We hear much wailing and lamenting that America has lost its common ground, that social media and its algorithms are pushing us apart from each other, that we don’t gather together across race and class in bowling leagues and sewing circles like we used to.

But last Sunday, I got to re-experience what feels a lot like a thriving, healthy American commons, rubbing elbows with a wide cross-section of Colorado in a weekly ritual that binds its participants in collective effervescence.

I‘m talking about a home Broncos game, of course.

Before we totally give up on America, let’s remember that every Sunday, MAGA Republicans and Democratic socialists, plumbers and doctors, Muslims and Catholics, Black, Brown and White put on something orange and become a single possessed mass cheering the Donkeys on to victory.

Talk about E Pluribus Unum (Out of the many, one).

When Coloradans assemble in droves to watch the Broncos, they are exercising a quintessentially American activity. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, French author of “Democracy in America,” identified one key factor above all others that sets Americans apart: We are a nation of joiners.

“In Democratic countries the science of association is the mother science; the progress of all others depends on the progress of that one,” Tocqueville wrote. In America in particular, there exists an immense “sum of associations.”

Our impulse to form ad hoc independent associations is one of the strongest manifestations of our “we the people” DNA. I’m thinking that’s one reason we are drawn so powerfully to team sports here in America, circa 2025.

In other words, I think Tocqueville would have been a Broncos fan.

On game day, people who otherwise wouldn’t interact all feel part of the same group. Games become meeting points, sparking conversations and friendships among neighbors who might not otherwise connect. We all take on shared symbols – the great white horse – shared ritual – the parachute drop – and shared values. The Broncos teach us teamwork, loyalty, and cooperation, promoting a culture of working together for a common good.

Psychologists associate the shared emotional experience of a sports event with increased empathy, stronger in-group bonds, greater willingness to cooperate afterward (except with those Green Bay cheeseheads in the stands).

 All that has a spillover effect for our state, resulting in higher civic pride and a greater attachment to place. As a result, I would argue that one of the great unspoken functions the Broncos serve in this state is social cohesion.  

Especially when we’re winning.

(The Broncos have not lost a single home game this season.)

“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite,” Tocqueville observed. “Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small.”

And sporting.

Through these associations, we learn how to play well with others. In a stadium of 75,000 cheering souls, we are building community.

Without really realizing it, we fans are combating runaway individualism, we are modeling cooperative relations across race and class, we are demonstrating the unique social benefits of bonding over a cause. As a result of regular mass associations like a Broncos game, “the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed,” Tocqueville wrote.  (That last part clearly doesn’t work for the Las Vegas Raiders, alas.)

In a great essay in “Law and Liberty” on the topic, political scientist Andrew Carico wrote: “At the heart of Tocqueville’s analysis is an important truth about the human desire to communicate and collaborate with others. Americans, (Tocqueville) contended, had elevated that art above other democratic countries.”

Football games may be the state of that art right now. Football games may be one of the few remaining unifying forces in the country.

Emma Green, in another wonderful essay in the Atlantic entitled, “Would Alexis de Tocqueville Have Joined a High School Football Team?” makes the point that playing on a sports team or even just rooting for one can be a transformative experience that strengthens a person’s sense of both local and national community.

“Whether of the field or in the stands, coaching a team or running the field, everyone at a game can feel part of something local – this team, this game, this town – and something abstract and national – a land where young people are free to run, the home of strong, exceptional, brave athletes.”

If Tocqueville were to come again to America today, he’d surely lament the divisiveness of our politics, tongue-lash the scourge of social media and make note of the general decline of associations compared to the 1830s.

But I think he’d see hope at Empower Field.