It’s not easy being a sports fan

In the midst of the Brewers’ recent eight-game losing streak, I had a thought. Why do I even like professional sports?

It’s something that I’ve mused about before. I first considered it a couple years ago, after a particularly soul-crushing Packers playoff loss. During the game, I had been angrily bemoaning the play of the green-and-gold as my roommate, who had given up on football and thus had no horse in this particular race, reveled in my misfortune. My frustration extended long past the clock had run down to zero, thinking about all the plays that hadn’t gone the Packers’ way as I drifted into an uneasy sleep. I grumpily attended my Monday lectures, still wondering how we had wasted yet another year of Aaron Rodgers’ career as I trudged through my day.

It was as I was stewing in my apartment, looking over my notes, that I noticed how perfectly fine my roommate was. He was just sitting there on his bed, having a grand old time watching YouTube videos like the world hadn’t just ended. And that was because, despite the way I had been acting, it hadn’t.

That made me think. Here I was, wasting an otherwise perfectly good day being upset over something that I had no control over. It was not any fault of mine that the Packers had lost, and yet I was acting like I had been the one responsible for muffing that onside kick that had cost them a shot at playing in the Super Bowl.

Why? It would be one thing if I was actually on the team, or if there were someone on the team that I knew personally. Or if I had some other way to control the outcome of the game. But the only real connection between myself and the Green Bay Packers is that we are both arbitrarily located in the state of Wisconsin.

And that’s the funny thing about professional sports, or really spectator sports of any level; their ability to create a sense of “we” between the fans and the team itself. It’s not really something that I noticed before I started looking for it, but so many sports fans, myself included, often refer to the teams that they follow as “we” or “us” or any number of inclusive or possessive pronouns that suggest that they themselves are part of the team in some way.

Which isn’t entirely off the mark, I suppose. After all, without the fans buying tickets and merchandise to fill the pocketbooks of owners, these professional or even collegiate teams might not even exist. But the frustration I was feeling at the Packers loss was nowhere near proportional to the money I had contributed to the team after buying shirts and hats emblazoned with the “G” logo. I was barely a drop in the ocean, after all.

Of course, that’s because very few people actually feel this ownership because of their own personal contributions to the team. Rather, a fan’s loyalty and the creation of an artificial “we” could play on something far more primal in human psychology.

Philosophers and psychologists have long hypothesized about the entities of the Self and the Other. Generally speaking, this usually boils down to the idea that, in order for us to maintain a sense of who we are, or our “self,” we often attribute negative characteristics that we don’t see as part of that “self” to others. This is often done outside actual proof or knowledge of the “others” actual characteristics. This act of “othering” can then be extrapolated from the individual level to social groups of any size that we consider ourselves part of.

Now, whether or not you subscribe to this theory, it does seem to apply to spectator sports. Is it not curious how people can be bitter enemies when their high school teams compete against each other, but then best friends when they both cheer for the same professional team? Or how a Brewers fan and Cubs fan can somehow put aside their differences to cheer for the U.S. baseball team at the Olympics, even if they had just been yelling obscenities at each other at Miller Pa…er…American Family Field? The theory posits it’s because we don’t actually know anything about that other person, only that they aren’t “us.” Until they are, of course.

It’s funny to see how we can think the worst of someone in one situation, but get along perfectly well in another, depending on whether we can see that person as one of “us,” or part of the “other.” And while this is mostly an interesting curiosity in the realm of sports, I do think that it is something that we need to be conscious of when applied to more serious situations.

So when the Brewers go on a long losing streak or the Packers inevitably lose in the NFC championship game, I have to remind myself that there was not much I could do about it. Enjoy the sports and the camaraderie that one feels for what it is, but don’t overdo it. Does that always work? Nope. But sometimes it does, and I think my spectator experience is better for it.

A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW

NATHANIEL U NDERWOOD REPORTER