Sports basically have two sides. At the core, you’ve got the athletes who perform day after day to win every game and then you’ve got the fans who cheer these athletes on with all their might. Without fans, sports would obviously not be as popular, but it also wouldn’t be as fun to participate in. Playing in a game in a completely empty stadium would probably end up just being really weird. Fans are an important part of sports but with that important role people will ruin fanhood for others. Not all fans are good fans, some are simply just jerks. They can be the type of people who make watching a game no fun and even make the athletes hate what they’re doing. There are those fans out there and they are a problem.
The fan I think a lot of us probably know and also probably hate are the social media fans and they are the ones making college sports weird. I won’t lie, I tweet during every second of my favorite team’s games and follow my favorite athletes on certain sites but those aren’t the fans I am talking about here. The ones you need to watch out for are the ones sitting behind their phones tweeting at incoming recruits day and night acting like their tweets are going to make a difference to some five star high school superstar. That’s bad enough but then some take a step further and will send these high school seniors and juniors tweets telling them they hope they break a leg or get their career ended just because they didn’t pick the school they like. Grown men and women with kids sitting around on their iPhones cussing out kids who can’t even vote yet over a game.
Then for pro sports, we’ve got the fantasy sports addict. Not all fantasy players are like these types of people. I myslef play fantasy football every year, but the bad ones are really bad. Here you’ve got the people who want to win their leagues so bad they making watching games unbearable for everyone else. They can’t stick to one game even though everyone else wants to watch the hometown team play because all their players kicked off at 1 PM and are on 11 different channels. Instead of just enjoying a fantastic game overall they are keep cussing under their breath because they’re last second decision running back is playing awful, doesn’t matter if the whole game is possibly the best one ever. They also just won’t accept defeat, no, they then also take to social media cussing out players because they didn’t get one more yard or make that one catch. It’s a game people, get over it and yourself.
The final type of fan that can just get on your last nerve is the fan who doesn’t realize pro sports are, at the end of the day, a business. You are allowed to have your favorite team and favorite players and you’re also allowed to have those teams and players you hate, it's perfectly fine. What just pushes my buttons personally are those who then throw temper tantrums when their favorite player goes to the a rival team because they offered them upwards of $6,ooo,ooo more in salary. You’ll get on Facebook and read things like, “Wow. I can’t believe this scumbag went and played for them. #NoRespect.” Listen people, if a rival business calls you up and offers you a $15 per hour raise and you reject then you can complain but until then keep the mouth zipped and watch the game.
In the end, sports will always be sports. You’re going to have your good fans, your passionate fans, border line obsessive fans, and then the ones who ruin the game for everyone. If you are the type of fan that no one likes, please stop. Learn how to simply be a fan again and enjoy the game for the sake of me, your kids, your friends you invite over to drink beer on Sunday, the family next door, for everyone. Be a good person and just love the game again.
