The Definitive Rules of Fandom

I recently became privy to a friend’s dilemma.  One of the most passionate and knowledgeable sports fans I’ve ever known claimed to be “homeless” in the NFL. Despite having a college football team, a college hoops team, and an NBA team, my good friend was an impartial pro football guru/enthusiast.  My friend, unsatisfied with dwelling in the cardboard box of his vicarious existence, devised an elaborate, semi-scientific process through which he’d eventually select the team worthy of his support.

Once I read the blog post declaring said intention, I proposed to Eric that we conduct the trial together, each applying criteria we deemed essential.  For example, Eric insisted that our team could not prominently feature an Oklahoma player. In turn, I refused to bestow my energy to a team that had a K-State or Missouri player on their roster, let alone in a prominent role. We also agreed that our team could not be a perennial power—the last thing we wanted was the maligned frontrunner label.

Sometime amid our careful, though half-serious process, the Kansas City Chiefs were in the final stages of weaving together the futility masterpiece that they called a football season.  Being a native Kansan, the Chiefs have always represented the only geographically logical choice for a professional football investment.  And yet, I have never really cared about them. The reasons aren’t few, and I think that they illuminate the reasons we become—or don’t become—fans in the first place, and why I ultimately could not select an NFL team at all.

1) For starters, I have only attended one of their games in my lifetime. Attending a game and absorbing the unique experience afforded by a stadium’s atmosphere often generates the passion it takes to develop an irrational emotional attachment for a group of behemoth, freak-of-nature strangers scarcely aware of your existence.

One of my most formative and enduring sports stories involves my late grandfather Roy, who became the paterfamilias for my family’s KU basketball fanhood. On one fateful day, Roy attended his first Jayhawk game in Allen Fieldhouse.  Bud Stallworth rained 50 points down on the hapless Missouri Tigers in a victory that thrilled the capacity 16,300 crowd and instantly transformed my grandfather into a lifelong fan.

So, from that angle, perhaps I never gave the Chiefs a fair shake.  I lacked that seminal, life-altering moment that may have been possible if I ever saw Joe Montano play in person.

2) As a child who spent every waking moment scripting his future career in the NBA, football meant about as much to me as pinochle or mathematics. Football, much to my wife’s disappointment, did not emerge as a hobby for me until long after my hoop dreams were cruelly squelched by inevitability. By the time I decided that waiting nearly eight months for the annual renewal of my vicarious existence was simply too depressing, I threw my passion in the only place that made any sense for me.

Perhaps no better segue exists for the following.

3) The Kansas City Chiefs are not good at football. It’s really difficult to care about a team that sets new records for fruitlessness each year—that is, unless you have never known anything different than cheering for that team. For this reason, and others, I harbor the utmost respect for the noble, longsuffering fans of wretched teams.

My uncle Jared is the stalwart champion of the Chiefs, the Kansas City Royals, and KU football.  Were it not for Kansas basketball, Jared surely—and justifiably—would have committed sports seppuku many moons ago. Loyalty counts for something, though, particularly when it is extended faithfully to the bantha fodder of sports teams.

Fans are not without a sense of ethics, as it turns out, and nearly all of them cast aspersions (and sharp objects) at people who back only the most dominant teams.  The man who dons New England Patriots, Duke Blue Devils, and New York Yankees apparel is assuredly the man who cheats on his wife for a comely woman twenty years his junior, attends Westboro Baptist rallies, and kicks cocker spaniels in his leisure.  The man who wears Cleveland Browns attire in public is the fellow who donates to the Red Cross, helps little old ladies cross the street, and pulled a maimed Lieutenant Dan from a Vietnamese war zone.

4) I could never quite condone embracing Missourians as brothers-in-arms on Sundays, but actively despise them every other day of the week.  The Chiefs fan base is a tension-ridden amalgamation of Kansas State, Missouri, and Kansas fans. Compartmentalizing my college athletics disdain simply was not tenable.  For most, rivalries are central and indispensable to their experience as fans.  My anathema for Missouri and Kansas State was set in place long before football managed to lay its claim to my consciousness, and asking a person to set such a thing aside for the benefit of watching abysmal football strikes one as discordant with nature, ethics, and The Rules of Fandom.

Before I moved to Oklahoma last summer, I foresaw the possibility of adopting the Thunder as an NBA team.  A passing, blithe interest in the Phoenix Suns would be relatively easy to shed for a team that had two Jayhawks on its roster and one of the most likeable players in professional sports.  Luckily, and most importantly, the Thunder galvanized my emotional investment last year when they eliminated the wildly unlikable San Antonio Spurs from the NBA playoffs. Tim Duncan, whose emotional capacity knows its zenith only in the seconds following fouls whistled on him, is rather easy to hate, as is his balding, beak-nosed counterpart (Manu Ginobli), and Tony Parker. I was irrevocably tied to the Thunder bandwagon after watching James Harden deliver dagger after dagger to the most personality-devoid team in sports, thereby exorcising the demons attending me for all the years I watched the Spurs eliminate the Suns. In other words, I needed a foil for my team before that team could be mine.

One of the primary motivations for fanhood, unfortunately, rests in the desire to feel superior to your rivals. Enjoying your own team’s successes simply isn’t enough. To be a true fan, you must also revel in the failures of your rivals.

This morning, when I glimpsed a woman wearing a Kansas State pullover, it conjured images of my fourth grade teacher (who memorably found ways to insert her athletics allegiance into our class at every turn), Western Kansas, and agriculture. The sight also triggered emotional responses, of course. I thoughtlessly unzipped my coat to ensure she could glimpse my 2007 Orange Bowl shirt, a particularly apropos dig on the heels of K-State’s BCS bowl loss to Oregon.  I wanted to shove statistics in her face about the all-time head-to-head record in football and our utter dominance of the Big 12—and, by extension, K-State—in hoops. To the relief of my wife, I managed to suppress these desires, but made certain to bear a smug grin on my face after we paid our bill and strolled past her on the way out of that IHop.

Ultimately, I removed myself from the NFL adoption project.  Sure, I can produce an emotional response for a group of tattooed college kids trying to throw a ball through a net, but doing the same for a group of tattooed adults trying to crush each other’s skulls seemed impossible for reasons other than my preference for a finesse sport over a contact one. The nuts and bolts for true fanship are as follows, and—as I discovered—are nigh impossible to generate during your adulthood:

1) You must have attended a game at your team’s venue.  If you’ve never set foot on the campus at Chapel Hill, you don’t get to be a Tar Heels fan.

2) You must have cheered for at least one bad team—and remained loyal to said team—during your life.

3) You must have rivals that you detest beyond reason.

The absence of any of the above precludes you from being a fan, irrespective of the money you’ve shelled out for the team’s apparel.  Fortunately, other hobbies exist for adult men, though I can’t imagine what they are.