I'm not sure I would draw this conclusion:

The word clouds allowed the researchers to generate new insights into relationships between traits and language used.

For example, participants with the most emotional stability refer to sports much more.

Researcher Lyle Ungar said this suggests “we should explore the possibility that neurotic individuals would become more emotionally stable if they played more sports.”

Correlation is not causation.

Yeah, I agree.  

Maybe it's because sports athletes have less time to encourage and cultivate more popular idle neuroses, those most often encountered and documented by pop psychologists, newspaper columnists and new york times bestselling authors.  

Athletes just hide their neurosis in the open, and more actively express them by what they must superstitiously do to make their team win.  This goes for their fans too: all sports playing and watching could just as easily be diagnosed as neurosis of superstitiously repetitive activity.

I mean speaking as a passionate, life-long competitive athlete myself... ahem.