The U.S. in the World Cup: The agony and relief of holding a lead

Countless studies have shown an unpleasant fact about the human condition: We tend to use the avoidance of pain as an influencer of decisions more than we do the seeking of pleasure.

It's not really a fun way to live, but perhaps it's just baked into our DNA from a time when it was wiser to, say, run away from a wild animal trying to eat us.

In 2022, at a time of unprecedented privilege and decreasing likelihood of wild animal attacks, this tends to be rather inconvenient in the pursuit of living our best lives.

But it does explain this: How watching sports with a genuine rooting interest in one team can feel like agony the most when the team we are watching is ... winning?

Yes, I would submit that watching your team play from some sort of deficit is difficult, there is a certain mix of optimism (hey, it could get better!) and resigned fate (well, it just wasn't their day) that informs the process. If they do end up losing, it might be frustrating.

But it is magnitudes removed from the gut-punch feeling of a victory being taken away and turned into a loss, which I talked about on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast.

The context for ruminating on such a thing was Tuesday's World Cup match between the U.S. and Iran. The Americans dominated first-half play in taking a 1-0 lead in a match that had clear implications: win and advance to the Round of 16; lose or draw and Iran would advance.

Despite chances to expand the lead, the margin remained one goal. Then the U.S. started tiring, Iran started attacking, and the final 30 minutes of the second half (plus NINE minutes of stoppage time) became pure hold-your-breath agony for anyone watching.

You would have felt better during those 40 or so real-time minutes had it been the U.S. pursuing a goal from a trail position than trying to defend against a goal from a lead position, even if that doesn't seem to make sense.

It's those darn pain avoidance tendencies. The thought of something being right in the U.S. team's grasp, and then slipping away, is more painful than the thought of never having led at all.

That the U.S. did hold on to win 1-0, gamely but what also felt like barely, gave the triumph a feeling of relief at least as much as it did elation.

This level of drama is rare (unless you're the Vikings, when you just call it "Sunday") but it is also why we watch sports.

And we'll keep watching how we watch as long as we can't outrun whatever is chasing us.