Sports Fan Ethics

Being a sports fan is an existential choice. It involves a way of being in the world and relating to other human beings. The point of the game is being a fan involves a moral stance. It means acting in ways that impact others and the game. This  means it involves obligations and responsibilities. As a friend of mine reminded me,  spectators refer to "the team" and fans use the word "we."

This all became clear to me when I realize how early this all starts. Last week a major scandal erupted in Florida where the parents and fans of little league football had been indicted for betting on the games and hiring coaches who had criminal records amongst other things. Along with the incredible cost to the young student athletes and the horrible role models this provided, it reminded me again of how deep and important being a fan can be to many people, a link that can cause the craziness of Florida or a fun and important way to link to community and study and admire a form of human mastery.

Games depend upon rules. Athletes depend upon rules and conceptions of form and excellence. The very idea of winning requires rules that define what constitutes excellence, achievement and winning. The essence of competition builds upon the idea that rules govern behavior. Competition without rules reduces to war.

As I suggested, fans shape the environment and impact the athletes and competition. This involves them in the game and their influence, unlike spectators and audiences, carries a set of obligations; to be a fan is a moral stance about loyalty, commitment and participation.

I don't want to go overboard here, but as fans, people act, influence others and model for others. They infuse social gatherings with their presence and they pass on loyalties and relations to those around them.

Ideally a fan appreciates the team and sport and athletes. A deep aspect of being a sports fan lies in the aesthetic enjoyment (no true fan would use words aesthetic enjoyment) of the beauty and pure form of the sport they love. Being a fan involves people in communities of like minded people, so they can share common identity, emotions and conversations. Fandom through blogdom, bars and office NCAA pools demonstrates  and creates a subculture of identity, community and conversation. It enables people not only to vent and gloat but to discuss and appreciate the fine points of the form of the sport and the dimensions of its players.

All this suggests that the moral world of being a fan should involve respect for the game, players and fellow travellers. It means that fans can argue and shout and scream and holler, but it should occur within the bounds of norms of respect (these are elastic norms since some groups can use profanity laced diatribes and still laugh with and at each other). Simply by actions, taunts, movements fans force the athletes brain do do more and subtly can subvert the attention needed for a fine motor skill activity under active stress. Fan actions matter and influence games, no matter what athletes claim.

Fans have obligations to at least understand the game; you often see this dynamic played out in teaching younger fans the nuances or the painful experience of watching two people on a date, one a fan and the other bemused but trying hard to attend to the fan's nuttiness. You also see it among fans who can acknowledge the other team's excellence, "good play,"  "nice call," "good shot." You try to teach this to kids and neophytes so that they understand this is about both the sport and the team.

The problems emerge because of the identity pathologies of any community. Fans can become more committed to winning than the team or sport. The obsession with winning can be tied to collective need to feel superior (welcome to war again). The winning drive can coexist with another dynamic of identity--the we/they black/white world of asserting my identity and value by devaluing another. Racism depends  upon this dynamic, so does sexism.

One of the crucial borderland obligations of sports fans is how to treat opposing players and teams. If the fans have overinvested their identity in winning alone (if a fan arrives at the point where they cannot acknowledge a great play by an opposing player, they have crossed a dangerous boundary). (I must confess I have spent a decade booing and hating Alex Rodriquez for his betrayal of the Mariners and still cannot bear to acknowledge that he has any worth as a player or human being for that matter).

Here is a critical boundary area for fan. It is part of the oblgation to root for their team. Heckling and getting into the other guys head is more problematic but fits for a good fan. But as a coach friend of mine said "if you heckle, be clever, be good, but don't be cruel." We all know and appreciate good heckling, but more than a few fans personalize their screams or worse they invoke racists, sexist or foreign baiting (I am amazed at the number of mindless fans who shout "USA" when an international player is under pressure even when their own team may have three internatioanl players of their own, but who said consistency had anything to do with fans.)

One of the classic ploys, in movies at least, is for a coed to flash an opposing player to deflect their attention. A very clever and very subversive act occurred several years ago when California coeds created a fake coed identity named Victoria who engaged in on line chats with a UCLA player. At the game the Cal. rooters revealed the "Victoria" cheer and even quoted textings in their jeers/cheers/heckles. It ruined the players night and revealed a very clever and subversive use of the social web world of athletes.

However more than a few fans stalk players, abuse players and coaches mercilessly with profanity, racist and sexist catcalls and remarkably ugly comments to the players, coaches and administrators on line and through web sites.  I've sat by benches where fans spat on the players and those  nearby. The pseudo anonymity of the web as well as the fact that internet flames are not tempered by any sense of how they impact the people encourages the same sort of amoral or immoral behavior of being in a crowd. People lose their sense of accountability, respect and appreciation of both the sport, the humans and their own responsibilities. People who believe they are anonymous or lost in a crowd will do things they would never do if held accountable as an individual.

Contagion is a psychological reality where the emotional and behavioral actions of one person can change the emotional affect of others. In economic terms bad fans drive out good fans. In social psychology the haunting example of the death of Kitty Genovese reminds us all that people will stand around while another person is murdered waiting for others to act. In fandom  this "bystander effect" encourages people to stand around while one obnoxious idiot spews invective to hurt the players and infect those around him. The picture here is of a young kid giving finger--is  this what we want to hand on as fans? Like racism, bad fanhood is learned and handed on.

Another crowd effect encourages the darkside of fans. Being in a crowd that feels anger and rage encourages people to feel release from their normal moral commitments. The crowd encourages a form of anonymity and people who believe they are anonymous will do things they would never do if alone and accountable. The soccer riots in Europe epitomize all these coming together. The recent killings of fans as people stood around and cheered resembled gang executions.

Moral and psychological life is strange. Every good aspect of being a fan carries a shadow. Identity, common fate and language, particpating with others in emotional expression, if turned ever so slightly, end up with vile cruelty to other teams, to human players and to other fans.

Being a good fan matters and carries obligations. 

First Fan: The Presidency, Obama & Politics meets Sports

The Presidential election is heating up, and President Obama is burnishing his credentials as First Fan. He has called Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, the American gymnastics team and complimented them on winning gold medals and representing America in the Olympics. He tweets well wishes and congratulations daily to American athletes. As Phelps said, the calls were "pretty cool." Last month he thanked Boston for trading the wonderful Kevin Youklis to his beloved Chicago White Sox. Of course the Romney campaign attacked him for this, but it's not clear Mitt Romney could root for a sports team even if he tried, except for maybe his wife's horse dancing, sorry, I mean dressage. But a campaign and Olympic medals provide a good nexus to remember why whoever is President becomes de facto First Fan which is an important constitutional position. 

The Constitution separates Church and State. The Constitution does not separate sport and state. Since sport is one of America's civil religions, the President must assume a strong role as First Fan to preside over the liturgy of American sport.

William Howard Taft threw out the first pitch in 1910 of the baseball season and started an American tradition of President as First-Fan. He loved sports, broke tradition and set a strong precedent of connecting sport and the Presidency. Taft aligned himself and the Presidency with baseball and sanctioned the sport as America's past-time.

Long before Taft threw out the first ball of the season, Ulysses Grant had met with the very first professional team the Cincinnati Red Legs and Theodore Roosevelt had met with the Yankees who urged him to run again.  Ronald Reagan was a huge sports fan and began the modern era tradition of the  First Fan regularly inviting World Series winners to the White House. Later Reagan invited the  NBA winners. President Richard Nixon worshipped sports, played football in college and got so wrapped up in sports that he even called in a play to coach George Allen of the Washington Redskins during the Super Bowl.

Obama fits  naturally into a long line of President as First Fan. Some presidents made no sense as First-Fan, and the persona never fit like Jimmy Carter or Lyndon Johnson, but most American Presidents loved sports and enjoyed the connection. In a typical two week period two years ago President Obama played host to  the Duke men’s national championship basketball team. Later he met with the Connecticut women’s national basketball team. That afternoon he met with the US national soccer team and urged them on to victory. 

President Obama plays basketball to relax; he fills out NCAA basketball brackets in full and can explain on national TV why he picked which team; he can actually get the ball over the plate when he throws out the first pitch for the Nationals or the All Star game. When he wooed Michelle, Michelle's family tested his character in a basketball game. He models how to root for his home team but still respect the sport and other teams.

Many Americans relate to athletic teams as obsessively and passionately as to a religion, and the Presidency has evolved into First-Fan who presides over mixed religious, I mean sports, affiliations. The President tries to embody the spirit of sport and competition and excellence and community that freights American sport. He sanctifies the activity by going out to the games and ritually throwing out the first pitch. He sanctifies the winners and blesses Olympic or World Cup soldiers heading off to war.

The First Fan walks a tight rope. How do you root for your own team—Obama passionately supports the Chicago White Sox, wearing a grungy White Sox hat. (yet everything becomes politics and his detractors claim he really does not support them enough!) He threw out the pitch at the All Star Game wearing a White Sox jacket. When he threw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals game he wore a White Sox hat with the Nationals' jacket.  GW Bush rooted for the team he once owned, the Texas Rangers, but still preside over all the sport. In my state of Washington, when the governor attends a Washington/Washington State game, she wears a scarf half knitted in UW colors and half in WSU colors. 

With Presidents Jimmy Carter or Lyndon Johnson, who could care a fig about competitive sports, it never feels quite real, kind of like Michael Dukakis pretending he knew something about the military. So the tight rope gives more than you might think. But being a real fan and suffering the pangs of loss and the joys of victory reveals a humanity and a willingness to be genuine when every incentive in politics is to not be genuine. Being a fan roots a President in a real local community and gives them a way to link with the rest of us.

Presidents meet with Olympic teams off to honor the country. They call Super Bowl victors and World Series winners. Part of it is pure self-interested politics. The President partakes in the reflected glory and status of the winners. But for the Presidents who care, they honor and acknowledge the excellence, the winners in competition. These Presidents know how sports competition embodies the American dream and ideal—hard work, skill, teamwork lead to excel and win. More interestingly each winning team, even the Yankees, has gone through the crucible of failure. Meeting with a team respects overcoming adversity to achieve. 

Our fetish for sports and athletics as a form of legitimacy and community makes it hard for some politicians. This hurts several classes of candidates. Republicans, more than Democrates, exploit the hidden coding of “effete” meaning weak and indecisive. They gravitate towards the tough sports like football,  Many politicians ends up as rootless and feel like carpet baggers. Someone like Richard Nixon loved sports, but had not been home in California for years. He  compensated by becoming a passionate Washington Red Skins fan. Others like Bobby Kennedy in NY or Hillary Clinton in NY simply have no real credibility in sports and lose the ability to use being a fan as proof of their local roots.

We give a pass to old guys like McCain and Reagan, but everyone knew Reagan was a fan and athletic, after all he chopped wood and played the Gipper in Knute Rockne. Right now I worry about the real costs to women. In one generation it won’t matter, but right now it strains a lot of imagination as Hillary Cinton demonstrated when she tried to be a Yankee fan.

In some ways better to be like LBJ and simply not care rather than feign interest. A non-fan trying to be a fan oozes insincerity, and being a fan is one of the few sincere things a politician can communicate. Especially as a politician aspires to higher office, being a fan carries costs because fans of other teams can hold it against him or her, but you stay loyal to your teams.

 It’s a lot like religion in American politics—a leader can be true to his or her own religion, but still preside over and respect the spiritual aspirations of all Americans. Mitt Romney is probably better off just staying away from the First Fan thing altogether during the race and let Obama make possible blunders with comments about Red Sox trades. On the other hand President Obama used his position as First-Fan to condemn the obsession with sports that could lead Penn State to hide child abuse to protect its football teams. At the risk of alienating Pennsylvania votes he reminded us all "But some things are just more important than sports. Making sure our kids are safe is more important than sports." 

The last thing about being First Fan: the President can model fan ethics. He can admire the sport; appreciate the skill and be a student of the game. He can  pick and root for teams. But he can demonstrate graciousness in defeat and honor in victory. He honors the sport and the success of committed and dedicated men and women. He honors them as athletes competitors and representing ideals that matter to Americans

The Dark Heart of Fans: Review of The Big Fan

He was beaten senseless for the crime of wearing Giants’ gear at a Dodger game. Two men dressed in Dodger blue attacked, knocked him down, then kicked him and fled to a car where a woman and child waited for them. Bad movie? Scene from the Sopranos? No, this is first day reality of baseball fans run amuck.

The awful incident reminds us of how important and fragile being a good fan can be. Being a fan involves a form of identification with a team, place and history. It can prop up fragile identities in a brutally mobile society where geography, work and even profession provide more and more attenuated identities. When recession strips away any illusions we might have about organizations being loyal to us, the few anchors we have for identity become even more important.

I’ve written before about how being a fan involves special obligations as well as special influence on the game and community. This incident in Los Angeles reveals the dark side of anger and mutual recrimination and hatred that fandom can unleash just like the destruction of the sacred grove in Auburn or the organized hooligans in Europe.

American movies and culture seldom engage what it means to be a fan, and when they do it usually reduces them to caricatures like in the movie The Fan where a psychopath kidnaps his idol.To many of us, however, being a fan does not involve being either a psychopath nor a malformed loner, rather we share it with family and friends and weave it into the texture of our lives, history and time.

Another movie reminds me both of the pathos, warmth and darkness of being a fan. The Big Fan tells the story of Paul Aufiero played with quiet implosive power by Paton Oswalt. At 35 he lives at home with his mother (what else), sleeps with a blanket embossed with Giants logo and has a picture of his favorite player hanging on his bedroom wall. He works at a dead end job as a parking lot attendant. But the dead end job provides time for him to compose with care and pain the rants he will unleash on late night sport talk radio. He inscribes them, almost etches them, with ball point on paper. He devotes his hours, mind and passion to his beloved Giants. What sound like spontaneous rants are composed defenses of his team replete with play analysis and statistics.

His mother nags him to grow up and find a life, but the point of the movie is that Paul believes he has a good life. He is not going anywhere and does not have the skill, education or quality of mind to move up. He knows there is no upward mobility world for him and for these good reasons he does not have a lot of ambition to do so. I mean why bother to dream or strive for what you know is impossible in this society.

But he does have his beloved New York Giants. The team dominates his life. He and his best and only friend Sal  attend the Giants games. In this modern world, he, like most working class families, does not have the money to actually attend the game. But Paul and Sal proudly tailgate in the cold parking lost watching a scratchy TV hooked to his car battery. 

This is OK. Paul knows his presence there proves his deeper loyalty to the team than the rich comfortable fans inside or the wimps who sit at home and watch. He knows he is their best and most loyal fan. The proof reinforces a strong and secure identity as the Big Fan. His role and  identity are reinforced by his late night radio moniker,  “Paul from Staten Island." His rants roll out with statistic, plays, and a mad logic of their own and generate his own avid following among the 2AM insomniacs who follow the ruthless, raucous, braying rituals of sport talk radio vituperation. He duels with his despised talk radio rival, Philadelphia Phil, who defends the hated hated Philadelphia Eagles. 

It looks like Paul  has little in his life to be proud of, but Paul sees it differently. He invests and gets psychic and status rewards  with his relation to the team. He also possesses a lodestar for his emotions and a way to invest his limited but real emotions and wealth. Watching him put on war paint for the games portrays a ritual of identity and community. Paul knows who he is.

The movies unfolds when he and his sidekick accidentally spot the team’s star linebacker and follow him through what may be a drug buy, then to a strip club. They humbly approach the linebacker for an autograph. Through a sad and funny misunderstanding the linebacker beats Paul into unconsciousness.

Three days later he awakes in a hospital. The linebacker is suspended, the Giants tank and his brother in law wants to sue the linebacker and team. Torn to his core and mocked and scorned now that his real life is revealed, Paul remains as stubborn as a reporter protecting first amendment sources. He will not betray his allegiance to the team even though his “hero” lacerated him and his vision.  Now he is scorned.

The  key of all our community versus personal allegiances is that we are loyal to a dream and vision, not to a reality. Cities, states, teams remain corporate shells and cold institutions inhabited by rotating personnel and our faithfulness to them emerges from our experiences of them and their place in our life and history. These loyalties stem from deeper reasons demonstrated by how Colin Firth’s loyalty to his soccer team reflect his link to his father and their complicated history in Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch.

The Big Fan ends with an act of violence! To redeem himself and prove his loyalty to himself and his dream identity, Paul seeks out his mocking nemesis on talk radio, the defender of the Philadelphia Eagles.  The Big Fan draws a gun on Philadelphia Phil and for a moment we fear that he will redeem himself like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver with an act of murder. But Paul shoots him with the paint colors of his Giants and makes redress for himself and his team.

Our Big Fan ends in jail. He has proven he loves his team more than himself, a core of human courage. The issue here is not whether the team deserves the love, but that he is capable of it. People have certainly devoted themselves to things more loony or more dangerous than a football team.  This love can pervert into jealous anger and hatred unleashing the violence in Los Angeles, but it can give life and a strange nobility to the life of a big fan. 

The Difference between Fans, Spectators and Audiences

I have a friend who attends all the basketball games at University of Washington. He endlessly works the sidelines. "Nice shot, Q." "Good D., Mac." He calls encouragement and criticism to the players which they often hear. He works the refs. "How could you do that Wanda!" "You owe us 2 now, Kathy." "Nice call, Bill." I watch him carefully because he epitomizes the nature of a true sports fan. Fans are not spectators and not audiences; just watch the participation of the painted school clad fans at the NCAA tournament.

Spectators watch. The Latin root of the word emphasize "seeing" and "watching," sometimes in a disinterested way. Spectators can be very sophisticated, watchers know the nuances of acting or playmaking and enjoy the finesse and fine points of the game, art, spectacle. You can often recognize them as they lean forward with intent stares and moving eyes. But in a sports context they remain passive in their interaction with the game; they watch, analyze and appreciate. (of course there are spectators like those who watch too much beach volleyball who gaze and oogle rather than watch and see, but that is another story)

Audiences hear. Again the Latin root gives it away; audiences listen to the audio dimensions of the world. Symphonic audiences provide an archetype; they listen in intense attention enraptured by music. Sophisticated listeners hear theme and variations and transpositions and understand and appreciate the nuance and mastery of musicians whether at Cleveland symphony or Green Day or Sugar Land concerts. Some listen with their whole bodies and you can see their  metronome feet or hands move  or they sway with their whole bodies. Sometimes they hum or mouth or sing along with the music or voice; many modern musicians invite this form of participation and the audience jumps in.


An experience like Cirque de Soleil creates both audience and spectator with its multidimensional world of sound, site, action, fancy, music, acting, gymnastics and sheer virtuosity. But at the core, the spectator and audience member remain receptors of the experience.

Sports fans participate in a different way. The linguistic roots are obscure for this uniquely American term but seems a shortened form of fanatic. That should warn us right away.  Linguistically, fanatics are "inspired by god, mad, enthusiastic" and carry a lot of frightening connotations that suggest fans move beyond reason and analysis into a different realm. The regular soccer riots and deaths in Europe do nothing to dispel these linguistic and emotional roots.

Sports fans create and shape the experience of sports. They are not passive receptors but active parts of the game itself. They influence action on the field of play. As my friend demonstrates, true fans participate in the sports. Go to a college game and you find bands blaring, student sections hollering and waving hands. Fans desperately impart emotional energy, support and distraction whenever they can. At football games they cheer so loud they force teams to wear radios or use sign language to convey plays. In basketball games they augment runs and try to break the other team's momentum or concentration.At races runners can literally feel and be moved by the energy from the fans.

Fans matter so much that sports often has a "home field advantage" largely created by the fans in the stands. Student sections and fans heckle and try to get inside players heads; they work to take players out of their games or reinforce their own players. They work referees as hard as any sideline coach. Leaving aside the litigation about who owns the "12th. man," a number of teams rely upon their home fans to give them a home field advantage. This advantage grows from the fan's emotional contagion and the comfort and the support it imparts to players. The fan base can infuse energy and hope in emotionally flagging moments as well as provide an endless stream of invective against other teams. Sports fans actively shape the environment in which athletes play as well as interacting in some obscure way with players and teams, for good or bad.

I've often commented upon how individuals who follow sports teams link an aspect of their identity to the team's presence and actions. This identity carries over into memory, but it also affects off field behavior. Fans sit in front of TVs with other fans wearing paraphernalia and talk, socialize and scream at TV suffering when their team suffers and exalting when their team excels. More than a few of us have been known to bow our heads or fold our hands in supplicant prayer--we know God has better things than to attend to a Mariner's game--but we do it anyway.

If you want an interesting lesson into the fanatic psychology of American sports culture, just peruse the hundreds of thousands of blogs devoted to teams and sports or follow twitter about teams and players. The vast majority carry rants and raves and expletive laden infantile comments upon teams and the going ons. But a surprising number (witness this one) offer thoughtful and interesting commentary upon their teams, sports or culture. The world of baseball is laden with sophisticated blogs like Fangraphs that link remarkably obsessive and smart individuals (who clearly need a life) who bring to bear passion and sophisticated analytical imaginations to offer fascinating ways to analyze and understand their beloved sport.

This baseball blog sphere now interacts with the world of professional assessment of players as well as leading to more interested and engaged fans for teams and sports. It offers an opening into sports for the life of the mind as well as the life of identity, aesthetics and deep appreciation of the form and achievement of human possibility.

Fans are different and that difference has some important implications for how they should act as fans. Being a sports fan is an existential choice. It involves a way of being in the world and relating to other human beings. The point of the game is being a fan involves a moral stance. It means acting in ways that impact others and the game. This  means it involves obligations and responsibilities. As a friend of mine reminded me,  spectators refer to "the team" and fans use the word "we."

I think being a fan involves taking oneself seriously and how we act in relation to our team but also to other teams and to other fans. At the core, we share a common appreciation of the sport and its own dynamics, but because fans often link their identity to their teams, the very ugliness that communal loyalties can unleash can climb out from fan tribal loyalties. So being a fan involves not just passion but, as I have written in another post,  being responsible  and self-controlled in your passion and loyalty.