I think the main point of your question of why we stick with anything good or bad especially in sports is we have faith that they will do well and hope (and I don’t mean an Obama version of hope) for greatness.

Being a fan of a team is giving all of our love and devotion to a team and there is no consequences. Some fans are obsessed with their team and they blog, wear apparel take to other or argue with other fans. If the team was an individual person, you would have a restraining order on you. Unlike a person, a team won’t ever dump you or cheat on you, but they can make you feel euphoric or totally rotten.

When you see other people that root for other teams, they either had roots there or it was thier parents. Many kids that you see in different jerseys other than your own are mostly fair weather fans and have no clue why they support them.

Perfect case in point. My youngest brother as a child rooted for the Bears, then the Cowboys and now the Buccaneers. He finally decided on Tampa because he likes Florida and we have some relatives there. At least he rooted for Tampa for the last 11 years.

Many conquered fader fans where I live in New Mexico are mostly posers and gang bangers (some are legit, but very few). They have no clue of their teams performance. I still see people with Moss fader jerseys. For them it is a way to be outside the norm and be a “badass”. Anyone who follows that team would have burned thier jersey by now.

MY FAN MOMENT

In 1996 after the Broncos lost the the Jags in the playoffs, I put all of my Broncos gear (hats, coats, sweatshirts, mugs…etc) into my closet at home and that stuff didn’t come out of there until August 1997. That is the move of a broken hearted fan! At least I didn’t have to have conseling for that. That year the Broncos took the Super Bowl and the rest is history.

Since I am now older, I just blog here and get my Broncos fix this way.

Hope that is a good answer for you. It is amazing what can be written on a late Friday night.

Hello:

There are many types of sports fans (fair-weather, balance, fanatic, etc.). Some may not consider all types to be true fans. There are also several reasons to be NFL sports fans. I will start by showing reasons to be NFL sports fans and follow up with general statements of fans.
   
Some reasons to become an NFL fan
Being able to root for a team gives a chance to belong. This may be part of growing up or area one lives. Perhaps a click they joined likes a particular team. Or, most important, You can be part of a great community such as MHR. "Thanks TSG"

You can choose what team / identity to root for.
(ie. Bronco Hero riding off into an Orange sunset or a dark brooding one eyed raider)

The “Grid Iron” Clashes.
It gives the feel of a PG version the ancient Rome coliseum. It plays to the inner battles.

There are interesting characters.
The spectrum of good character (Rod Smith) to bad character (Ray Carruth) can be put on display.

Tail Gating – Has a campout / part appeal in preparation for the big game.

The strategy of the game
As HT often points out in his articles, there is quite of bit of strategy. Not just running into each other.

Thrill of victory / Agony of defeat
This keeps our attention – a conclusion is reached. Sometimes in life we have to live without closure.

Strategy beyond the field
Draft picks, Free Agency and Trades make the offseason interesting.

Games Matter more
Unlike some sports, if you lose 8 games you are mediocre at best.

Games allow enough hype
Since games are each week, it allows response to the previous results and build up to the next game.

About Fans:
I guess the level of fan excitement boils down to what emotional investment you wish to give. Some get a great high from the thrill of victory. They are willing to endure the agony of defeat. Remember wading through the bleak super bowl years. Remember that the emotional highs and lows are a problem for players as well. The quarterback position in particular has this issue. Perhaps the thought of shared emotional attachment is what the greatest driving force.

I will get back to you in the morning. I promise. :)

What a great post! Since my own first love is psychology, I can appreciate your take on this. As a social species I imagine we have a deepseated cooperate or die psychological mechanism. It’s the basis for us against them, only we are such a cerebral species that we’re endlessly inventive in how we define “us” (with “them” being everybody else after “us” is defined). There are, it seems to me, two general classes of us-ness. The more obvious, and in evolutionary terms the more primitive, is proximity. My town against your town. My tribe against your tribe. I don’t know if it even happens anymore, but as a child I remember being at a baseball game between my community and one down the road, probably neither large enough to be considered a town per se. My university vs yours, my city or state team vs yours, my country vs yours, is a less intensely local version of the same thing.

But between the lines in your interlude (“This at least has somewhat more sense in the fact that that’s where I’m from”) is the question, what’s the nature of solidarity when it doesn’t involve being from the same place? This is the second sense of us-ness, which involves less physical proximity than shared characteristics. Scientists, doctors, teachers, accountants, and professional football players are all instances of “us” in this second sense. Note that the two kinds of classification can overlap, so that an individual or team is “them” at one level and part of “us” at another. Koutouvides vs Webster, me against him, is this polarity in its most immediate sense. In the Broncos vs the Jets both are part of “us” against “them”. But all the players and all the teams are part of an even larger whole which has norms and rules to manage competition, and a hall of fame to formalize the general respect felt for those who epitomize excellence in the pursuit of what for everyone in the collective is “the same thing”.

This second kind of us-ness accounts for “distributed fanship”, in which a Broncos “nation” is centered in Denver and Colorado but has committed (!) members in other states and even other countries. Although an out-of-city or state fan often becomes one while living in Broncos territory, the question is why does she or he retain it after moving into another team’s territory and why do others become fans in the first place while living elsewhere? The answer is in the nature of identification, in which we associate ourselves with a certain set of characteristics or a distinctive style or with a specific individual, Elway for instance, who becomes the “face” of the franchise. The swashbuckling, anti-establishment, rule-breaking image of the raiders is a noteworthy (notorious?) example. Many of their out-of-state fans identify with the team because they like to think of themselves in the same light. This sense of a characteristic style can be seen within teams when players and coaches exhort each other to get back to playing Jets’ ball, or Steelers’ ball, or Falcons’ ball. Outsiders can of course snicker in the latter instance and compare it to losers’ ball, but in the minds of teammates it evokes an image of a current, recent, or distant time in which the team has succeeded via that style of play.

Finally, different levels of us-ness brings into focus another subtext of your piece, how it is that a person can be a “hated” fan of another team, while at the same time you realize in your heart of hearts that he’s probably an okay guy whose mother loves him and who has actual friends. The factors here are physical proximity and maturity. If your brother or sister or good buddy at work is a raiders fan you wince but knowing them personally in a lot of contexts besides football you don’t write them out of the human race. Maturity comes into play in your recognition, however grudging, that the raiders fan at Starbucks was no doubt “a perfectly ordinary fellow”. Shared humanity trumps, however fleetingly, rabid partisanship. The latter, when it becomes so extreme as to exclude common sense and human decency, evokes contempt when exhibited by fans of other teams, and embarrassment when exhibited by fellow Broncos fans.

The second form of us-ness frequently morphs into the first, as when doctors or scientists get togerther at a convention, at which time they are “us” in the crowd sense, or when out-of-state fans attend a Broncos game (oh, nirvana!), which emphasizes in my mind that the shared-characteristic form of solidarity is “higher”, or at least evolutionarily more recent. For that reason, and also to pursue other aspects of the questions you raised, such as why we feel the need to “win” in any and all contexts in the first place, you might find evolutionary psychology, leavened with the kind of social psychology associated with socialization and developmental psychology, to be an interesting diversion. From one overthinker to another, I hope this is food for thought.

La-La-Land has no answers—it is the answer.

I gave up on endless analysis of my life when I stopped taking psych classes. Its not that I think people shouldn’t pursue these courses. I simply found that over analysis drained some of the joy of experiance that was the reason I wanted to do something for in the first place. In other words I was overthinking my activities.

That still left me ignorantly plunging into depression on a regular basis for no better reason than being a fan of a team that couldn’t best a similarly gifted team. Sure there was the utter joy of victory that would carry me to the next week, but that proves to be a rollercoaster ride, even for last years Pats fans.

Ultimately I have recently started watching my team intensly just like I used to, but after the game is over I let it go, win or lose its a game. A game I didn’t even play in! I had no control over it what so ever, why would I want to surrender my emotions for over a quarter of the year to the performance of “my team?”

As you can see this hasn’t affected my love of the orange & blue, I still read the mhr two to three times a day. However, I don’t find myself hating on others anymore. I was recently stuck at a blackjack table with my future father in law, and the dealer let it be known that he was a former Charger. Aside from some light ribbing back and forth we spent time talking about his experiance as an NFL player, and what it had been like to have to switch to the Bucs. The old me might have turned up the teasing, but the new me let our differances go in favor of exploring shared interests. To me I am better for the experiance gained by way of comradery (sp?).

So basically I have decided to let the wins and losses happen and enjoy the ride.

And hey – my fandom is even more wierd – I’m from a totally different continent! I have absolutely no relation do Denver…

Fist of all, great post Silverblood. Obviously the reasons for fandom could be the subject of a very long book (which I‘m sure it is). Numerous thoughts came to mind as I read your post; however, for the sake of brevity I will only elaborate on a couple. Spock, in an excellent response, touched on one of my original thoughts that sports appeals to a group identity. Building on Mike Clark’s assertion that la-la land is its own answer, I would suggest that sports fandom results from the same pursuit of pleasure as any other leisure activity. Furthermore, I think you can draw many parallels between the various stages of drug addiction and advanced fandom (euphemism for sports addiction). I think both are pursued for similar reasons.

That said, there are lots of leisure activities that we do in society that don’t seem to serve a particularly useful function. For example, music, sports, board games, video games, art, sitting on a beach, etc. None of these things help fulfill our essential needs (food, shelter, water, etc.). All do serve as a pleasurable diversion that are increasingly prominent as societies become increasing affluent. Simply put, if you have to spend your day ensuring that you have something to eat then you’re probably not sitting around painting a masterpiece or practicing your slap shot. Alternatively, if we don’t have to spend all of our time fulfilling basic necessities, we then have time to pursue such pleasurable activities.

I think you could also examine the historical evolution of sports for an interesting perspective on the nature of fandom. I am certainly not a historian, but I know that sports have existed in various forms in human society for a very long time. I would speculate that sports did originally contribute to securing the basic necessities of survival. Many sports could serve as training for war and hunting. For example, a baseball could easily be replaced with a rock or weapon. Archery obviously would have a utilitarian function. I imagine the earliest sports did just that. They prepared the participants for hunting and/or war by strengthening their bodies and developing the skills necessary for success in these endeavors.

But what about fans? The individuals that would have been most successful in these primitive sports would, presumably, be the ones that were most successful on the battlefield or in the hunt. Therefore, it would behoove the lesser athletes and non-athletes to affiliate themselves with these individuals. Being associated with the best athletes would most likely translate to more food and greater security. These "athletes" were also revered for their ability to make the greatest contribution to the common good and would have most likely been idolized by the young and less ’productive’ in the society.

 I imagine that as sports became less and less related to survival…the pleasure of victory and the admiration of physical excellence continued to evolve into what we have today. We still associate sports success with group success and it a very pleasurable diversion with all the leisure time we have found ourselves with.

(disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about!!!)

know part of my answer. ;-) Everyone else (who’s interested) can find out the day after baseball’s regular season ends.

I have no connection to Colorado outside of the sports teams, so what made me stick with them? I mean, I’m from New York and became a fan by accident. The Avs were playing for the Stanley Cup in ‘96 and when asked by a classmate who I wanted to win, I told him the Avs (he wanted the Panthers). Others in my class somehow assumed that meant I liked all the Colorado teams. I wasn’t really beholden to any New York sports team, so I went along with it.

Yet, years later I can come up with a rationale for that decision. I’m not explaining the past so much as I’m attempting to create a past that is . . . more palatable?

At the time I became a fan of the Colorado teams, you’d think I’d already have been set in my ways as a sports fan. Think about. In ’94 the Rangers won the Stanley Cup. In ’95 the Yankees returned to the playoffs (after that damn strike ruined their chances of going to the World Series in ’94), and they were on their way to a playoff appearance (and eventual World Series victory) in ’96. The Knicks were also one of the best teams in the NBA in those years. And I have vague recollections of watching the Giants win their second Super Bowl as a five-year old in ’91.

Seems like I should have become a diehard New York fan. But I didn’t. To a great extent at the time, I preferred to stick with myself and be occupied with my own thoughts. Still am, though over the past year that’s changed a bit (that’s part of the answer I refer to in the opening line of this comment). I never got into arguments with the kids I went to school with over the Yankees and Mets, the Jets and Giants, the Rangers and the Islanders. No one was a fan of the Nets. I had no real connection with the teams. I’m from New York, but why does that mean I have to be a fan of the teams from there?

So that moment when the others in my class assumed I liked all the Colorado teams provided me with an opening. I can have my teams. No one else is going to have the Rockies, the Broncos, the Avs, and the Nuggets as their teams. I guess you could say I did it so as not to be them.

I took the Rockies to heart more than the other teams since baseball was and still is my favorite sport. But no one ever thought I was a bandwagon fan of the Broncos when they were winning back-to-back Super Bowls, because I was such a big Rockies fan. I hope that makes sense.

Then the Rockies continued to sink and the Broncos entered the muddy waters of the post-John Elway era. It certainly wasn’t the time to abandon ship. It was time to become an even better fan. It wasn’t a matter of not being them anymore (them having gone their separate ways from mine); it was a matter of sticking with your guys.

The guys in orange and blue and in purple and black were my guys. Win or lose (lose more often than not for one particular team), they were still my guys. Of course, I had only this joy and misery to share with myself until Purple Row and Mile High Report came along. Still, I didn’t have a real, live, breathing person to share any of this with until last year (one last time: if anyone is interested, check Purple Row the day after baseball’s regular season to get that story).

So, yeah, I became a diehard Colorado sports fans by way of an accident. Here I am, here I remain.

I was born and raised in Colorado. I am a fan of all my states sports teams, except those pansies in Ft. Collins. I was raised on being a Bronco fan by my dad. He was a die hard from the 60’s. He was at Mile Hi in 1969 when the Broncos beat the Sb champ NY Jets and my mom was pregnant with me. So you could say I was indoctranated in the womb. I have always be a loyal Orange and Blue. Its a great fandom. There is no other team I like the NFL. There is just levels of dislike, Raiders being #1 most dispised, and Houston being #31. I root for only 1 team in each of the 4 major sports and all call Denver home. I have anguished from a Nuggs team winning 11 games, and watching the Broncos win more games that year than the Nuggs. Losing the original Rockies to those bad people in NJ. Getting the Avs was cool, I want my rockies back. I am not a big baseball fan, but I support the Rox. Try and go see thme beat the Padres at least once a year.
Thats why I feel like denver gets slighted so much. We are in the mountains not a major media market. Still considered a cow towm. I can remember when the friggin stock show was the 2nd biggest thing outside of the Broncos season. Its all good. I can remember all the disrespect in 1977, and the even more disrespect in 1978. Calling Denver a fluke, there was no way the AFC Champs were gonna repeat winning the West. Guess what happened, they did it. The more the world disrespects the Broncos the more I love my team. It makes a huge diehard. I have studied the history of the Broncos and everything associated with it. If this tells you anything about my passion for all things Broncos, in school I would read and re-read all my Broncos books, media guides ( I have them going back all the way to 1979). My mom always said if I would (have) spend as much time on my school work as I did the Broncos I would have had straight A’s. Man that makes me proud now. Plus when I was in the Shaw Heights Little League Football (it is/was in Westminster by the Ice Rink off 92nd and Sheridan) I was upset because I missed the boundry to be on the Broncos. Instead I had to be a cowboy. That was 1978 right after the Boys beat the Broncos in the SB.

I know much of what I have to say about the topic has probably already been stated in the comments, but they are just too damn long to read, so you’re going to have to bear with me here. I’ve spent a long time thinking about this conundrum, and this is the answer I’ve come up with:

I find that I identify with myself as a Broncos fan. I am elated when they win, and depressed when they lose. My emotions are therefore intimately connected with their actions. In this way, they are a part of me, and I am a part of them as well. I find solace in the fact that for three hours every Sunday, I can be someone else. I can be Jay Cutler, threading the needle on a post pattern. I can be Mike Shanahan, calling the plays on a fourth quarter drive.

Let’s face it: real life sucks. We go to the same job, or the same school, every day, week in and week out. We follow a pattern of the utmost redundancy. Some things change, but we know that we can always count on our teams. We can always break that pattern, once a week, for five glorious months, where we experience the most wonderfully contrasting emotions. We can feel as exuberant as we can dejected. Our emotions are all connected, for those three magnificent hours, with hundreds of thousands of other people’s, via the team we all find an identity in.

That is why I root for the Broncos.

I imagine it is the same reason that people watch movies, go to plays, etc. It is that sports is a microcosm of human existence. There are the greatest highs and the greatest lows, and they can all be contained within the span of a few hours.

When someone like John Elway finally reaches the mountaintop, and wins the Super Bowl, it is a reminder that no matter how bleak some things look (like that SB vs San Fran), there is always hope for something better. While none of us have any more connection to John Elway than we do to any other pro athlete, we have chosen to integrate the name on his jersey into our identity, and thus it is validating when he succeeds.

As to why we stay fans when we are losing, I really have no idea. Perhaps it is sheer stubbornness that keeps people fans, as it would feel like failure to dump a piece of your identity. I do know, however, that staying with the team through countless losing seasons makes it so much better when they finally do win. I refuse to believe that a bandwagon fan can enjoy a victory as much as a devoted fan (maybe just so that i can keep my sanity – haha).

I don’t have the same connection with pro sports as many of you do, as the only pro team I really follow is the Broncos (mind you i will root for the Rockies, I just don’t have enough of a connection to rabidly follow them since I moved away before they came to Denver). I have, however, have been a fan my university since i was old enough to wear an NC State onesie (my dad went there, and I am currently going there), and I cant tell you how many times I have immediately dismissed people because they are wearing shirts/hats/etc from our rival school. Even in the area here, when they might have a legitimate connection, I still immediately label them as inferior. The worst part is that I have the exact same questions as you Silverblood when I am doing it, thinking to myself that they are likely a normal person who just happened to be a fan of another team.

While such labeling is likely counterproductive, I think it is probably a very important part of being a serious fan, since the only way to deeply identify with one specific group is to exaggerate your differences with all of the other groups. If you had absolutely no feelings about a stranger completely decked out in raiders gear, then I would contend that you were not a serious Broncos fan, if for no other reason than the fact that you had no reaction to the fundamental dichotomy between the Broncos and the raiders.

Anyways – excellent post Silverblood, it was very thought provoking, even if it makes us call into question things that are major parts of our lives.

Also, in response to unknown way back up the comments saying he is a fan of the game: I know I personally have the same type of reaction with games I do not have a major rooting interest in, or even with Broncos games after the fact. During an ongoing Broncos game, though, I am more concerned with how the amazing interception will hurt the Broncos, and the recognition of the amazing play gets shoved way back in my head, and doesnt reemerge until I see it on highlights later that night. I have to agree with you though, that an appreciation of the game is a major factor, and should definitely be respected.

By the way: beware anyone wearing unc tarheels gear – they can’t be trusted. ;)

that there are some very brilliant and well-thought-out responses in here which I think are providing a real dig toward the basis of my question — if it’s wired into us or acquired behavior, why it affects us so deeply, etc. I have very much enjoyed reading all your thoughts, and find that it’s quite hard to select an answer to be honored with a Doomination of Phyllis. (That’s quite catchy. I hope we see it a lot…)

Since I am not a psychology major, all I can give you is my uneducated opinion and perhaps, serve as another “lab rat” that can be studied in this research project!

I was never a lions fan, Michigan, being my home state. I was a cowboys fan early on, for one reason only, Tom Landry. For some reason, I loved the fact that he always seemed calm, cool and collected regardless of what was happening on the field, and he always dressed as if he was going to a business meeting. Players on the feild never had a problem “picking him out in the crowd an the sidelines!”

That all changed when I moved to Denver in the early 80s. I don’t know how anyone can live in Denver without becoming a Bronco fan! The reason I was never a lions fan is that they always stunk. If you ever become a die hard fan, I think that the time that you make that commitment will be when that team is experiencing success. For me, it has always seemed like I latched onto a team based upon a single individual, to start with. John Elway was an easy choice! Then I wanted to spend the time to get to know the entire team.

The sweet thing that happened, shortly after John, is that Mike became HC. Then the ORANGE CRUSH became an awsome group and at that point you have to be hooked.

The beautiful part about sticking with a team, through the tough times, is that eventually you will get a Jay Cutler. That allows you to start all over again, following what I believe is going to be like following John Elway all of those years. I used to “pick an individual”, but that all changed once I became a Broncos fan. For some crazy reason, I just got so involved with ALL the players, that I am hooked for life. I worry about thier personal problems, thier injuries, and all the rest of the things that have an affect on game day!

So, Doc. What can you perscribe for a lab rat at the end of the day, a “loosing day?” I’m just hoping that I won’t need that perscription at all this year!

And standing by on my thoughts and comments for part 2 of your excellent work!

You seem to present a case that there is something wrong (yet normal) with letting a team (despite the lack of any meaning to our personal lives) having such a dominant influence in the way we think. We all are Gladiator’s, even you as a ‘GIRL’ have ambitions as to what we think we are. Forgive the, ‘GIRL’ thing…its just the truth—we are different.

This world is marching toward something that looks like certain doom, this country seems to be on a quicker pace. Here in Spokane our largest home-builder just went belly-up—giving all its assets back to the bank (which now own all those no-value assets).

What does this have to do with us? Good question, as I continue I think you will see why we think the way we do. This country this world is moving farther and farther away from believing that God had anything to do with anything that concerns what is happening with this world. Because of this we have moved closer and closer to total bondage (more rules). Only if a God created us can we have rights that cannot be taken away from the God that created us. If there is no God there is no rights—all rights can be taken away by whoever is in power. Silver, I’m sure you’ve seen this, research ‘land’ taken by the government because of new and stupid laws. It is communism which Satan loves—and is by him.

OK—now that you understand why we cling to the teams we love—its because you understand. They are an escape. We know troubles coming..loving a team is easier.

Why the Broncos control the autumn of my life (fall early winter)—I love the Broncos and have no reason.

I love the Broncos because: I started following them in the early sixties (not a choice – I’m a Colorado guy). They lost a lot of games back then, but they never, ever, died in a game. Never. That’s what some of you younger fans need to realize – the Broncos never gave up. Bronco fans never, ever booed them. Even when the Raiders were beating them into the mud.
Then they started to get good, and in 77 went to the SB, and would have won it if Craig Morton hadn’t been one huge bruise, and LG Glassic hadn’t lost 30 pounds because of an allergy. Anyway, if we didn’t have heroes, we’d have no idea of how great we could be.