Today, team sports serve as an outlet for "warrior culture" that would otherwise be incompatible with a modern civilized society. So I get what the OP is saying.
From what I recall, all children were equal in social status up to the 3rd grade. It was in the 4th grade that pecking orders were starting to be established. And it was the boys who were reaching puberty before the others that held the higher positions.
Exactly, all non-martial arts sports and non-combat sports should be about physical fitness and discipline. That's it! No need for some warrior culture or toxic machismo hegemonic masculinity to be in them. It's absolutely unnecessary and only scares non-alpha male normal peoples away.
All non-warrior sports should be just like going to your local public bodybuilding gym.
But no! Coaches inject hypermasculinity and warrior mentality in sports. This is how non-warrior sports become full of low IQ bullies and testosterone-filled retarded alpha jerkbags who routinely fail their school academics.
Coaches, teachers, and other adults actually encourage this and yet they get offended when their beloved highschool athletes get stereotyped as dumb barbarian uncivilized brutes.
Honestly, I don't think athletes will be popular if they are not testosterone-filled alpha male bullies but are just normal babyfaced goody-two-shoes people who take academics seriously.
Like I said again, everyone worships assholes as long as those assholes don't hurt them and here are proof:
Child bullies are well adjusted people who are coldly calculating and intimidate others because it makes them more popular, two studies carried out by researchers in Canada have found.
www.dailymail.co.uk
People love the bad boy image. Can you imagine athletes having no bad boy aura or masculine edge? Like if athletes are like nerds to the point that athletes have no masculinity. Can you even imagine that? Do you think people will take them seriously? No! I don't think so!
Athletics is basically the physical brother of the mental academics. It's not anymore masculine than academics. It's just that! Athletes with no bad boy image will just be seen as physical nerds. That's it.
There is probably a parallel universe outside of our universe where athletes are not bad boys, don't bully, and are nice as nerds. I am pretty sure that in that parallel universe, they are seen as loser goody-two-shoes for taking sports seriously the same way that academics nerds in our universe are seen as loser goody-two-shoes for taking academics seriously.
People like bad boys. This is also the reason why criminal gangsters, Wild Old West outlaws, and serial killers are often glorified in mainstream media. People love bad boys.