How 'Bout 'Em Steelers? - How Sports Teams Define Us And Why We Become So Obsessed With Them

A few years ago WFAN New York broadcast a sports call-in show.  More than a radio station, it was a community.  Those who called in were not simply followers of the Mets, the Yankees, or the Giants but part of a virtual neighborhood that lived and died with the fortunes of the teams.  Larry from the Bronx was a frequent caller as was Rose from Brooklyn and Artie from Staten Island. There was belonging here at three in the morning. 

The late-night listeners to WFAN not only called in to comment on trades, ownership, or management; but to share their feelings.  A loss by the Yankees or the Mets was not simply a loss but a letdown.  A victory was not only a move upward in the standings but a vindication of team and individual worth.  Fans always spoke personally. We should trade for so-and-so…We need to get more bats in the lineup.  These were the fans with season’s tickets, paraphernalia, and membership in the community of supporters.  

What does such fandom provide?  Diversion from 9-5, divorce, settlements, wives, and politics? Or a label when none other is available? Why are fans so passionate in their support of local teams? 

The biggest college stadiums accommodate more than one hundred thousand people, are always full every week of the season.  Fans support the Mets, the Giants, the Phils, or the Nats even though the team itself – players, managers, top management, and ownership – may have changed completely.  The team a fan in New York  or Chicago started to support twenty years ago is unrecognizable today.  All that is left is the name. Why is that enough to generate such enthusiasm, passion, and undying support?

As importantly why do we insist to such a degree on belonging to groups which have little to do with the promotion of our interests? Labels and denominations are common everywhere from religious faith to football. It simply doesn't matter what organization you belong to or what team you follow. Belonging is the thing. 

Sports is the most curious affiliation for it has no purpose other than sharing. Belonging to men’s groups, PTAs, neighborhood associations, and a thousand other groups organized to promote or protect, serve, accommodate, or defend has benefits for both members and beneficiaries. There is an outcome to a meeting about additional funding for resource teachers, fewer battered wives, a neighborhood watch; but hooting and hollering for the Wolverines is purely and simply camaraderie, and one that carries on after the weekend. 

 

Mondays at the office was a rehash of the Sunday matchup.  Tuesday was more of the same but down to individual players, fumbles, goal line stands, and coaching mistakes.  Wednesday looked forward to the following Sunday, odds and premonitions. Thursday was all about standings, injuries, and revised betting lines.  Friday was prayer day - that the ankle would heal in time, that the defense tightened up, that the jackrabbit from Cleveland could be stopped. 

It was all about 'our team' and its fortunes. If we lost, Monday would be a quiet day, a sympathetic day.  It hurt to lose, it meant more losses could follow.  The team might not be what we thought it would be. Victory meant beers at McSorley's, rounds for everybody. 

Eastern Mississippi prepared for the State game well before Saturday. Parades, barbecues, festoons, and tailgate parties began early and went late.  The team would feel the energy, absorb the enthusiasm and the passion, and would carry it onto the field.  The events were part of the camaraderie, the communal energy, and the commitment, but something else was in the air, carried up and over Aberdeen to Starkville to the stadium, to the grass and the stands, to the majorettes, the whistles and cannons. 

The stadiums in the Midwest are enormous - Michigan 107,000;  Ohio State and Texas A&M 103,000 - and each are packed to the gills on Saturday afternoon; and the game itself an apotheosis.  An impossible number of fans in roaring for their team, standing through four quarters, on edge, pins and needles, and then when the final runner crosses the goal line in victory, a climax beyond expectation, a release of love, empathy, and wildly enthusiastic belonging. 

Yale, Harvard, and the rest of the Ivy League have always been indifferent about their sports teams.  Men were there to become Presidents, Senators, and scientists not jocks; and the Saturday tailgate parties had little do to with real fandom, that devotional passion of Louie from Queens, but drinking with 'our crowd', sharing vignettes about the summer on Nantucket or plans to ski at Gstaad over Christmas.   No one really cared who won or lost the Columbia-Brown game. Whoever won would lose next week,  There was no such thing as momentum in the Ivy League, no life depended on it.

The days of affirmative action have added a bit of competition to the league, and while it is not exactly the SEC, Alabama or Old Miss, it is blacker than in years past, faster, and more serious; but the Old Blues knew why their teams were better and kept their diffidence intact.  The game - even The Game, the final game of the year between Yale and Harvard - was of minor importance. 

Meanwhile Ohio State sweatshirts were flying off the shelves, tickets were not to be had, and the stadium filled up long before the starting whistle.  It was better than High Mass, better than anything, more...more, well, more everything.  Winning was a must, and when the team ran onto the field, the stands erupted with cheers and whoops and hollers that had been building for a week.

The true, unencumbered, unaffiliated individual is a rare bird, an outlier, and a threat.  A lack of affiliation is taken for a lack of commitment; and a lack of commitment can only mean a lack of moral values, faith, and sincerity.  Anyone who does not belong to something is suspect.  Belonging is a higher value which shows the better side of humanity.  A person who belongs cannot, ipso facto, be niggardly or selfish.  Belonging bestows value as well as provide it.

And no more than at an Ohio State game.  Football is the meme, the signifier - a validation of community, belonging, and participation. A Fall Saturday in Columbus, Ohio is not just any day, it is the day, the one we have been waiting for, the only one. 

Fans have been packing stadiums ever since the Roman coliseum.   English club football fans are rabid hooligans, teddy boy gangbangers for whom team spirit goes cerebellum - wild and unrestrained.  Fandom makes up for a shitty life in the council house.  Drunken, brawling love for Arsenal is OK.  For these laddies the match is really the be all and end all. 

American fandom is a lot tamer with a lot less negative energy, a lot more communal and virtually no hate.  An American thing, a Midwestern thing; but still all in all, like everywhere else the stadium is a cathedral