic plays into the larger narrative of what it means to belong, drawing parallels even to iconic moments in coaching, like a scene from the 1993 film Rudy.

Dopamine Drives The Feeling

The neurotransmitter dopamine plays a pivotal role in how we experience emotions and movements. Produced in a two-step process at the base of the brain, dopamine is crucial for a range of functions. It ignites feelings of reward and motivation alongside behavior reinforcement. When you indulge in a favorite treat or cheer for your team’s victory, the brain’s pleasure center sparks and dopamine is released in conjunction, signaling triumph.

When your team prevails, the ventral striatum, a significant component within this reward system, experiences a surge of euphoria akin to personal success — even though you are not an active participant in the match.

This dynamic is not merely theoretical; it is backed by data. A notable 2010 study employing functional MRI technology revealed that fans’ brain activity correlates directly with their team’s triumphs. When fans were shown clips of their team achieving successes, their ventral striatum exhibited significant activation, indicating pleasure.

Interestingly, data also indicates a surge in testosterone levels among fans with their team’s victories, heightening the emotional experience and amplifying the thrill of triumph.

Winning is a science of sorts.

The Neuroscience Of Losing

The brain’s response to a sporting defeat parallels the emotional processing of personal losses, engaging the anterior cingulate cortex, a central player in the emotional pain arena. This region activates whether one experiences or witnesses suffering, such as feeling empathy for a friend who has been hurt.

Research involving functional MRI scans indicates that the brain of a sports fan can mirror the neural responses typically observed during genuine emotional pain, reflecting how deeply fans experience losses despite being physically unharmed. Fans often activate neural pathways similar to those engaged when observing a close love one endure physical injury, drawing a vivid connection between sporting disappointment and emotional turmoil.

What Happens When Your Rivals Lose?

The same 2010 study elaborated that fans derive joy from witnessing their rivals falter, where the brain registers a near-equal worth of excitement as witnessing their own team’s accomplishments. This finding underscores the fact that rival misfortunes can activate the ventral striatum, eliciting euphoric feelings just like team successes.

This dynamic extends to everyday life — while one might not openly celebrate a classmate’s failure in gym class, the distress of watching a rival athlete struggle brings about a subtle rush of joy. Everyone revels in an astonishing upset.

For example, Michigan’s stunning win over Ohio State last year reverberated throughout college football communities. The emotional responses during such rivalries run deep and intense.

Behavioral Economics Of Loss Aversion

Insights from Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s prospect theory have reshaped our understanding of the emotional weight of losses in contexts like sports. Unlike classical economic theories which assume rational behavior, prospect theory illustrates that we perceive outcomes relative to a reference point. The disproportionate pain of losses emerges from our tendency to value them significantly more than equivalent victories, often quantified at an emotional difference of two-to-one.

At its heart, loss aversion conveys that the sorrow stemming from losses outweighs the jubilation we derive from wins, creating imbalances in emotional responses — as evidenced by an unwillingness to take fair bets in experimental scenarios unless the potential upside is notably greater than the downside. Our perceptions are dictated by references, making any downtick deeply disheartening.

NBA legend Jerry West famously remarked, “The pain of losing is so much stronger than the joy of winning,” connecting with the shared sentiments of fans who deeply cherish their victories while painfully recalling their defeats.

Should Notre Dame Have Won That Game? Is That Why It Hurts?

Despite having grown up as a more zealous New York Islanders fan than a devoted supporter of the Irish, the pain of recent Notre Dame losses feels acutely more intense. The discrepancy in expectations plays a significant role; the Islanders’ fate doesn’t carry the weight of presumed success, thus their defeats resonate less.

Conversely, the heart-wrenching loss against Texas A&M represented a crucial moment in the season for the Fighting Irish, who entered the game with high hopes following a national championship appearance in 2024 and expectations to secure the win by a significant margin. This game was one they should have claimed, but miscues, including turnovers and defensive breakdowns, led to a crushing defeat — a scenario in which it feels more justly lost rather than deservedly won. While credit goes to Texas A&M, the residual sting of the loss prevails, and, as we’ve examined, that always hurts more.