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I want someone to make this t-shirt:

Somewhat off-topic, but I thought I would speak about "sports fan" behavior a bit.

Sports is a conduit through which flows the competitive obnoxiousness of people who are prone to that kind of thing anyway. As a former girl's team soccer coach, I can attest to this. Perfectly reasonable seeming people commit outrageous behavior in that context. It's depressing. I got so fed up with it that I even stopped playing soccer myself as adults aren't much better. There were always some adults who just wanted to play and do as well as they could, but we were often sabotaged by people who simply couldn't get through a game without starting a fight.

I do think that the same behavior shows up in other environments for these same people. Work, for example, or in the way they react to their child's grades. It leaves me conflicted since I really do like playing and Lawd knows I need the exercise. I just hate that crap. It isn't in me and it seems that I am in the minority in feeling that way.

Dude, dhex, it's "I want these motherfucking olypmics off this motherfucking plane." Except it's not that either, because both are long, and consequently they make Baby Jesus cry.

I'm not sure if it's "important" to be pursuing, but I still don't accept Ken's assertion that sports fandom is a form of empathy. I call it identification. You identify with the fortunes of your team and either ignore the fortunes of your opponents or feel the opposite (i.e., revel in their demise or seeth at their triumph). That simply has litttle to nothing to do with empathy as I think it's generally understood. The actual personal experiences of the players (especially the pain they're going through!) is of secondary consequence at best (except sometimes in extreme circumstances, such as with serious injury) and often next to meaningless. I.e., selective empathy may play a role in sports fandom, but it is not primary to sports partisanship as vicarious identification clearly is, a whole different animal, I would say. It may have some superficial overlap with empathy as we general understand it, but I'd say it's clearly very different. Whether Ken understands me or not!

Now, is that "bad"? In and of itself, I see no problem with it. It may be related to and part and parcel of some very bad things (thuggish sports hooliganism, "us versus them" tunnelvision in politics, both domestic and international, military and religious fanaticism, etc.), but obviously, and I think we all agree, there's no reason to expect sports fandom to necessarily or universally spill into those things.

It may also seem just stupid or foolish or counterproductive (a word I believe Jennifer has used) to take vicarious pride in people who wouldn't know or care if you got run over by a truck today, but I agree 100% with Ken that this derives from (in my words) a naturally selected trait that helped humans survive in small groups from back in the days when the victory of your guys with clubs over the other guys with clubs really meant something to your survival and thus to you personally. And it probably meant something to your guys with clubs to have the support of a diehard fan!

Now, that it's an "adaptation" (Ken's word) doesn't, to my mind, make it good or bad in and of itself. But it does seem to be a fairly universal aspect of human behavior. T'aint going away.

I also would, once again, like to make a big distinction between feeling the emotional response of vicarious pride in the accomplishments of people who don't know or care about you and thinking of such like it's a genuine reflection on your own self-worth.

It's probably impossible for any of us to do an accurate survey on how many people do take such vicarious pride seriously and think it's meaningful. Suffice to say it's somewhere above zero and below 100%. But nobody here has endorsed it, not the way Jennifer describes it, anyway. While some folks here have come up with analogies to ridicule Jennifer's ridicule of vicarious pride, she has repeatedly explained why those expamples are different, which is relevant to both sides. That said, she has yet, to my knowledge, made it clear what line has to be crossed before empathy goes from reasonable to unreasonable. Can such a line be drawn? I'd say when the person whose accomplishments you're taking pride in doesn't know you from a hole in the ground, perhaps that's a sign that one's feelings of pride in them should not be taken too seriously. But who knows, who cares? It's your thang, do what you wanna do. Hopefully we can just live with allowing others' their funny quirks that we don't personally relate to. As I've said before, I don't think anyone here is really telling anyone else they've got to change their personal interests or stance versus sports, as much as both sides have accused the other side of doing so.

And again, maybe this is all "too serious," but what the fuck. It must be interesting to us or we all would have just dropped it long ago. Sometimes "unimportant" things can still be interesting!!

This reminds me of my whole dang philosophy of life. Which is that it's a game.

The implication being that you shouldn't take it too seriously. Though at the same time, you do have to take it seriously to some degree, because a game just isn't fun if you don't take it seriously at all, if who wins or loses or what happens has no meaning to you whatsoever. So I think the goal in life, just as with sports, is to maximize the fun by taking it seriously enough to be involved and care what happens but not too seriously such that you lose sight of the fact that it's just a game!!!

There's a percentage of the population who are fuckheads no matter what they're into. They always ruin it for everyone else. They always have.

Name the activity (sports, comics, sci-fi, cyclists, theatre, ballet, opera, work, etc), and you'll find some bludgeon-worthy asshole who makes it miserable and gives everyone who enjoys the same activity a bad rap.

Mo - NO WONDER YOU ARE EVIL! Dodger fan! BAH! MUST SMASH!

Seriously, though, baseball inspires its own brand of retarded. You know why I hate the Dodgers? Because in 1965 they beat the Twins in the series. In 1965 my dad was a 9-year-old Twins fan...I was still 17 years from birth at that point. But, I hate the Dodgers anyway. Not in an active let's burn a cross on their yard kind of way, but in a rooting against them at all opportunities way.

Wise words Fyodor,

My particular fanboyness doesn't preclude me from appreciating the skill of the team that may be in the act of trouncing my team. If FC Barcelona comes to town during the summer for an exhibition game, they would most likely shame my beloved DC United. I'd still go though.

I wasn't going to say anything, but the opening of the Nationals Stadium here brought out a whole segment of the local population I had never seen before. There were extra Metro personnel on duty everywhere to make sure they actually made it to the game. Many of them STILL ended up in the wrong place.

But surely this can't be said about Libertarian politics? :p

Agree 100 percent.

Not sure there's a hard-and-fast line that can be drawn and apply to all cases, but a few indications that it's over the line would be: having your sports fandom become a replacement for something missing in your own life. Hitching your emotional wagon to their train: "When they win, I win, and when they lose, I lose." Having your fandom become so important that the mere lack of it in someone else becomes grounds for contempt, as in Mo's example of the time he had Red Sox fans get angry at him when he didn't start wailing and gnashing his teeth after a Red Sox loss.

And this is NOT a unique incident: a lot of sports fans really seem to think that saying "I don't care one way or the other that 'your' team lost" is akin to a Manhattanite on 9-12-2001 saying "I don't care one way or the other that 3,000 people just died a few blocks up the street," or saying to a close personal friend "I don't care that your children just died in a car accident." They make Ken's mistake of confusing a lack of sports fandom for a lack of basic empathy for the suffering of others.

I can enjoy Battlestar Galactica without getting angry at people who don't; why is this acceptance of "interesting for me, but not for thee" so hard for sports fans to achieve? Why is such fandom even encouraged in schools? My high school experience I told you about on the last thread, where I was basically ordered to feel personal pride over the accident of having been assigned to attend a public school with a good football team -- that was NOT some unique experience that would make most modern Americans think "Gee, Jennifer, your school was a rare example of fuckuppery." Actually, my school was pretty mild; if I'd gone to some football uber alles school in Texas, I probably would've had my house vandalized, or worse.

Here's an article National Geographic had a few years ago, called Sports Riots: The Psychology of Fan Mayhem. A quote:

Sports riots are so common that the phrase itself is instantly recognizable to modern people. When so many people take something that's supposed to be mere entertainment -- watching a game -- and regularly turn it into actual mayhem threatening the property and personal safety of others, I do not apologize for thinking "Wow, this is tapping into something really ugly in the human psyche."

Ah, the demon rum and the unwashed masses. Always a problem.

there's a lot more violence at bars and the like on a regular basis; does alcohol tap into something wicked in the human psyche?

i would say "maybe" but qualify it with one of those "weeelllll" that's all drawn out and makes it seem like i have a lot going on upstairs.

Dhex, I doubt the teachers requiring people to cheer at the pep rallies were drunk at the time. I know the principal was sober when he yelled at me.

Maybe not, but they were probably angrier at your nonconformity than your lack of interest in sports.

Which goes back to the root of the whole problem: too many people refuse to consider "watching sports" as merely "something which some people find enjoyable, while others do not." No, it's a Vital And Integral Part Of The Human Experience, so we must teach/force the children to enjoy it, while adults will become angry and even pick fights with other adults for simply not sharing their enthusiasm. It's already been implied on this very forum that I must be a low-grade sociopath -- lacking in basic human empathy -- because I simply don't care how a given sports team or individual athlete does.

The fact that even alleged individualists get so passionate about this lack of conformity says to me that it DOES touch something ugly in the human mind.

Again: why must "sports fandom" be part of the social order? I have no problem with schools teaching students "Do not steal people's property. Do not commit assault. Do not kill people." Expecting me to do THESE in the name of "maintaining social order" makes sense. Expecting me to cheer for a football team does not.

Again: why must "sports fandom" be part of the social order? I have no problem with schools teaching students "Do not steal people's property. Do not commit assault. Do not kill people." Expecting me to do THESE in the name of "maintaining social order" makes sense. Expecting me to cheer for a football team does not.

because it's high school? why did i have to go to stupid presentations - complete with music and actors - about self-esteem?

for the same reason "school spirit" is part of the social order. for the same reason the prom is. because the big monkeys up top said so.

Which supports the thesis that sports fandom, at its worst, is about suppressing individuality and encouraging people to become members of The Herd. Look at the "individualists" here who are incredulous -- and even offended -- by the simple fact that I don't care about sports. I'm not trying to outlaw sports, or prevent people from watching games if they so choose; I'm simply saying I don't want to do any of this myself, and I'm not interested. You'd think I was confessing a desire to rape and torture children. But no; I'm just not interested in becoming part of a mass rally.

I STILL don't feel any different now than I did a week ago, despite all the records my compatriot Michael Phelps has broken and all the medals he has won since then.

Double post whoopsie. Shouldn't be so impatient when I click "post comment" and nothing seems to happen!!!

Jennifer, I think it's a mistake to say that all sports fandom is, at its root, about the worst aspects of the monkey hierarchy. Yes, there's big overlap, but it's a multi-faceted thing.

And I say this as somebody who never watches sports.

Nor did I say all sports fandom is like that; I specified fandom at its worst.

I do, however, take exception to the type of sports fandom that is drilled into students as a form of civic virtue. If you personally want to watch football that's great, but the schools shouldn't be teaching students that watching football and cheering for the team is something everybody should do. And governments have no business saying sports fandom is so important that they'll take tax dollars from non-fans like me to build massive stadiums and the like.

Nor should schools tell kids that they really need to watch Battlestar Galactica, either. I came by that interest on my own; I didn't need authority figures telling me it was a virtue to do so. And I don't believe it IS a virtue; it's just something I do for fun.

You know, I went to highschool and was subjected to all that too, but come on. It's highschool. There were people into pep rallies and people who made fun of people who had the spirit or whatever.

I wouldn't use highschool social structures and pressures as an argument for anything. The end of all such commentary should be, "Yeah, but its just highschool." Not only are there big monkeys up top trying to impose order, but the brains of all monkeys at that point aren't very well developed. Kids look for identity and its hard and there is a lot of drama. Most people look back and kinda laugh at that stuff once they start paying bills and stuff, don't they?

It's not just high school, Jason. It's tax money going to subsidize sports arenas. It's the zillion articles you could link to today saying that anyone bored by Michael Phelps is bored with life itself. (I still don't want to watch soap operas.) It's the common insistence that watching a game is more than watching a game; like love itself it's a transcendent part of the core human experience, so that one who never experiences it cannot be called fully Human.

Any one of us here could say "I truly don't give a damn what Britney Spears is up to these days," and unless you post this on the Britney Spears Fan Forum, nobody would be shocked. But replace "Britney" with "the US Olympians" or "the local sports franchise" and them's often fighting words.

Indeed, that attitude is so common that even those who share it to an extent will joke about it: remember when we had a thread here about personal celebrity encounters? I told the true tongue-in-cheek story of how I went to junior high school with a guy who later became a player for the Redskins. And 15 years after we parted ways, there came a televised football game which I hoped would end on time so I could watch the show scheduled after it. The Redskins were losing until my former classmate made a goal which tied the score so the game went into overtime, and I missed my show. And I jokingly cursed him for it, and Redskins fans here jokingly informed me that since I'd wished ill for the Redskins they must now hate me for it.

I know that y'all were joking, but the joke was based on truth: there really DO exist Redskins fans who would sincerely get mad at me after hearing that I wanted a game to end on time, even if that meant the Redskins would lose. THAT sort of attitude does indeed exist among sports fans, and THAT I consider worthy of criticism, no matter how much people try to wrap that attitude in pieties about team spirit and sports empathy and the alleged beauty of feeling part of something bigger than (though completely separate from) yourself.

No, I'm not. Bringing up a funny anecdote in a thread doesn't mean that anecdote spends the majority of its time at the forefront of my brain, or was a defining moment in making me Who I Am Today.

And for the umpteenth time, I point out that I'm not talking about people who merely enjoy watching a game, or enjoy playing it, either. Remember this whole thread started, long long ago, with the theme "Hell, I don't care about the Olympics." Not "To hell with anyone who enjoys watching any part of them."

If you're a casual fan, then stop taking it personally when I criticize those who view fandom as Far More. Likewise, as a casual fan of Star Trek I don't take it personally when people criticize Trekkies who define themselves as citizens of the United Federation of Planets.

Admittedly, I do get annoyed when someone assumes (this is almost everybody not into Star Trek) that anyone into Star Trek is an overweight virgin who wears costumes regularly and considers themselves members of the United Federation of Planets.

Or, of course, if they insinuate that Picard is somehow superior to Kirk. I mean, c'mon.

So I can empathize with people who assume that certain criticisms are simply shorthand for other criticisms or an assumption that all members of set Y are like the most extreme members of set Y.

That being said, I don't think this happens to sports fans very much at all, certainly not as often as it happens to Star Trek fans or people who don't like sports very much.

But Kirk was more entertaining.

Also, Picard was a bloodless bureacrat who kept his distance from the action, whereas Kirk was a guy who mixed into the middle of things and "got things done." Kinda like an entrepreneur. Only with fists and phasers. I found Kirk more admirable in spirit.

Yes, I know that Picard's way was more in keeping with proper behavior of a highly trained officer in charge of an expensive starship and hundreds of personnel. But I'd still rather watch a TV show about a cop on the beat than about the police chief -- unless he was a chief who occasionally walked the street and fought crimes in person.

Oh.

Well, I guess by "occasionally" I really meant "all the damn time."

He had a pretty good record of beating the bad guys!

But then.....so did Maxwell Smart, hmmmmm...............

Starfleet was only quasi-military even in Kirk's day, and even more quasi by TNG. For that matter, there was a lot more violence in the later seasons of TNG. There was even an somewhat absurd setup where Starfleet tapped Picard for some special ops business that got him captured and tortured.

EDITED for alleged humor content.

Hee--I did it, I ruined the thread.

Also, three words: Flying Leg Kick.

You know, it's a shame that John Wayne never made a guest appearance on the original Star Trek. That would have been so cool.

*post made while tipsy deleted*

That whole fans rioting because of beer theory does not make sense. How can you explain rioting at sports events in countries where alcohol is not consumed.

So we can boil it down to

Lots of people + beer + Bostonians = rioting

from what Mo suggested above. I don't have a counter argument about "Bostonians" though :-)

Last night at the gym I saw Brazilian gals playing American gals in volleyball. I found myself rooting for the American gals, maybe it was just that Nationalistic impulse.

Then later I turned on the tube and saw an American playing a Nigerian in ping-pong. I rooted for the Nigerian cause I thought he looked cool and I just thought the idea of an African excelling in ping-pong was just very appealing! (My fave won both times!!)

A Piece of the Action. Picard would never have been able to resolve the the situation at all. He'd still be talking vacillating with Counselor Deanna Troi while Oxmyx and Krako initiated a bloody gang war. He would not have been funny. He would have been borrrring.

#1 Kirk
#2 Sisko
#3 Janeway
#16 Picard*

* I'm assuming that 12 other Star Trek series' are still to be produced.

But top notch entertainment!

Actually that's the neocons' real purpose and the reason my next CD is called Peace Is Boring!

Timothy, sounds like you should be rooting for a close match -- to keep it going longer!! Oh, and the Nigerian won it in the 7th and deciding game, I think by 2 points! (And BTW, I was switching between that and Globetrekker at the time....)

I'm starting to think we're arguing about two different things here. Kirk was mildly entertaining, but that was about it. Making him Captain makes about as much sense as making the badass cop who plays by his own rules into the Chief of Police. Saying the BCWPBHOR is the greatest Chief ever because "at least he's not boring!" is just as crazy.

But smart if you want people to watch your TV show!!!

It got a lot better, judging by a couple late-run episodes I saw.

I think Voyager doomed Enterprise. There just wasn't enough fan interest after the former show to support the nearly-inevitable weak first season of the latter and keep a strong following.