This originally started out as a diary about sports, but while writing it something struck me about the similarity of human behavior when it comes to fans of sports & politics. In psychology & philosophy, there's the concept of the "other", when dealing with how humans define themselves & their existence.
"What appear to be cultural units — human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations — are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization. Other phenomena or units must be represented as foreign or 'other' through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is 'privileged' or favored, and the other is devalued in some way."
With this in mind, Sports Illustrated has a story detailing the behavior of some fans of College Basketball who've taken support of their alma mater a bit too far. "You suck!" and "My team is better than yours!" Somehow, it all seems too familiar.....
There's some striking similarities when you start comparing die-hard sports fans & political junkies. For both, there are divisions & allegiances based on the area where you grew up, a family history of supporting one side or the other, and class divisions (e.g. rivalries between private & state schools). There's also the plague known as AM talk radio, where blowhards tell people what they should think about the day's happenings in both sports & politics.
But for both sports & politics, there's a small subset of fans, supporters, and devotees who are probably otherwise decent people, but become complete & total assholes in support of their cause, team, or candidate. The irony is they would probably be a better service to their favorite team, campaign or candidate if they would just shut up. For this group (and just so we're clear, I think this applies to some of the partisans on both sides of the primary debate), there is.....
- The ability to devalue the opponent & their supporters, and rationalize doing and excusing horrible behavior.
- The ability to be outraged by the most insignificant slight, or manipulate the opposition's actions or words into meaning things they don't for "locker-room material."
- The ability to rationalize away their own team or candidate's wrongs (which could even be the same thing or something similar to what they were outraged about the other side doing), and if that doesn't work employ the defense used by five-year-olds around the world: "They did bad stuff too!"
- The ability to believe, say, and spread the absolute worst things about the other team, player or candidate, even if it's just a rumor, poorly sourced (e.g. Drudge, some dude on his blog who heard something from a friend, etc.), or pure speculation.
- The ability to require multiple sources & maybe even the word of God himself, if it's something bad about their team or candidate.
- The ability to make broad assumptions based on limited data or flawed logic about a state, group, team, player, or candidate.
- The ability to create lame excuses and/or conspiracy theories when results don't conform to these assumptions, rather than just admitting their team or candidate lost (e.g. the refs fixed the game because they want big television market teams in the playoffs).
In SI's
article, they detail recent fan actions in college basketball, from harmless razzing of Maryland's graduation rate by the
"Cameron Crazies" at Duke
("Fear The Classroom" and "A Mind Is A Terrapin Thing To Waste") to fans of the Illini, still upset about Eric Gordon renegging on his verbal committment to the University of Illinois and going to Indiana University, throwing a drink on his mother in the stands.
In the print edition, they also go over some of the more notorious incidents in the history of the sport.
- In 1988, University of Arizona senior guard Steve Kerr was taunted by Arizona State fans with the murder of his father. In 1984, Malcolm Kerr, the president at American University of Beirut, was killed by terrorists in Lebabon. At a game in Tempe, Kerr was jeered by Sun Devils fans who yelled "PLO PLO" & "Where's your daddy?" Kerr scored 20 in the first half, with the Wildcats blowing the Sun Devils out.
- Then there's the story of Dominique Wilkins, who decided to become a Georgia Bulldog in 1979, instead of going to NC State. A star on his Washington, North Carolina championship team, after Wilkin's intentions were made known, his mother had her home to find her home & car vandalized. Also, the store that financed some of the family's furniture came to repossess it. She eventually moved to Georgia.
1979 is almost 30 years ago. Things have to better now, right?
Kevin Love knew it would be bad. But not this bad. Sure, he'd chosen UCLA over Oregon after being the consensus national player of the year as a senior at Lake Oswego (Ore.) High -- but what happened to his home state's rep for peace, love and understanding? On Jan. 23, the day before the Bruins-Ducks showdown in Eugene, Love found more than 30 voice-mail messages on his cellphone when UCLA stopped for a layover in San Francisco. He listened to the first one: If you guys win, we'll come to your house and kill your family. He played another: We'll find your hotel room and blow your f------ head off with a shotgun. He didn't bother to check the rest. "I mean, these were death threats," Love says. Shaken, he called his mother, Karen, and had her cancel his cellphone service.
[...]Stan Love knew it would be bad. But not this bad. Stan, who is Kevin's father and the sixth-leading scorer in Oregon's history, arrived at his alma mater that night in a party of seven including Karen, Kevin's 13-year-old sister, his grandmother and his uncle Mike, a cofounder of the Beach Boys. But good vibrations were in short supply. Stan says his family was pelted with popcorn cartons and empty cups, as well as a barrage of profane insults ("every filthy word you can think of"), including screams of "whores" that made Kevin's grandmother cry. "There were six-year-old kids with signs saying KEVIN LOVE SUCKS," says Stan, who endured a hail of one-finger salutes to snap photographs of the worst signs. "It was the grossest display of humanity I've ever been involved with. To think I'm sitting at the school where I played ball, and just because my kid didn't pick Oregon he gets abused like that? I'll never go back there."
See how stupid some of these jerk-off fans look? I wonder if it might be like what we'll think when looking back at some of the diaries & front-page stories around here 6 months from now?