I was at an apartment party on Landfair Avenue on Saturday
night, and it was the most excruciating 15 minutes of my life.
Everywhere, people were touching me, and everything smelled like
alcohol. All I could think of was this one line in the last Sartre
book I read: “Man, this is so plebian.”
For a moment I was tempted to cut a rug on the dance floor, but
for fear of being assaulted by the flailing limbs of others and for
fear of being infected by the beat, I chose to nest at my
precarious perch at the foot of the apartment’s
stairwell.
How is any of this related to sports? Well, this party was a
“track party.” Does this mean the entire UCLA track and
field team was in attendance? Does it mean someone on the track
team lived in the apartment? Does it mean people practiced pole
vaulting at the party? I don’t know.
But this column will attempt to figure it all out. I will
address the sociological implications of attaching a UCLA athletic
team’s name to a party. If that sounds too serious,
I’ll throw in some jokes about beer.
After conducting many boring interviews, I can determine a party
becomes named for a sports team when either a member of that team
hosts it or when several members of a team are at the party. I am
most interested in the second sociological phenomenon, and I will
now address it.
Because I am currently taking my first class in sociology, I
figured I had to go to the experts. So, on Tuesday, I e-mailed some
professors of sociology at USC, because people there are really
smart. I simply asked them if they could explain why parties are
named for sports teams. When I finished writing the e-mail, I
celebrated by doing a keg-stand.
You might think I would have had to wait a while for some
replies because, you know, professors are busy. Well, I checked my
e-mail 20 minutes later and I had already received two replies. I
guess the professors had already picked up their Nobel prizes and
had the rest of the day to catch up on their correspondence.
The first reply came from Professor Jon Miller, a comparative
sociologist. It was disheartening.
“Sorry, haven’t a clue,” he wrote.
I have to admit, at that point, I was feeling pretty down. So I
did another keg-stand. But seriously, I got to thinking,
“Maybe this isn’t even a sociological phenomenon at
all. Maybe I’m just an idiot who is short on column
ideas.”
Obviously, I knew the latter assertion wasn’t true, so I
decided to press forward.
The next e-mail I received, from the lovely Professor Julie
Albright, proved I really had discovered a sociological
phenomenon.
“It seems to be a fairly simple social network
phenomenon,” Albright wrote. “People have others
similar to themselves in their social network, i.e., athletes know
and hang out with other athletes ““ so when someone hears
about a party, they tell their friends.
“It’s easier to “˜group’ athletes
together and identify them as a group ““ compared to just a
group of friends that showed up, which you wouldn’t
necessarily identify as a group (i.e., “˜Mark’s
friends party’,)” Albright continued.
Well there you go, it’s a social network phenomenon. How
cool is that? Something I discovered can be classified with a
complicated sociology term.
I tried to contact some real-life athletes, hoping they might
have something to say about my newly discovered phenomenon.
“It’s an attraction thing,” said senior
volleyball player Chris Peña. “If there is a group of
girls going out, there might be a rowing party, a baseball party
and a volleyball party. Of course, they are going to the volleyball
party.”
Sadly, I couldn’t get in touch with any other athletes. I
bet they were out partying.
Thanks, USC. That was fun! E-mail Miller at
dmiller@media.ucla.edu.