I would be curious as to what people think being a fan means.
I have pondered this in myself and it always begs the question for me, “Is there any reason for an intelligent, well-adjusted adult to be a fan?” I honestly don’t mean that to be as snarky as that sounds.
When I was a young child I played “cowboys and Indians” armed with my cowboy hat and cap pistols. I did not have a sophisticated worldview, obviously, but this play acting had something to do with “right” vanquishing “evil.” As I got older, this was replaced by a love for Tech sports. Realizing that “cowboys and Indians” was a childish distortion of reality, not to mention fraught with cruel historical inaccuracies, I opted for a game in which the outcome was far less certain, and the opponents were not painted in black and white terms.
Identification with Tech was easy since I was an Atlanta child and my family valued education.
This is getting long but wrapping up my complex feelings quickly will be hard.
Observation of local uga fans is instructive for me. Pattern recognition follows:
“Our daughter goes to Georgia so naturally we pull for the players who represent her school.” -not consciously recognizing even for a moment that the players not only do not represent the school, they have zero in come with 90% of the faculty, staff and students, including their daughter.
For most uga fans I know, school affiliation, identification with student athletes, or love of education have nothing to do with it. Pulling for uga is just part of their general culture like where they like to go in Florida for vacation, where they go to church, the political party that always support, their favorite mixed drink, and what they put on their steaks. The circles they move in, the friends they have, and their lifestyle choices never seem to evolve, grow or change and they like it like that. Each generation of their family will go to their graves being a bulldog fan because, like almost everything else they do, it is comfortable, familiar, and requires no thought or questioning.
I asked a bulldog fan recently if they were at all concerned about the excessive speeding, moving vehicle violations, DUIs, and the tragic deaths at uga. Not, One. Bit. Why? “Because this kind of thing happens at every university.” Unfortunately, this fit with their other “all or nothing” philosophies, like all politicians are corrupt, all government is bad, and everything you eat is going to kill you any way so why worry about a balanced diet.
Being a fan, it feels like more and more, requires an uncritical view of life that couples well with certain fictions or delusions about the state of sports. Most college competitions involve athletes who don’t represent us or the school, have nothing in common with us, and who generally engage in uneven contests that verge on being rigged. If the student athletes do represent the school, demographically, educationally or culturally, the degree to which they do is the degree to which they are “losers” on the athletic field.
Uga fans love not being “losers” on the courts of athletic competition but the degree to which this equates for them as some kind of personal life success story or personal victory honestly baffles me. I love to see Tech win, and clearly I identify with Tech on some level, but my whole reason for being is not intimately connected to Tech sports.
I think the reason the current trends in college athletics is disturbing is because it demonstrates in glaring ways how being a fan requires that you, to some degree, buy into a fiction. Just like you do when you see a movie and suspend disbelief. But the current trend is going to make it very difficult for some of us to suspend disbelief.
I apologize for the length of this and I also regret that I could not capture the nuances of my thinking and thus had to paint with a broad brush.
But I would be curious about how others are going to answer the question, “Why be a fan?” The old answers are not holding as well.