I think men have instincts to define boundaries, bring things within a space to order, protect it from threats. When everything is perfectly fine, these instincts have nowhere to apply and so they replace them with virtual forms. Sports are a very direct form of virtualized conflict over defined bounds and tribalism. Videogames do the same but in an actual virtual space. Politics send it back into real life but in conflict over the conceptual. Sciences take things deeper into real life and deeper into conceptual as well, yet back to the basics of man venturing beyond known bounds and setting order to nature. Soft studies such as history, sociology, and psychology start to bring this back into tribalism with competing schools of thought.
When people become too obnoxious about these things, it is likely because they are finding very little in their life where they are impactful, mastering a space or art and being acknowledged for it. Without this sense of identity and role, it is difficult to sort hierarchy of respects, which is another strong instinct. So then the virtualized form becomes more like a real measure of themselves rather than a mere game and if they perceive the other as not giving due credit, there is a sense that they themselves are being disrespected in the hierarchy of respects. Sports is where the stupidity of it is perhaps most apparent, yet people do the same when they are unable to discuss any meaningful topic with someone who disagrees without getting all worked up.
