Hrm.
It's not considered an "adult activity" for men to go half naked in the freezing cold to support their favourite sports team. Or in the hot. Or at any time outside of a sporting event. It's a "sporting activity" and it's seen in almost the EXACT same was as Cosplaying is at Conventions, both by people who go to the conventions and people who don't go. It's something that is appropriate for the activity in question, and depending on your perspective, it's generally a mix of "childish" and "juvenile" with "awesome" and "respectable" or "idiotic" and "unseemly". Also, you can't wear most sporting outfits outside of the sporting events themselves. You can't go half naked and body painted with the team colours out on the bus, going to buy groceries. It's not appropriate to take the kids to the park while wearing a huge football costume. But it IS appropriate to wear a simple sports jersey to those activities, while if someone went out wearing a Star Trek uniform to do groceries would be looked at askance. Or if someone decided that instead of a light jacket they would put on a Jedi robe. Costumes that really don't require a great deal of effort (you can just go buy them off the shelf, they're mass produced in China) are, in my eyes, akin to sports jerseys. So comparing those two would be far better than trying to compare the Punk Rock Sailor Scouts and the Black Hole of Oakland. ( http://larrybrownsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/raiders-fans.jpg )
So this podcast is making the wrong comparison between Cosplay and Sporting Fanatics by focusing the most complex costumes, and it's far too easy to dismiss the points because it's exceptionally easy to prove that the point that people are willing to completely accept sports fanatics for putting hours of their lives into costumes while not willing to accept comic book fans who put hours of their lives into their costumes is frankly wrong. Make it about "Why can't I wear a Star Trek uniform to Bath, Beds and Beyond while I can wear my Lakers jersey?" and you're going to have a much better argument.
