Sports fandom

What makes someone a fan of a particular team?

This is something I've been wondering about recently, as a friend of mine (from Utah) is a "Jazz-first Lakers fan" and one of my cousins (also in Utah) is a hardcore Lakers fan.

In my opinion, here are the circumstances in which you can become a fan of any sports team:

1. You attended the school (if it's an NCAA team), or your parents attended the school.

2. You live in the state the team is in.

3. If you live in a state that doesn't have a professional team (ie. Utah and the MLB or NFL), you can adopt any team you want.

That's it. Now, I'm not saying you can't like other teams. When the Patriots won their first Super Bowl, I liked the team. Doesn't mean I watched all of their games or bought a Patriots hat. Same with the Suns. I like the team (moreso before they got Shaq), but I don't call myself a Suns fan.

I despise bandwagon fans. People who are suddenly diehard Red Sox fans (starting around October 2004) make me roll my eyes. Yankees fans who live in Seattle are posers.

Part of being a fan is sticking with your team even when things are bad. If you're just around for the good times, it's like you married someone and only live with them after they win the lottery.

In this way, I admire Cubs fans. An old roommate of mine is a diehard Cubs fan. He was born a good eight decades after they won their last World Series. Can't accuse him of jumping on the bandwagon.

Assuming the Jazz win an NBA championship sometime in the next ten years, I guarantee the year following said championship will result in the number of Jazz fans doubling.

BYU fans who attended home football games during the horror years of 2002-2004 are true fans. Those who showed up last season, after the 11-2 2006 season, not so much. Same will be true for many who come to games this upcoming fall.

I saw a lot more Utah Ute flags on cars in 2004 than I do today.

If you can think of other rules for becoming a fan of a team, let me know what you think.

Buckner forgiven?

Bill Buckner threw out the first pitch today in Boston's home game against Detroit.

If you don't understand why that's significant, watch this clip.



If you still don't get it, here's the issue in a nutshell:

Bill Buckner was the focus of every Boston fan's frustration about no World Series titles in 90+ years.

For the Red Sox to invite him today and give him this opportunity is pretty classy.

Though let's not kid ourselves; this would never had happened if not for Boston's two World Series victories in the decade.

Why we watch

This article originally ran in the Feb. 20th edition of the Scroll.

Why do we watch sports? It's a question posed by millions of disgruntled girlfriends and wives to their armchair-planted significant others. What makes us sit and watch sweaty guys run around a field or court or track for hours on end?

I'll tell you what it is.

It's the Red Sox coming from down 0-3 in the 2004 ALCS and winning seven straight games to earn their first World Series trophy in 86 years. It's Tracy McGrady scoring 13 points in 39 seconds to beat the Spurs in a regular-season game. It's BYU completing miracle play after miracle play to beat Utah in 2006 and 2007.

And it's the Giants, huge underdogs in the Super Bowl, defeating the previously unbeaten Patriots two weeks ago.

The Patriots had an average winning margin of 19 points per game during the regular season. The Giants started the season 0-2. New England relied on the play of star quarterback Tom Brady and new acquisition Randy Moss, who caught a record-breaking 50 touchdown passes in 2007. New York lost their star running back, Tiki Barber, at the end of the 2006 season.

Yet we tuned in to watch the Super Bowl in near-record numbers. There were enough reasons to think the Giants might be able to pull off the upset that we wanted to see if they could. The Patriots and Giants had played in the last week of the regular season, and New York had given New England all they could handle. The Giants' defensive front four were able to put pressure on Brady, and New York's offense moved the ball well enough to score 35 points.

Plus, the Patriots had been discovered cheating in an early regular-season game. This drew the ire of the American people to the point that some described New England's coaches as “demonic.”

These elements created the perfect “Good vs. Evil, Underdog vs. Superpower” mix that we love. The U.S. hockey team beating the U.S.S.R team in the 1980 Winter Olympics is quite possibly the best sporting moment of our country's history. Why? Because we had a team of college kids, while the Soviet Union's team was stocked with professionals. The little guy beat the clear favorite.

So when New York's David Tyree was able to pin the ball against his helmet for a game-clinching first-down catch on a throw from Eli Manning, it meant something. It meant that the unthinkable had happened. David had gotten the better of Goliath.

Again.

And that is what draws us to sports. We watch to be there for the moments when the unthinkable happens. We watch so we can tell our kids about the time we saw the Pistons beat the juggernaut Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals. So we can laugh with our friends when we remember watching the eighth-seeded Warriors route the Dallas Mavericks, four games to two, in the 2007 playoffs. So we can smile when thinking about our little brother's game-winning field goal with no time left on the clock.

And that is why we watch.

Sportsy Post (tm)

Thoughts from the world of sports:

-The Suns beat the Spurs last night 100-95. True, the Spurs were missing Tony Parker, but this is still a victory for the sport of basketball. San Antonio represents everything that is wrong with the game. I hate how they slow the pace of games down so much. I hate how Tim Duncan whines about every call that doesn't go his way. I hate how Ginobili initiates contact as the offensive player and gets calls. I hate how Parker drives wildly into the key and gets calls. I hate how Bowen gets away with slapping and grabbing on defense because of his "reputation as a great defender."

So when the Suns, a team I love to watch, beat these guys, I'm okay with that.

-Roger Clemens probably won't be speaking at a Texas High School Baseball Coaches' meeting in January.

The title of this aborted speech?

"How I played so long [in professional baseball]."

Awesome.

-Gotta love fantasy football. In one of my leagues, my team scored 35 points for the week.

Total.

To give you an idea of how bad that is, my previous low point total was 56 points. My high this season is 151 points. My starting QB, Tom Brady, has frequently had weeks where he scored over 35 points by himself.

In my other league, I'll be playing my little brother Matt for the title. If you could please root for Drew Brees, Donovan McNabb, and Chester Taylor this Sunday, I'd appreciate it.

-I love watching the train wreck that is New York Knick basketball. After following this saga as Isiah Thomas put together a horrible team and was then forced to coach it, the story gets more interesting all the time.

Seems Isiah has decided that questioning the heart of his players is a great coaching strategy right now. After losing to the Pacer 119-92 last night, Thomas said, "Very rarely do we discuss something that happened strategically. I look forward to that day when I'm not talking about heart and courage.''

Did lack of heart cause the Knick players to miss 20 straight shots last night? Is fear the reason New York is 7-17 on the year? That they are are 116-185 since Thomas arrived, 36-58 since he became the head coach, and 7-24 since he received a contract extension?

Maybe Isiah should take a closer look at himself when trying to figure out what's wrong with the Knicks.

-So Brett Favre finally passed Dan Marino to become the NFL's record holder for all-time passing yards at 61,367. I guess since he's already won a Super Bowl, something Marino never did, Favre has to be seriously considered as the greatest QB ever.

I believe Favre's biggest secret to his success has been longevity. For him to play 17 years in the NFL at quarterback is unheard of. As defenses have gotten faster and stronger, the fact that he's avoided major injury has become even more impressive.

Sure, Brett plays with reckless abandon and makes stupid mistakes at times (he holds the record for most career interceptions with 286). Heck, he didn't know what a nickel defense was until he'd been in the NFL for a few years.

But he has fun when he plays, and that's fun to watch.

Here's hoping Brett doesn't die on the football field, like Joe Paterno will one day.

But it's looking more and more like they'll need to physically drag him off the field to get him to stop playing.

-Finally, Bill Simmons released his seventh-annual NBA Trade Value Column today. It's always an interesting read; this year Dwight Howard is ranked second-most-untradeable. Howard's getting his own post here soon. Trust me.

Sportsy Post (tm)

Some thoughts on a few current sports topics:

The Patriots can complete the first perfect regular season with by winning its final three games. This would be the first perfect season since the Dolphins did it in 1972. New England's next game is against the Jets. Conventional wisdom prior to this week was that the Pats would destroy this team, mainly because Jets coach Eric Mangini was the one who ratted them out in Cameragate.

But after learning that the forecast in Foxboro for Sunday is snowy with 40 m.p.h. winds, I'm thinking it wouldn't be that much of a shock if the Jets won. The Patriots have been less than impressive on the ground, averaging 78 ypg on the ground over the past five games. Sure, this is mainly due to the fact that Brady has been slinging the ball around like he's Brett Favre, but I'm not sure that Laurence Maroney can run the ball 30 times in a win.

The other fun aspect of the Pats' quest for perfection is that the Dolphins are winless, and have a great chance to go 0-17, setting a new NFL record for futility. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers went 0-14, but 17 losses is that much more impressive. The Fins have no defense and a horrible offense. Former BYU QB John Beck started a few games for Miami and didn't achieve any better results than Trent Green or Cleo Lemon have this season.

For one team to go unbeaten and one team to go winless in the same season would be pretty historic. And for the team that went winless to be the same team that first went unbeaten is even more interesting. I think Dolphins fans may commit mass hara-kiri.

Why did the Mitchell Report cost $20 million to make when it basically says, "A bunch of MLB players took steroids and HGH. Roger Clemens is one of them. We got this information from a couple batboys and Jason Giambi."

In other news, the Jazz still stink. They lost to Portland last night, 91-99. Two more games like that and Utah will sit at .500 on the season, after starting 13-5.

Go Jazz go!