As a sports fan who spent the better part of three and a half years at the University of Winnipeg, I often felt that sports were a taboo subject.

In my experience, when you try to talk sports with other students, you’re often dealing with the arts/activist/hipster/indie crowd, who by and large have no interest in the subject. In fact, this crowd often paints sports in a negative light; the sentiment is that sports are too competitive, too corporate and not co-operative.

If you’re a sports fan, you’re at risk of being deemed uncultured.

But despite this opposition, I can tell you that sports play an important role in our society in a wide variety of areas.

The first thing that sports provide is a valuable lesson in teamwork.

For example, teams in the UEFA Champions League win the European Champion Clubs’ Cup not on individual talent, but on teamwork. Teamwork is an excellent transferable skill to be learned from sports, valuable well beyond the soccer field. Quite often this benefit is overlooked.

Another oft overlooked quality of sports is the mixing of cultures that occurs during major sporting events like the FIFA World Cup.

While Winnipeg abounds with cultural activities such as the Folk Festival and Fringe Festival every summer, these events may not appeal to sports fans.

However, every four years the World Cup engages Canadians of all cultural backgrounds to celebrate the world’s most popular sport.

It is one of the few events in the world that can boast a true multicultural turnout, with all sorts of ethnicities engaging.

Sports also allow students the opportunity to advance their post-secondary education through scholarships that may not have been possible otherwise.

Students who may not be able to go to university because of their socioeconomic status are often given the opportunity to attend university through sports scholarships. This gives those athletic students the chance to pursue their dreams, as well as advance their life and career.

The most important intrinsic value in sports is that during times of turmoil they can soothe people. For examples, you need look no further than this past decade.

After Hurricane Katrina, the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, unfazed by their beloved Superdome being damaged in the storm, played the entire 2005 season on the road in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and San Antonio, Texas.

The team’s resiliency in the face of crisis helped to boost the spirits of a ravaged city. The Saints won the Super Bowl in February 2010 and uplifted the still-recovering city even further, four and a half years later.

Sure, there are annoying things about the sporting world, like millionaire prima donnas who whine that the millions they make aren’t enough for their bling-bling lifestyle.

However, sports are capable of a lot of good. They can bring people together.

Let’s hope that the student culture changes here at the University of Winnipeg; after all, its sports program is growing, with the recent additions of soccer, baseball and wrestling.

Let’s hope that our Wesmen basketball and volleyball games are being played to full crowds during regular season games, not just for the University of Manitoba clashes.

Let’s hope students rally around sports in general at the U of W.

Sports matter, folks.

A recent graduate of the University of Winnipeg, Adam Johnston is a big sports fan, particularly of soccer.

Published in Volume 66, Number 6 of The Uniter (October 5, 2011)