Celebrities are a painful reminder of the damage caused by bandwagon fans
As long as there has been sport there has been bandwagon fans. The drawings of Paleolithic men etched on the walls of caves tens of thousands of years ago depicted these rituals. According to Encino Man the first bandwagon fans consisted of brutes and women folk who only became admirers of Encino Man after he hath whooped his neighbor’s ass in a skull-bashing contest. Despite the fact that he lived alongside these pioneers of fair weather they ignored his existence until they wanted to be a part of his path to glory. Fast-forward 20,000 years and not much has changed. Enter, our modern day caveman, Alexander Ovechkin. A.O. has brought the District out of a sports coma in a big way. People who have been avoiding sporting events for years now have a reason to return to the stadiums, excuse me one stadium, and those who never thought they would see a winner in our Nation’s capital are starting to whisper about the possibility of a world championship. All and all it’s a phenomenal time to be a Caps fan. Perhaps that’s why there are so many Caps fans sprouting up all over the world. As much as I’d like to analyze our Euro fan-base the focus of this note is on the North American phenomena of the bandwagon fan, I couldn’t possibly do the stein -chugging, soccer-loving hooligans of the world justice because of my lack of first-hand interaction with their crazy asses.
If you call a true sports fan a bandwagon fan, you might as well kick a pigeon in front of Mike Tyson because you’re going to die. Nothing conjures up the pain and suffering of a die-hard fan like being grouped together with the people who have not been losing sleep over your teams loses for the past umpteen years. This is a bigger sin than calling a Tar Heel fan a Dookie, or a Buckeye fan a Wolverine. You just don’t do it. Thus, we must all have some means of recognizing die-hard fans from those who are just along for the ride to avoid unnecessary homicides and the like.
Because the Caps are our shiny, new toy and our inspiration for this article we will use their current situation as an example but you can fill in which ever team you like because there is at least one in every sport, each season (SEE for example, Tampa Bay Rays, Jordan’s Bulls and Boston anything). The Caps are not your typical bandwagon team. They did not come from obscurity and their success has been building since the NHL got back from its little lockout in 2004-05. Thus, these fans may be harder to pick out than the Rays fans that filled Tropicana field for the World Series last year with stickers on their brand-new, flat-billed ball caps. Although trivia about retired players and current rosters may immediately expose some bandwagon fans, the intelligent ones will be privy to this information thanks to the Internet and will be more prepared for your inquisition than a Soviet spy. Thus other avenues should be traversed. More efficient identifying questions focus on tricking the bandwagon fan and catching them in their web of lies. Casual conversation spliced with misinformation will let you know if you are dealing with a true fan or a poser. I real fan will not hesitate to interrupt you and correct information about a player or the team while a bandwagon fan is likely to let it slide assuming that it is just “something they missed in their Google search.” Wearing 3 Al Iafrate jerseys and a Don Beaupre blocker won’t shield a bandwagon Caps fan from this type of exposure. The same can be done for most teams but this becomes inherently more difficult when dealing with expansion teams.
Luckily the DC area only yields one team that resembles an expansion team, that being the Nats, and any poor bastard who roots for them knows that only bandwagon coming to town is anytime soon is the one with 100 loses on it. Overall bandwagon fans are relatively harmless but they should be identified so that they do not tarnish the images of our illustrious fan bases. Such a tragedy would occur if a loudmouth bandwagon fan (oxymoron) gets himself into a showdown with a true fan from an opposing squad. Upon viewing such a slaughter, a true fan should not hesitate to be the third-man-in on the altercation and should worry about bashing the bandwagoner at a later time. If such an accident occurs without intervention it should immediately be deleted from the memory bank like the Chinese do for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. In general I don’t have much of a problem with bandwagon fans, they pump revenue into the sports I love and they separate the maniacs like me when they fill the stadiums.
As a side note I really don’t think there should be many rules of fandom outside of loyalty. I have no problem with you rooting for the Yankees, 49ers, Bulls and Duke basketball if that is where your allegiance has always been. Also if you want to have sex with Carlos Mencia, you just go ahead, I’m not here to judge you. The reasoning for the teams you root for is immaterial. I don’t care if it was your dad’s team or your grandma bought you a jersey when you had your first nocturnal emission. Your teams are your teams but you better be prepared to stick with that team forever, barring a short list of exceptions like: team relocation, growing up in a city that didn't field a team for a specific sport or marrying into franchise ownership which no one reading this blog will ever have to worry about. If you aren’t an athlete or a professional gambler and you only root for individual athletes kill yourself.
For anyone who is concerned that someone close to them may be a bandwagon fan or may be on the verge of becoming one please read this Bill Simmons article from a few years ago which lays the groundwork for bandwagon prevention and intervention. Also, if you are more proactive you could just put a plastic bag over his head and whisper, “Goodnight sweet prince.”
And for your daily dose of pleasure. I know where amazing happens. As always, Hail.
If you call a true sports fan a bandwagon fan, you might as well kick a pigeon in front of Mike Tyson because you’re going to die. Nothing conjures up the pain and suffering of a die-hard fan like being grouped together with the people who have not been losing sleep over your teams loses for the past umpteen years. This is a bigger sin than calling a Tar Heel fan a Dookie, or a Buckeye fan a Wolverine. You just don’t do it. Thus, we must all have some means of recognizing die-hard fans from those who are just along for the ride to avoid unnecessary homicides and the like.
Because the Caps are our shiny, new toy and our inspiration for this article we will use their current situation as an example but you can fill in which ever team you like because there is at least one in every sport, each season (SEE for example, Tampa Bay Rays, Jordan’s Bulls and Boston anything). The Caps are not your typical bandwagon team. They did not come from obscurity and their success has been building since the NHL got back from its little lockout in 2004-05. Thus, these fans may be harder to pick out than the Rays fans that filled Tropicana field for the World Series last year with stickers on their brand-new, flat-billed ball caps. Although trivia about retired players and current rosters may immediately expose some bandwagon fans, the intelligent ones will be privy to this information thanks to the Internet and will be more prepared for your inquisition than a Soviet spy. Thus other avenues should be traversed. More efficient identifying questions focus on tricking the bandwagon fan and catching them in their web of lies. Casual conversation spliced with misinformation will let you know if you are dealing with a true fan or a poser. I real fan will not hesitate to interrupt you and correct information about a player or the team while a bandwagon fan is likely to let it slide assuming that it is just “something they missed in their Google search.” Wearing 3 Al Iafrate jerseys and a Don Beaupre blocker won’t shield a bandwagon Caps fan from this type of exposure. The same can be done for most teams but this becomes inherently more difficult when dealing with expansion teams.
Luckily the DC area only yields one team that resembles an expansion team, that being the Nats, and any poor bastard who roots for them knows that only bandwagon coming to town is anytime soon is the one with 100 loses on it. Overall bandwagon fans are relatively harmless but they should be identified so that they do not tarnish the images of our illustrious fan bases. Such a tragedy would occur if a loudmouth bandwagon fan (oxymoron) gets himself into a showdown with a true fan from an opposing squad. Upon viewing such a slaughter, a true fan should not hesitate to be the third-man-in on the altercation and should worry about bashing the bandwagoner at a later time. If such an accident occurs without intervention it should immediately be deleted from the memory bank like the Chinese do for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. In general I don’t have much of a problem with bandwagon fans, they pump revenue into the sports I love and they separate the maniacs like me when they fill the stadiums.
As a side note I really don’t think there should be many rules of fandom outside of loyalty. I have no problem with you rooting for the Yankees, 49ers, Bulls and Duke basketball if that is where your allegiance has always been. Also if you want to have sex with Carlos Mencia, you just go ahead, I’m not here to judge you. The reasoning for the teams you root for is immaterial. I don’t care if it was your dad’s team or your grandma bought you a jersey when you had your first nocturnal emission. Your teams are your teams but you better be prepared to stick with that team forever, barring a short list of exceptions like: team relocation, growing up in a city that didn't field a team for a specific sport or marrying into franchise ownership which no one reading this blog will ever have to worry about. If you aren’t an athlete or a professional gambler and you only root for individual athletes kill yourself.
For anyone who is concerned that someone close to them may be a bandwagon fan or may be on the verge of becoming one please read this Bill Simmons article from a few years ago which lays the groundwork for bandwagon prevention and intervention. Also, if you are more proactive you could just put a plastic bag over his head and whisper, “Goodnight sweet prince.”
And for your daily dose of pleasure. I know where amazing happens. As always, Hail.
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