BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published November 13, 2008

Dallas Stars left wing Sean Avery is paid to be annoying. He is paid to make obnoxious comments to opposing teams and to be in all the right places to give an opponent an extra shove when the referee is not looking. Avery, along with teammates Steve Ott and, to some extent, Mike Ribeiro, is an infamous pest. (There are many other words I could use to describe him, but these would not be appropriate to put in print.) Avery demonstrated this last weekend when the Stars took on the San Jose Sharks. There is no love lost between these two teams after the Stars knocked the Sharks out of the conference finals last year in the fourth overtime period of game six. But Avery manages to bring it to the next level.

Early in the first period, Avery was already exchanging words with Sharks enforcer Jody Shelley, threatening to fight before the game had really even begun. This dispute ended in the two players throwing water at each other from their respective benches. I have to admit, I found this entertaining, but it did strike me how this incident and others that continued to occur throughout the game, usually involving Avery, brought a halt to the game coverage. While play continued elsewhere on the ice, the TV commentators were left discussing how it was worse of Avery to throw Gatorade than for Shelley to throw water because of the “stickiness factor.” So however entertaining it was to watch these two grown men resort to water throwing to express their frustration, it left me wondering if this bitterness toward each other actually had any effect on either team’s play or whether individual or team rivalries are even a useful part of sports.

There are some obvious uses for team rivalries off the field, one of which is as a marketing tool for sports. Most colleges, and even high schools, have a form of the Big Game, a game against the school’s rival, and these are usually hyped to be the most important event of the season. In the Pac 10 conference, the Big Game between Stanford and Berkeley football is advertised far more than any other game in the season. Coaches use these rivalries and increased advertising in hopes of boosting fan attendance. According to recent research, this strategy has been proven to work. An April 2004 article in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology found that the transition in the NHL over the past decade to increase the number of games played against divisional rivals was successful in helping increase overall attendance at games. For example, the NHL office increased the number of times Canadian teams played other Canadian teams. Games like these, where teams have a long history with one another, tended to attract more people and were more entertaining for fans, giving them an opportunity to watch the rivalry develop.

Besides boosting ticket sales, some sports psychologists argue that these rivalries can help a team get ready for important games. In an article on his Psychology of Sports Web site, Richard Lustberg, a licensed psychologist, discusses how the long-standing rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox has intensified games between the two for both fans and players alike. “Hate has a way of making people feel alive,” Lustberg said in the article. “Hanging onto a grudge for a long time gives people a feeling of being pumped up and energized beyond a humdrum day.”

Although games against rivals do not count for more points, psychologically they carry more meaning for players and fans. Thus Saturday’s victory against the Stars was not just another two points for the Sharks and a continuance of their winning streak, but it was also a type of payback against the team responsible for cutting their previous season short. The fact that this victory came at the expense of Avery, who spent the entire game provoking Sharks players instead of concentrating on his own play, was really just a bonus.

Hannah is a sophomore. She can be reached at hpurkey1@swarthmore.edu.

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