In my city, ice hockey is a very big deal.

When a promising new member is added to the local team, billboards are erected on the road in from the airport to welcome him. Many people try to watch all of the 80-some games a season. Season tickets ($2000-$7000) routinely sell out well in advance. In 2006, when the local team got into the finals, people rioted in the streets.

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy the occasional spectator sport. It can be fun to watch a game, commenting on the various plays and players. It’s kind of cool to get to know a team and root for them.

But rioting in the streets? Paying the price of a small car to sit in a cold arena 2-3 times a week? Erecting billboards to the latest 19 year old player to land here for a couple of years before moving on?

This is plainly about more than a bunch of athletic fellows chasing a piece of rubber around a piece of ice.

My theory is that it speaks to a hunger we all feel; a hunger for common ground, to connect with other people. It’s a hunger to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. We all want to be part of a community and get swept up in the emotion of that. It’s a fundamentally human thing.

Somehow, in cities like mine, that hunger has latched on to professional sports. In some places it’s soccer, or football, or basketball. It seems more socially acceptable to care about them than about politics, or civic affairs, or any number of other things we could be connecting and engaging with each other over.

Why is it somehow safer to care about professional sports than these other things? Is it less controversial, less complex? Is that why such an avalanche of energy and other resources are poured into things like hockey while things like voter turnout drop steadily?

I often wonder how we could take a little bit of the passion, energy and money that goes into professional sports and turn it to more meaningful uses – get people just as interested in community development, environmental stewardship, elections, where their food comes from, etc.

The sheer potential of it is mind boggling – and I think it might even do a better job of satisfying the hunger.