From the Fans – An Affect of Sports Subculture

Episode 1 – Impact of the Fan Subculture

We as people belong to many different subcultures and use it as a means to identify ourselves with. Subcultures exist all around us, and we are a part of many subcultures regardless if we recognize it. In sports, I’m going as far to say that being a part of your favorite sports team would be enough to classify someone as a part of a subculture. Someone would have to be pretty involved with their favorite team, going beyond just someone saying they like a particular team. There are levels of extremes when being apart of a subculture, and it could be from simply just buying and displaying merchandise in your home to going all out. Buying the t-shirts, getting the license plate, wearing the face paint/makeup type stuff to every single game. Because it is categorical, it is really hard to identify any level differentiation. you’ll basically know by how intense they are about football, it’s not rocket science.

So, what does it mean when someone is apart of a sports subculture? I’m glad you asked! It goes beyond what I stated above.  What I said before is how to identify if someone is actually apart of the subculture.  It is a sense of belonging within that group.  It means you are taking part in the team’s victories and defeats. yes, defeats. I doubt that many people will call someone a true sports fan if they keep switching to the winning team. There  is often a sense of pride when your favorite team wins, and you have to face your friend when their favorite team beats your favorite team. That almost never goes well, especially when you both are big into sports.  I know it is always a big deal throughout my family *cough cough*.

Based on deduction, if someone feels great when their team wins, then it is important for their team to win. I shouldn’t even need to prove that winning is good and losing is bad. What I’m trying to get at however is it goes beyond your favorite team winning or losing, it actually affects your personal life.  How does your favorite sports team wins and losses affect your life? Another good question. Generally speaking, most people recognize the internal joy or sorrow when they win or lose. Take the recent Super Bowl for example, it was very disappointing for a lot of people when the Carolina Panthers lost.

Let us go beyond that, what do people do after the game, but I’m going to use a regular season game as my example. Pick any regular season game where your team won, what did you do? Short answer? CELEBRATE!! Even more likely celebrate when the team has had a long losing streak.  There are many forms of celebrating, and that could include marching or dancing around the living room, shouting “IN YOUR FACE” to someone else cheering for the other team, stuffing your face full of food from being happy, or doing something else I may not want to know about. By the way, just because players dump Gatorade on their coaches to celebrate… does not make it a good idea for you to dump a whole 5 gallons of Gatorade on your friends or family, as tempting as it may be. Unless you’d like to die the following night…

What happens in the days after your team wins? Chances are if you are like me, you are going to display that. Someone is more likely to wear their team’s shirt, maybe brag to other people that your team won, chances are pretty high that you are willing to be verbal about it. Even people who are more shy or introverted who like sports are likely to display that their team won. I’m saying that because introverted will tend to speak using symbols, they may not like talking, but they are just as likely to display what they are proud of.  Keep in mind this does not apply to all introverts, just generally speaking.  

Okay so what about the opposite, your team loses during any given week? if you are a good sport about it, you’ll suck it up and move on. I like to use the phrase “suck it up, buttercup”, many sports fans of teams that consistently lose are good at that. How do I know that? because my favorite sports team happens to lose frequently, but they are totally underrated. Thats a post for another time…. anyways…. what behavior could be displayed? well, it could be punching the person’s face when they shout in your face, shoving your face full of food from acute depression, or maybe even just not caring. Whatever happens, the point is that the behavior displayed is going to be different from that when your team wins.

In the days after your team loses, you are less likely to talk about it. Probably not going to want to talk to those friends who are prone to rubbing it in your face, and likely finding something else to talk about. It would make sense then that someone is not going to wear a shirt with that sport’s logo on it, at least not until the hype has died down.  When you think of it, the behavior displayed in this case is not opposite to that of when your team wins, it’s most likely just the absence of behavior.  When your team does not win and you just don’t do anything about it, that would be absence.  But when you are actively avoiding any conversation that could possibly lead to talking about your team losing, that could be considered negative behavior. Clear as mud? Good.

This responsive behavior is probably going to be more likely in a team that frequently wins. I say this because a team that wins all the time will probably be more likely to say they are fans of that team. Like the New England Patriots or the Denver Broncos. Chances are people are not going to have any problems saying they are fans of those teams, well, maybe the Patriots, but that is another post. Fans of say the Chicago Bears or the Cleveland Browns  are probably not going to be as outspoken about it. There is an inverse relationship here.  Kind of. in relationship to winning and losing anyways. Fans of teams who frequently win are going to not have any problems saying that they like that particular team, until they lose. More so when it is an embarrassing loss.  Then someone may not so much be as outspoken.  When someone likes a team that frequently loses, they may really celebrate and rejoice when they win. But when they lose? eh, who cares. they just lost another game.  It is not like they haven’t lost before.

Why am I saying “likely” and “probably” so much? because human behavior is pretty unpredictable. Certainly there are norms, when it comes to behavior, but just because norms are displayed does not mean people will follow all the norms of society. Many people in fact follow their own norms that are disjointed with society.  Keep in mind then that when I say “probably” or “likely”, it just means something is more likely to happen than something else. Maybe.

One last thing. As I’m typing this, there are two thoughts that stem from my mind that would make great experiments. Do frequently winning teams have more fans? and are said fans happier overall than fans of less frequently winning teams? I don’t know if studies have shown any of this, nor have I looked to see if this stuff exists. If someone happens to be a multimillion dollar research scientist looking for a huge research project, this would be a great study to do.