By Jim Caltagirone

For the Mirror

Despite claims by colds and flu, this is primarily peak season for nostalgia.

In the weeks that span Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, traditions, customs and decorations revive sentiments and memories from times in one’s life that were especially meaningful.

In similar ways, sport has imbedded itself in the identity of fans across the generations.

From throwback uniforms and ballpark architecture to vintage fan apparel and special events, such as the NHL’s outdoor games, nostalgia takes various forms as influencer of fan behavior and consciousness.

Summarizing research on sports retromarketing by University of Kansas researchers, the KU News Service wrote, “Sports seem to have a built-in advantage of their product offering a lived-in experience. People aren’t likely to be nostalgic for, or spend large amounts of money on, obsolete technologies, to give one example, but harkening back to the teams of their childhood is a widely positive experience.”

By definition, nostalgia develops over time. So, it is natural that fans within a specific age range might share clearly-defined recollections that are associated with their childhood or adolescent years.

Pirates fans might vividly recall staying up past bedtime to listen to radio-only broadcasts of games from the West Coast or racing home from school to watch World Series games during the afternoon hours, in an era when television executives didn’t possess total control of start times.

The personalities of sport are as much a part of nostalgia as the games and venues.

The top 10 of the final AP Poll of the 1973 college football season featured teams coached by legends Ara Parseghian, Woody Hayes, Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, Bo Schembechler and John McKay.

At present, Nick Saban is the lone coach of a top 10 team who comes remotely close to meriting legend status.

The names of 1970s quarterbacks also portray a stature that is widely unmatched today. Staubach, Bradshaw, Namath, Griese, Stabler and Tarkenton — all Hall of Famers — epitomized excellence in leadership and performance.

As might already be obvious, this commentary is offered from the perspective of a fan who had yet to graduate from high school when the Montreal Canadiens were building their ’70s NHL dynasty.

Impressions of what constitutes greatness and class were formed through observations of John Wooden, Tom Landry, John Havlicek, Willie Stargell and Penn State football on the grandest stages of competition.

It makes no difference if historians validate those types of impressions. Idealized or not, they are an important part of the person who embraces them.

During the pandemic, a trauma psychologist named Valentina Stoycheva wrote, “Nostalgia is usually a yearning for our past selves, not just for a time and place. We crave to feel the positive emotions that we felt, to connect to the version of ourselves we were at the time we are reminiscing about.”

Continuity and familiarity perpetuate nostalgia.

The tree ornaments that have become family heirlooms, the recipes that are passed from parent to child and the longing for sports moments in time are all branches on the same tree.

As nostalgia grows among Penguins fans of a certain age for the Cup years of Mario Lemieux, there also exists a generation of young fans that will one day possess equally strong emotions about the “Sid the Kid” period.

The sentiments are the same. Only the lived-in experiences are different.

Jim Caltagirone writes a monthly column for the Mirror. He also comments on college football’s national scene for Gameday.