A Bit About Sports Fandom
March 18th, 2008 by DanielleI came across this article (link is listed above) about sports fans in the Chronicle of Higher Education and thought it would make a good addition to our discussion on fandom. Considering that the term “fan” first appeared in reference to followers of professional sports teams (Jenkins, 12), I thought it would be important to bring more attention to sports fans since we haven’t paid them much attention up to this point. I also felt that we could draw a lot of parallels between the nature of sports and media fandoms, so that is what I tried to do in this post.
Murray Sperber wrote this article about the nature of sports fandom, but about collegiate sports specifically. He starts off his discussion by recounting a visit to the University of Washington, where he answered questions students had about his book, Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education. In the book, he critiqued the way in which big-time colleges and universities, such as the University of Michigan, have treated their athletic programs as professional teams rather than fostering successful student-athletes with an emphasis on the word “student.” One student in the audience, knowing that Sperber was actually a sports fan himself, asked Sperber if he was engaging in “double speak” by criticizing collegiate sports while simultaneously supporting his favorite collegiate team, the Cal Berkeley Bears. This sparked the discussion about the power of sports fandom over logic and reason and caused Sperber to look a little bit deeper into the sports fan’s psyche.
In addressing this issue of whether Sperber contradicts himself by being a fan while also critiquing the direction in which Division I athletics have been moving, I think it’s useful to remember one of Henry Jenkins’ arguments in Textual Poachers, where he argues that fans’ responses often involve “not simply fascination or adoration but also frustration and antagonism.” He goes on to say, “it is the combination of the two responses which motivates their active engagement with the media” (Jenkins, 23). Later, he quotes a Star Trek fan that says, “If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t criticize” (Jenkins, 86). This would seem to indicate that you can be both a critic and a fan at the same time, and that they are not necessarily separate entities. In fact, it seems to show that criticism is an important part of fandom since it encourages improvement in a text, team, etc, and demonstrates the fans’ deep knowledge of the object of their fandom. This is the realization that Sperber came to in his article when he admitted, “although I was a critic of big-time college sports, I was also a fan and rooted for my team.” He, like many other student sports fans seemed to “acknowledge the dysfunction of college sports while fervently following its teams and games.”
Making another link back to Jenkins’ discussion of media fandom, Jenkins notes that fans often choose certain interests “in order to facilitate greater communication with friends who share common interests or possess compatible tastes” (Jenkins, 40-41). In relation to sports fandom, this might help explain why some fans choose one sports team over another. When he asked fans how many games of their favorite team they had attended, Sperber found that many admitted that the number was zero, indicating that these fans were motivated by some other emotion and connection than the team’s performance alone. Sperber found that many of these attachments stemmed from childhood experiences and family bonding, while other fans admitted that their attachment to a team somehow connected them to positive memories of their college glory days. This would seem to prove Jenkins’ theory that many fans are motivated by the process and activities of fandom more than the central show, movie, team, etc. itself (Jenkins, 91).
So, after drawing some similarities between sports and media fans, I guess my big question is, what makes the distinction between the two types of fandom in the way they are perceived by fan culture scholars and the mainstream? Sports fans still seem to be more acceptable than media fans, even though they both engage in similar practice, so I am curious to figure out where the differences lie.
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Sports fandom, especially at the professional level, might be more of an accepted fandom since there’s a kind of civic devotion fueling it. Writing/speaking as a Yankees fan and a denizen of the Bronx, I’ll never forget 1996, the year that kicked off the Yankees dynasty –not because of the growth of the Yankees financial and commercial empire, but because of how it made me proud to be from the Bronx. I was thrilled that the moniker “Bronx Bombers” was on every American’s tongue from Oregon to Maine. By proudly declaring my Yankees fanaticism (and, trust me, “fanaticism” is the right word for it), I felt as if I was also declaring my love for my hometown: every Yankee win was a win for the Bronx. I thought that sentiment was also reflected in the Giants miraculous win in the Super Bowl: during the Key ceremony at City Hall, Eli Manning declared that New York deserved the best team. Maybe I’m reading too much into those words, but I take them to mean that New York deserves the best team to play under their name, to represent them on the field. The Giants’ victory was New York’s victory.
And when sports fans taunt and deride other teams or the fans of other teams, they tend to make disparaging remarks about their rival city and its citizens. I have met many Red Sox fans who claim to have an inherent dislike of New York City out of loyalty to their team and home city. In 1999, a huge feud broke out between the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves which was fueld by Braves pitcher John Rocker who said insulting remarks during a Sports Illustrated interview directed not at the Mets, but at New York Mets fans (basically New Yorkers), calling them “degenerates” and managing to offend the New York Hispanic and queer communities respectively. In such arguments, the goal seems to attack the rival city itself and not the rival team’s game stats.
Anyway, I apologize if the above isn’t very coherent since I’m kind of unraveling it as I write. Basically, I think that the civic aspect of professional sports fandom might play a role in why it is more acceptable to the media: after all, the New York Times would never make fun of New York Giants/Jets fans for their bizarre practices (rooting for the home team); those silly Cheesehead Packers fans with nothing better to do with their free time in the middle of nowhere, on the other hand, are fair game (deriding rival fans and city) [also, I have nothing against the Packers–their Cheese hats just make for a good example). The media fandoms we’ve discussed so far (television, fantasy/sci-fi) seem frivolous by comparison–at least cheering for the Yankees can unite an entire city; what does rooting for the Rebel Alliance get us? One can be viewed as promoting social cohesion while the other is often viewed as being of interest to mainly recluses who only come out for midnight premieres.
Maybe another aspect of it might be that sports fans are fans of something concrete and real: real people in a competition. Their fan activities, whether it be simply attending a game or not changing their socks for three weeks to ward off a game loss, can be understood as engaging in some way with the real world. The activities of media fans, however, engage with an idea, an imaginary scenario, etc. Basically nothing that has a foundation in the physical world, which might add to the perception of media fans being “disconnected” from reality.
I really think that Illy made a great point in her comment when she focused on the difference between sports fandom and the Rebel Alliance being their stake in reality. (The difference being imagination factors and a text to work with.) I really connected to this explanation and find it a bit relieving due to my frustration in my struggle with proving sports do have a legitamate fandom.
One frequent argument against sports fandom is that it is “socially-acceptable,” and I fail to see why this matters in the overall picture. I feel that social acceptability is irrelevant in how a fandom might act. While it may be part of how society views the fandoms’ actions, it should not be something to define a fandom by… As in Katrina’s article in Response to Jenkins, she stressed the focus on the fan’s emotional attachment. Emotions have been known to be illogical and dismissive of judgment. Thus, while it may be true that our culture embraces sports fans with open arms compared to Trekkies, it perhaps is not a legitemate argument against why sports do not have a ‘real’ fandom represented in fan culture.
(However– I do not wish to say that social-acceptability is not a factor, as it certainly may affect some members of the fandom…however, I think pride and investment overcome any bashing (whether it be over cheese-hats or vulcan ears). )
As a huge UFC fan, the only sport I watch, I have experienced firsthand this phenomenon of criticism as a part of the fan identity.
On Sherdog, a bad performance from a given fighter pretty much guarantees they will be getting flack and unwarranted condemnation until they prove they do not deserve it. I think the issue here is just the same as the Star Trek quote you provided. Fans of the UFC and the greater world of sports and other fandoms have expectations of their athletes or text and when they aren’t met criticism is a given because who knows better what “they” are capable of than the fans?
On Sherdog it serves as a sort of badge of honor to get bashed by fickle fans because it can fuel fighters to deliver. This seems greatly similar to when a bad arc on Lost or Prison Break comes and the creator or writing staff promises changes, etc. Bad opinions of a series or a film or a comic from those that matter most should serve as reminders to the creators (or athletes) what they are capable of and often expected of. After all, fans often put their heart and soul into a given text (dropping 44.95 on pay-per-views certainly warrants my criticism of certain UFC events).
The fans opinions matter and opinions commonly involve critiques so I think it is not only fair for fans to criticize in this manner, it is somewhat necessary.