Photo Credit: Happyhints.com

February 5, 2012, I spent the day at a sports bar for almost five hours trying to discern
what attracted so many to the event known as “Super Bowl Sunday?”  In some ways
this article is a tribute to a late colleague, Dr. Walter Dozier, who was both a professional
 journalist and anthropologist, specializing in—you guessed it, the anthropology of sports
When you’re told that each company that had an ad played during Sunday’s Super Bowl
game paid $3.5M for a 30 second spot, and that 1.25 billion portions of chicken wings
were eaten during this game weekend, or that some people were willing to pay $4,000
for a ticket to the game, you gotta wonder, what’s the allure.

We anthropologists tend to build upon Aristotle’s thesis that “Man is by nature a social
 animal;”  we assume the human species (men and women) to be social and study how
 humans operate individually and in groups.  The need to belong, to be part of a social
group seems to be structured into our DNA.  While I did not conduct a scientific study,
 I did use one of the primary methods of cultural anthropology—participant observation. 

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