Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him (Proverbs 24:17-18).

Sports are a window into the human soul.  For whatever reason, behavior that would be totally unacceptable in any other area of life is somehow perfectly allowable in sports:  religious fanatacism to things like circus animals, nuts, and weather phenomena (i.e. Tigers, Buckeyes, and Thunder); respectable men and women dressing up in silly costumes and yelling at the top of their lungs just for the fun of it; perfect strangers enthusiastically hugging one another; grown men sobbing in public... All of these things are natural human impulses, I believe, but they find a legitimate expression in sports where they would be socially frowned upon in the workplace, in the classroom, in the supermarket, and so on.

Rejoicing at someone else's misfortune is another example of a type of behavior that is generally not acceptable in our society -- though we all tend to have such feelings anyway -- however, in sports it's totally OK to feel that way.  It's openly discussed that people who support Amsterdam's soccer team, Ajax, and people who support Rotterdam's soccer team, Feyenoord, generally hate each other.  Similarly, people from Ohio actively and proudly wish for the misfortune of Michigan athletics, with a popular Ohio saying being:  "I have two favorite sports teams:  Ohio State and Whoever is Playing Michigan!"  It's not just favoring one team over another; it's actively despising another rival team and rejoicing at the "enemy's" misfortune.  Again, I don't think that these thought patterns are actually limited to sports; in fact, we tend to slip into this mode of thinking quite often, without even realizing it... But sports provide us with a window into our own souls, offering a clarity that cannot be easily observed elsewhere.

Even in sports, I think most of us can recognize that gloating is an ugly thing that says something very ugly about ourselves.  We cut down others in order to make ourselves feel higher.  We act as though it's not enough, if I'm doing well; I have to make sure that I'm doing well and that others are miserable in the process.  It's even more immature than blubbering in public, wearing team-themed costumes, or yelling at the top of one's lungs just for the fun of it.  And it often accomplishes the opposite of what we're hoping for -- shifting the sympathy of neutral bystanders (including the LORD himself) to the side of the underdog and changing the dynamics of the game.