It's common for sports fans to say things like, "we're playing Los Angeles next week" or "we picked up so-and-so in the draft" when there's really no "we" about it. The speaker is not involved in the action in any way other than as one observing it. But using that language makes them feel included in something bigger. And sometimes the brain starts to believe you really ARE part of that bigger thing, and you start taking actions to reinforce that belief.
(And I want it noted that I'm very much including myself in this assessment. This is not some "nerds > jocks" kind of thing. As an American football fan myself, I've made a conscious effort to stop saying "we" specifically because this has started to bother me.)
So no, participating in sports isn't unhealthy. Succumbing to the delusion of participation as a spectator, that's what becomes unhealthy.
¹ Or any other group, but US Americans in particular seem to love this cry.
² And are probably mistaken about their ranking, but that’s a different issue.
Edit: And I'm curious how this relates to the topic at hand. Not that I think it is unrelated, but specifically how. We seem to be in rather strong agreement that it is the relationship with a thing that is unhealthy, with regards to sports. Why or how would that be different with regards to social media?
The mechanism seems to be the "media" part. All the promotional content is blasted out at scale in a way that triggers this false or amplified sense of social engagement. It's not the social part of social media that hurts, so much as the media platform part that enables so many promoters to thrive.
This leans into all media and aligns with how much credence is given to pundits. People with good ideas wind up digging in and pushing that they have the only reasonable idea.
The exploit is emotional reactivity, get your in-group gaslighted so they are on permanent rage.
Side-tracking people into unimportant (sports) in-group versus out-group is really good at improving cohesion between important group differences e.g. the Mexican and American rooting for the same team that have their sport in common, helps them be closer to each other.
It can be divisive between countries. Then again it is interesting to watch New Zealand support Australians against the English (background - there is usually strong sports rivalry between NZ and Oz since we are neighbours). A bit of win and lose on that one.
The most popular sports tend to be cross-class too - which is good. Of course there are sports that tend to be class oriented in some countries e.g. polo, soccer, athletics. FYI golf and skiing are not particularly class oriented within New Zealand (we are weird down here).
Just a theory of mine.
I'm less enthusiastic about a lot of the big corporate push into many sports. Not just at large, but in the reach out to youth. Happy for my kids to get involved with sports at the local level. Annoyed at how much effort seems to go into funneling local assets into marketing that larger organizations clearly could be getting elsewise.
That said, I'm almost socialist enough to have a crap ton of completely incoherent ideas about how those that are succeeding should be doing their best to make sure those that aren't could. With no obligations attached.
However, that is ridiculously unhealthy. And it easily bleeds into other aspects of life. Heaven help you when you go watch some middle school team sometime, parents are being terrible to their kids. Worse to other's kids.
Does this mean sports are unhealthy, though? I'm convinced, right now, that that is definitely not the case. But I can also easily claim we tend to have unhealthy relationships with these topics.