The Impact of Fandom

 

My Older Brother,
back when a Senior could
drive the school bus

I must begin with my credentials, so you will not think that I am just someone who doesn't know a football from a basketball.  I was a high school cheer leader, and I once sat through a football game with a clear plastic trash bag over my body to keep the drizzling rain off.  I could provide more credentials, but you get the point.

The point is that my fandom credentials are apparently out of date.  Obviously, my idea that fans go to games to cheer for touchdowns and baskets is no longer enough.  I thought wearing school team colors was enough, but apparently dressing as a banana, or baring your chest along with some buddies to spell out the school name across your bodies--preferably knowing how to spell so you can get lined up to properly spell the name--is more acceptable.

Team support is no longer limited to yelling loudly--which I certainly practiced enthusiastically--but stomping your feet so loudly that construction strength is vulnerable and doing it well before anything is happening on the court is mandatory.  

Ok, I get that, sort of, but here is what really disturbs me.  I thought sports had something to do with encouraging being good sports, playing by the rules, focusing on a habit of good health.  In short, behaving like the players in 'Chariots of Fire.'  How out of touch I am!

In doing my research for this blog, I learned that sports are more than a game.  It is really about the importance of Fan Experience!  What is important is that fans leave the game feeling that they were a part of a unified group, that their self-esteem was justifiably raised because their team won and they played a role in the victory. 

Unfortunately, fans of the losing team may feel the responsibility of supporting their losing team with   rude and disruptive behavior. heckling, throwing tantrums, blaming the referees.  The old logic of my era might have criticized the referees, but in general we left the game with comments of "there is always next year, we almost won, if we hadn't run out of time we still had a chance to win, we will beat them in the tournament"  These responses for some fans today seem to be declining.

In my research, I discovered an article in which the author set up a sort of joke, putting together   irrational fan-based pairs, with nothing in common, and asking fans to vote which was worst.  It was such a useless challenge that she expected only a few friends to respond, but instead, over 17,000 votes were cast.  

What I concluded in reading her little senseless contest is that there is something inside us that challenges us to choose.  I suppose that in writing this blog I am also choosing.  Somehow, we do seem to need to decide one thing over another, and once we choose the unchosen thing is suddenly "less than."  In politics, life is much like a basketball game.  There is our team and the other team, and we favor our team.  And, like the silly game the woman set up as a sort of joke, there may be very little reason to favor one team over the other, but once we make our choice it inevitably influences us.

I began this blog to be about sports, but I could not help applying Fandom to politics.  Do we sometimes choose our political party in the same ways fanbases are chosen?  For example, Loyalty across generations, Expectations of others, Frustration during struggles, The need to be a part of community.  Those explanations were taken from an article on sport's traditions, yet they seem quite applicable to politics.

So, during the World Series season, when you choose your team, you might reflect on just how we humans choose our favorite sides, and whether it makes any sense.