Storyline: It’s easier to evaluate how fans treat your teams than to gauge how your fans behave. Let’s explore these and other issues in the field of “Fandomology.”
I remember the first time I experienced a Michigan State football victory at Notre Dame Stadium. I didn’t look forward to walking back to the car.
I’d been through rough experiences at other places—yelled at, abused, even threatened in some cases. Leaving a game at Syracuse University was my all-time worst experience. Departing Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City (as an Iowa State fan) ranks second.
Courtesy: gamedayr.com
So I was really apprehensive that afternoon in South Bend, bracing myself for the worst. My wife and I—both donned in Spartan Green—headed to exits as fans filed out with the words “Fighting Irish” and a Leprechaun emblazoned on their chests. Except for shuffling feet it was quiet as all get-out.
They looked at me. I looked at them.
“Nice game!” “Congratulations.” “You guys deserved the win.” “Thanks,” I said, over and over.
Irish fans were gracious in defeat. “How refreshing,” I thought. Check the word “refreshing”: make that “extraordinary.” I’d never experienced anything like it.
The experience that day gave me pause for thought. For a very long time I had noticed a pecking order of what I’ll call “fandom,” an expression of what seems to be fan culture. Some fans are ok. Others are obnoxious. Some seem disconnected to the game on the field. (During the long string of losing years some Northwestern football fans struck me that way.)
Courtesy: mainenhpsualumni.wordpress.com
Over time it was easy to rank fans of the Big Ten. And the ranking data aren’t always connected to game day experiences. I remember the time—at an interstate highway rest stop, no less—when I was accosted by two Penn State fans, both men. Football was riding high at PSU at the time and they wanted me to know just how good it was. Ok. I get it: the Lions are great and Joe Paterno is god. But they wanted to communicate that and more. They denigrated college basketball and MSU’s success at it. “Basketball isn’t a real sport,” they said. The message: You suck. We’re special.
Then there was the time when I was at a bar with friends watching a Michigan State game. A guy at another table was wearing a Patriots cap. He looked at me and said (pointing to his cap): “Your team ain’t won nothing!”
There was another time when I took a group of undergraduate students to West Lafayette to attend an academic conference. Over lunch all we heard were stories about the Boilers beating the Spartans—one game after the other, one year after the other, and one sport after the other. It went on and on all the way through the meal. “Why is this happening?” I don’t know. I still don’t understand why. We began as guests, but ended as hostages.
But here’s the thing. While it’s easy to make experience-based judgments about other fans, it’s not easy to evaluate the behavior of your fan base. “What’s it like when you play our team?” But, c’mon! Few ask that question. Answers will more likely come through the three “un’s”: unsolicited, unwelcomed, and unabridged. That has happened to me more than once. What can you say when it happens? Nothing. Just receive and move on.
Courtesy: Fox Sports
There’s another dynamic of fandom that I find interesting—make that unsettling. I experienced it first in neighborhood organizing. It’s how people can complain and carp about how others are doing things. But when some of the complainers get a chance to lead…. Guess what? They do the very same things they were complaining about, sometimes with more emphasis, more animus, and more you-name-it-us. The self-annointed oppressed become the oppressors. Oh, my!
Then there’s this dynamic. Downtrodden fans take abuse from a superior foe for years and years and years. It’s brutal. It’s abusive. And it’s unrelenting. “You suck!” “We can beat you with 8-year-olds playing!” “We toy with your ass!” It’s especially bad when your team takes a big lead in a game and you think, “Finally!” Then the other team makes a comeback—a really big comeback—and wins the game at the wire. (I experienced just that at Michigan Stadium in 2004. My son and I slinked out of the stadium that day.)
The reality, of course, is that sports are cyclical, just like most things in life. “What goes around comes around.” Tables turn: your team starts winning, vanquishing this long-time foe, over and over and over again. Roles reverse. And sometimes it gets nasty.
Courtesy: Huffington Post
I keep on coming back to two personality traits when it comes to explaining fan behavior: arrogance and low self-esteem (i.e., being comfortable in your own skin). Some teams, cities, and fans are outright arrogant. They believe they’re superior and victory on the field provides an empirical confirmation: We won! You lost! We’re a winner! You’re a loser!
Then there’s the other dynamic. Uncomfortable souls as they are, some fans pump chests as a way of pumping up themselves. It’s overdone. And it masks other things that are going on—deeper things—that athletics brings out. But, whatever that might be, it has nothing to do with athletics.
But, ironically, arrogance and low self-esteem bring out the same thing … obnoxious fan behavior.
What I’ve just done in this essay anybody can do. Think about the teams your team plays regularly. How do their fans stack up? Then, think about your fans? How do they act? Have they changed over the years? If so, how? Why?
It’s all part of a new academic sports specialty that I just created.
Let’s call it Fandomology.
