"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting."

George Orwell, The Sporting Spirit

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/spirit/english/e_spirit

I tend to think that the emotional collectivism of sport is rather a more harmless substitute for darker, more dangerous emotional mass movements.

But with Orwell in you corner you are in good company with your opinion.