There's a lot of things that perplex me about sports fandom. I'll start with New York fandom, since a lot of people in my adopted state of Nebraska think that the fact that I'm not from here explains my disinterest in the local college sports teams, especially the football team.
New York Football Teams: in my view, there's only one New York NFL team, and that's the Buffalo Bills. Both the "New York" Giants and "New York" Jets play their home games in New Jersey, and have for decades. Yet New York football fans happily refer to both teams as New York teams. They're not only out in the suburbs of their eponymous city, as many sports teams are, but in a whole 'nother STATE! It's true that both teams started their existence in New York City, but the Giants have been a New Jersey team since 1976 and the Jets followed soon thereafter.
Sports vs. Education: I fully understand that professional sports teams, and even popular college teams are good for business. It makes a certain kind of sense for donors to pour their discretionary funds into new stadiums or even for cities to offer big tax breaks rather than funding its educational institutions. Sorts fans spend money. But high school sports? I'm not criticizing the existence of high school sports, but the priority that is often placed on them. When my step-daughter was in high school she participated in several sports. Coaches thought nothing of requiring players to devote many hours to practice or to observing other teams when homework got neglected. Out of town games kept them up late on "school nights". The track team regularly pulled team members out of class to go to most-of-the-day meets. Class was sometimes cancelled to facilitate a tournament.
The Two Sides of Criticism: Sports fans love to criticize every move a coach makes, but at the same time will get nasty if criticism comes from the wrong quarter. The fans of a team that isn't doing so well will spend hours debating the relative merits of their team's game day strategy. They call for the coach to be fired over losses. They wait in the queue to comment on sports radio talk shows. But some fans will try to shut down criticism with the position that unless you're actually a current or former coach or player you have no grounds to criticize, because you can't do any of it yourself, so you have no grounds to point fingers. (My position is that if you have a high-profile job that depends on thousands of people being excited about your work, and you accept the adulation when you're doing well, accepting the criticism is part of the job) College sports isn't much better, although more of the anger is directed at the coaching staff since players, being students, get rotated out every few years. Some fans will defect complaints about a team's losses by pointing out that "they're just kids", while having no problem putting those same "kids" on a pedestal and subjecting them to hero worship when the team is winning.
"It's OUR Team - Why Aren't You a Fan?": I saw this as a transplant from the East Coast to Nebraska. Even when I was a sports fan, football never interested me, so I was indifferent to the local college team. This apparently wasn't good enough. Obnoxious local fans intimated that there was something wrong with me for not enthusiastically rooting for the home team. This introduced me to a phenomenon that I'm sure exists wherever there are sports teams - the locals expect new arrivals to jettison their loyalties to their former city's teams and taking on the local boys, while locals, if they move away, fully expect to retain their team loyalties. One of those mysteries.
The Glory Days: In any sports league, division or conference there tend to be "dynasties". One team, for various reasons, dominates and wins a few championships. These sports dynasties don't last forever though. For various reasons the top dogs get replaced by the new dogs. This leads to two differing yet related behaviors. Fans of teams who were regularly beaten by championship winners experience a sense of schadenfreude when their former tormenters aren't so good any more. While beating them while they were on top might have been an accomplishment worth bragging about, beating them years after their winning days have faded away isn't much to brag about. The other side of this is the fans of the former golden boys haven't forgotten those glory days. When they are being mocked by their opponents for being thrashed in a blowout, their retort is to brag about championships that took place before the current players were born. My own local college team is in this category. Teams that easily beat them today are giddy with celebratory excitement that they beat a struggling team with a losing record, while the loser's fans console themselves that at least they're has-beens and not never-beens despite being losers in the present.
Loyalty Doesn't Go Both Ways: Once upon a time a player on a professional team might spend a majority of his career with one team. As a fan, it was easy to have your favorite players - you might even switch teams if the team had the audacity to trade your favorite. (My dad was a New York Rangers hockey fan. In his youth they traded his guy to the Montreal Canadiens and he became a lifelong Montreal fan) These days players are compensated better and have more opportunities to get the best deal for themselves by negotiating with different teams. They are, rightly so, more concerned with their own future and lack a loyalty and connection to the cities where they play. Many don't even live in their team's cities in the off-season. So, have fun cheering on your team, but they don't really care about you or your city.
Everyone has something that entertains them. For many that's sports - not me though!
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