Settle down boys: Players on the champion Leicester City Football Club watch rivals on TV during their championship run.
Plumb Images; Leicester City FC via Getty ImagSettle down boys: Players on the champion Leicester City Football Club watch rivals on TV during their championship run.

For both males and females, spectators and players, love of sports is deep in the genes—but in the men it's deeper

Gender politics and science have never gotten along very well. The patriarchal system was—and in some cultures still is—based on the premise that women are more mercurial, less deliberative and physically less sturdy than men. Those are perfectly easy beliefs to hold—at least until you subject them to the least bit of intellectual scrutiny or real-world testing, at which point they fall apart completely.