Sports Fans - We Kind of Suck

    The title of this post is not the most loving of my people, but I believe there’s a lot of truth behind it. Sports fans can be some of the nicest people you will ever meet. They will welcome you into their home, give you free food, and provide a loving and welcoming experience that you may never get anywhere else. They will have your back and stand beside you through thick and thin. IFF (a term from math class meaning “if and only if”) you are supporting the same team.

    If you are supporting the opposite team or, even worse, the rival team, that experience is definitely different. They will become loud. They will become obnoxious. They will argue about every little thing. They will pick on you with such gusto you’d think they were getting paid $10 million to do it! But they’re doing it for free.  And the best part? They will feel no remorse about it. If their team wins, you will never hear the end of it. If they lose, excuses will come up for reasons, they will shut down, they will acquire a horrible mood, or it will be a lovely combination of any or all of those three.

    These qualities are true of all real sports fans. We feel such a deep connection to the team that when they lose, it hurts us as well. We can brush it off like, “we had an off game, next week will be better,” but inside we are crying. When something bad happens to them, we take a personal offense. I am a fan of many sports but I primarily follow the mainstream ones. I know someone who is big into the less mainstream ones, i.e. paintball and electronic sports. He claims that only the mainstream sports fans get so crazy. “There’s too much hype for no real reason because the athletes aren’t actually doing that much…” Blah blah blah blah blah. They are athletes. All of them. Mainstream or not, they all go through their own process of training, practicing, and competing. Anyway, when he watches paintball or an e-sport competition, he gets just as bad as I do when I watch football. There’s a lot of yelling (and I mean YELLING) at the screen and the refs like they can hear me. There’s celebration over a win and there is heartbreak over a loss. Mainstream or not, we all have feelings.

    Another thing that all sports fans do that makes us somewhat sucky, when the team wins: “WE WON!”  When the team loses: “They lost.” Not always. I know many times I have said either “they won” or “we lost.” But when the passion is high and the adrenaline is pumping, we celebrate with them but they are on their own when they lose. The wording is fascinating. See if you can notice it the next time you are at a game. Once you pick up on it, it will stick with you.

    Sports fans come in all shapes and sizes but one thing that you can’t really deny, you get some of the most snooty people anywhere in Sports World!! Geez, know-it-alls. You know who I’m talking about too. They are the ones that are quick to jump on you when you get one really obscure statistic wrong. You might say a score wrong or not in the proper way and they are quick to pounce on it and point it out. Oh he is #79 and not #89? My bad. I clearly did not mean to offend you or apparently your entire way of life by saying the wrong number. It was not intentional. Yes I will be more careful next time… Jerk. Mistakes happen but sports fans jump on it like the grammar police on an internet post. We can’t be nice and correct them either, oh no. We can’t say, “Do you mean #79?” The sky would probably fall.

    I could go on and on. I love my people and I hate my people. I am one of the people that can fall into any of these people depending on the team/player/game/situation. Instead of my ranting continuing, I turned to Facebook. I asked my friends what they hated most about sports fans of any kind and here are some of the responses I got (I said I would post no names):

    ”They Yell a lot and take it too seriously.”

    ”That life stops when their team is playing.”

    ”People disagree and get in fights. Also Facebook fees are blown up when teams play.”

    ”That the people rooting for the other team don’t agree with me.”

    ”Fair-weather fans.”

    ”They get really ‘ragy’ when they lose.”

    ”I hate having to look at the naked (sometimes painted) torsos of chubby sports fans, the likes of which should never be unclothed in public. Definitely not okay. Also, the ones who ALWAYS think the refs are cheating for the opposing team.”