Sports Subculture at NUQ

In my freshman year, I founded Northwestern University in Qatar’s first sports team, the Men’s Football team. Back then I didn’t know I was bringing a subculture into the NUQ community. I just thought of it as a club like all the other ones that existed. However, after September 30, 2012, after a sociology class about subcultures, I realized that I should be going down in the history books as one of the first students to introduce the subculture of sports in NUQ. The girl’s basketball team, however, will be recorded as the first successful NUQ sports team. It was much more challenging for me because NUQ had plenty of girls, but very few male students.

So how is the football team a subculture? A subculture is basically a group of people within a broader or larger culture. What differentiate them are their beliefs and values, which may or may not overlap with the beliefs and values of the popular culture. In this case, I would like to refer to NUQ as the popular culture and the football team as its subculture.

The major goal of NUQ is to provide excellent education and produce individuals who will become the pioneers of the media industry in this region. The major goal of the football team, however, is to promote physical education, sportsmanship and win competitions. We see some differences in the goals and beliefs of both, but there are also some overlaps. Honesty, discipline, punctuality are values that are required by the members of both organizations.

Through the football games organized in Education City, I also observed the emergence of fandom subculture. Several people come to support their teams during tournaments and important games. The sports subculture is closely tied to the fandom subculture. Members of the sport subculture are mostly athletes and other active members in the field of sports, whereas, the fandom subculture consists of individuals who admire or are passionate about a specific sport or any activity.