Sports! I freakin’ love sports. Not all sports though. Baseball is too slow and methodical, too reminiscent of American politics. Basketball is too intimidating, too Slenderman-like. American football is too crunching and contorting. But I appreciate all sports (yes, esports too) because I love the thrill of competition. That thrill, combined with a healthy dose of childhood privilege and spurred on by competitive parents from above and a competitive younger brother from below, led me to trying many different sports in my yet-unfinished athletic career. I was playing ice hockey before I received my first Holy Communion, I played soccer for at least a decade straight, and I just discovered the joy of tennis less than a year ago. I’m yet to turn 30 and I’ve played basketball, baseball, American football, have occasionally biked, bowled and swam, played kickball, handball, dodgeball, pickleball, wiffleball, volleyball, played hockey on ice and on land, soccer indoors and out, and now, tennis.
Sports are the perfect arena for low-stakes self-actualization. It’s self-actualizing because, through the competition with others and with yourself, you learn about who you can be and what you are capable of. You get a direct appointment with your potential: what can you accomplish with your body? And it’s low-stakes because, apart from the obvious potential for injury, it’s just a game, and therefore the mistakes you make generally do not impact your real life and you can experiment on yourself in ways that will generally not negatively affect your present and future. If you fuck up in school, it’s not the end of the world, but you could miss out on some great opportunities for self-improvement because of how our society functions. If you fuck up in your pickleball league, the worst you’ll have to deal with is people knowing you play a sport that literally sounds so wacky and you’re not even that good at it.
Besides playing sports, and more importantly for the purposes of this essay, I am a huge sports fan. I enjoy watching lots of sports that I have no interest in ever participating in (MMA, huge respect but miss me with that, literally and metaphorically). I love to follow the arcs of athletes and their teams, sharing in their joy in triumph and their agony in defeat. I inherit and share fandom with family. I try to demonstrate fandom very carefully (people can be assholes, as I’ll explain), except when I’m home at Madison Square Garden of course.
This essay will explore some components of sports fandom and some questions of its ethics. I’m thinking about the differences between rooting for and cheering for a team, real success versus perceived success, the importance of rivalry, misplaced fandom and trolling, and what it means to be a sports fanatic. As I often refrain in front of the screen in traditional white-bro fashion (especially in recent years, thank you Jürgen Klopp), “Let’s gooooo!”
What does it mean to “be a fan”?
To be a fan of a player or a team in a competition means two basic things: I hope they win and succeed, because it would bring joy to me and my people, and I hope they don’t lose, because it would bring us disappointment and shame.
Is there a difference between “rooting for” and “cheering for” a team?
This is how I would propose a distinction. “Rooting for” a player or team can be done internally—I can greatly hope for their success without ever showing it. “Cheering for” a player or team cannot be hidden and quite openly displays your fandom, proudly waves your bias. This is an important distinction if you happen to have a wife who supports a rival team, because if and when your team dominates or her team loses, you have an important decision to make. How demonstrative are you in your loyalty?
Does rooting for one player/team mean you automatically root against all the other players/teams?
Case 1: One game or match. In this simple case, if you are rooting for one player or team, then you are automatically rooting against the other player or team.
Case 2: One season, competition, or tournament. (The above case still holds for every individual meeting between your player or team and another.) In this case, you should root for your player or team and you should root against the success of any player or team whose misfortune would bring fortune to your player or team. In other words, you don’t necessarily have to root against every other player or team. You root for your guy and root against the guy in front of them.
Case 3: A game or match that doesn’t involve your player or team and the result would not affect them. In this case, fandom doesn’t require rooting for one or the other, for both or against both. Here is where we can make an important addition to the definition of fandom: the “I’m rooting for everyone to have fun” addendum. Being a fan of a particular player or team means you are a fan of that sport to some extent, and that extent can be great even in instances that don’t involve or affect your player or team. Watching sports with a completely neutral appreciation is not only possible, it’s a great practice in awe and amazement.
Case 4: A game or match without your player or team whose result would affect them. In this case, fandom requires you to root for the result that would benefit your player or team. This might involve momentarily rooting for players or teams you might never root for otherwise.
Case 5: Rooting for more than one player or team. It’s definitely possible, sometimes fraught, and almost always more rewarding. If we restrict it to rooting for multiple players or teams in the same competition, it is possible only insofar as the results of one do not negatively affect the results of the other. But there will come a time to choose…
What about your rival?
The ethics of sports fandom say to always root against your rival, even in cases where their misfortune would not bring direct fortune to your player or team. The thing is, a rival’s misfortune almost always brings some form of enjoyment to you and your people. The failure of a rival is seen as your success, even if that’s not actually true. This is part of what makes rivalry unique—the stakes are higher when people actively desire you to fail. But we must always leave with this reflection: someone else’s failure is rarely linked to your success.
Sports fandom says you don’t always have to cheer against your rivals, especially if you happen to have a wife who supports a rival team. But you do have to root against them, they’re your rivals! You can make a tiny fist when they fail and whisper “Let’s gooooo.”
What about the special case where rooting for a rival would actually benefit your player or team? Your rival is low in the standings and has a chance to take down the top team, putting yours into the top spot. What do you do? I would argue that you should, however much it might pain you, root for your rival, because the success of your team is the most important thing. But this logic, against the emotion of rivalry, might not always stand up.
Look in the mirror. Are you a little sports troll?
Case 1: Rooting against your player or team now for some perceived future success. In the vernacular of sports, “tanking” is supported by many fans who essentially believe that their misfortune in this current competition will lead to more success in future competitions. The American sports industry does sometimes reward present misfortune with greater future opportunity, but this creates, in a fan, an opportunity for trolling. In this case, the troll would be rooting against a player or team in order to root for them. But in sports, as in life, future returns on investment are never guaranteed, so it’s almost always better to continue to root for your player or team so as to avoid this instance of trolldom.
Case 2: Rooting against another player or team (not a rival) for some perceived success of your player or team or for just for the hell of it. You might believe your team might look better because they won and another team lost, but if those results are not directly linked, then it’s pointless to have rooted against the other team. In other words, another way to act like a sports troll is to root for someone to lose when such a loss would not benefit your player or team at all.
Case 3: Rooting for injuries to players, even if this would bring misfortune to a player or team that directly brings fortune to your player or team. If your gal is running second, is it ever okay to root for an injury to the first place gal, even if this means immediate success for yours? No, that’s top-tier trolling and borderline criminal.
What does it really mean to be a sports fan?
To really be a sports fan, you must appreciate, over and above every athlete and club on earth, the value of competition. With the creation of sports, humanity has found one of the healthiest means of social and self-competition. In any one match, any of the usual indicators of hierarchy and hegemony—be they biological, cultural, or political—can be completely destroyed through competition. And life goes on, because it’s just a game.
To really be a sports fan, you have to acknowledge defeat and extract lessons from it. Only in sports can you take loss after loss, crumble and get humbled, make it to the peak only to wobble and fall, and the next day can be refreshingly normal, because you can reflect on what you could have done better and you can realize, it’s just a game.
To really be a sports fan is to know it’s just a game, and yet, when you play or watch, you must treat that game with almost equal importance as you do “real life.” It’s very important to win. It’s also very important to lose well. And it’s most important to compete, whether on the court or on the sidelines. Because competing in and being a fan of the game can enrich your life outside of the game. Being aware of physical limits, experimenting with mental potential, testing your resolve. These are all practices of sports that can be applied to almost anything, so that when you do them on the court, you can replicate it the next day at work or with family and see improvements.
The benefits of sports and sports fandom might not be as clean and easy to read as a stat sheet, but any athlete or fanatic can recognize, at minimum, the infectious joy they bring in the form of shared memories.
Ma(’)s Espacio 