On Newsletter #110
On Being a Fair-Weather Fan
Defending a much-despised role.
How Do Your Root?
There are many ways to be a fan of a sports team. Perhaps it might be less controversial to say, “There isn’t just one way to be a fan.” Either way, our limited time, resources, and emotional energy don't permit us to (1) have a favorite team in every collegiate and professional sports league, while also (2) following them equally closely.
I suppose if you make your living in the arena of sports—whether as an analyst, commentator, coach, or player—this bold claim might require more caveats. However, my claim may hold up even better for such people. For example, how could one effectively coach one team in one sport while also paying attention to developments in every team and across every league? It’s simply unfeasible. However, it’s also undesirable.
So what's a fair-weather fan. Such a fan actively and eagerly roots for his team(s) when it/they are succeeding, but disengages when they aren’t. While I could argue that this is the most common kind of fandom in the world, it also manages to be the most despised kind. “Where have you been all of this time? Sure, now you want to find a ticket to the game when they’ve gotten good! Why, I didn’t even know you rooted for that team! I guess you decided to dust that cap off and wear it now that your team is in the playoffs!”
I admit that there is something that seems less admirable about those who bail on people when the going gets tough, as opposed to those who “keep the faith.” They show up and cheer even when there’s not much to warrant such cheers. And in time, almost always, patient support is rewarded. (Unless you are a New York Jets fan.)
Yet let me make a counterclaim that has the benefit of common sense and practicality behind it: why elect to give yourself to enterprises in your spare time that only bring frustration?
Remaining involved and interested in people when they struggle exists in an entirely different moral register. Remaining engaged when our church goes through a rough patch isn’t just admirable, but biblical! Tying our attention and emotions to sports teams during sustained incompetence and/or underperformance strikes me as an entirely different category. Because it is.
You could emphasize the millions of dollars professional athletes are being paid only to underperform and leave you disappointed. You could point to the fact that you’re spending hours on a weeknight rooting for 19-year-olds in gym shorts, when you could be watching a documentary, reading a book, or connecting with your family. Yes and yes, many arguments like these are persuasive for most. But allow me to share a brief anecdote. Then I’ll argue for how being something like a fair-weather fan is sensible.
Meet the Gamecocks
In collegiate sports, I root for USC. The real USC: the University of South Carolina. Despite some flirtations with Duke basketball (I attended grad school there), I am first and foremost a fan of South Carolina sports. They’ve at times been excellent at baseball, women’s basketball, and women’s equestrian. They have occasionally been good at football, though that has tended to be in the form of a few three-to-five-year runs. Otherwise, they’ve not been a top ten or 20 program in much else for any length of time.
Yet as I write this, the men’s basketball team are 24-5. They are ranked 17th in the AP Top 25. They just missed a share of their regular-season conference title by one game. Yet here they are on the brink of an NCAA Tournament berth under second-year coach Lamont Paris. And they were picked in the pre-season to finish last in their conference. (They were 11-21 last season).
You must understand, South Carolina’s men’s basketball team has been poor to average for most of their history. Even when they’ve been good, they’ve been knocked out of the NCAA Tournament early repeatedly. Besides their one, magical trip to the Final Four in 2016-17 (and it was magical!), they’ve been a big yawn.
I made up my mind several years ago that I wouldn’t watch any South Carolina games (in any sport) unless they demonstrated competitiveness first. Not only was it a waste of my precious time, but it was a discouragement, a persistent reminder that we’ll never be Ohio State or Alabama in football, Duke or UNC in basketball, or a half dozen other storied programs.
Every now and again you find a legendary coach—a Steve Spurrier, a Ray Tanner, a Dawn Staley—but South Carolina is simply a solid university with a few excellent programs, and mostly up-and-down teams (at least in the sports I care most about). I didn’t attend there, nor will I. I’m not a booster. And half the time I can’t watch their games on my television anyway.
In Defense of Fair-Weather Fandom
Being a fair-weather fan doesn’t mean you jump on other bandwagons who come along. It doesn’t mean you despise your preferred team/teams. It means you’re realistic about their probability of success and honest about their actual success. It means you’re responsible with your time, money, and especially emotional energy.
Remember that “fan” is short for “fanatic.” One might argue that we shouldn’t be fanatical about hardly anything. But if for most people “fan” simply refers to “one who roots for a player, team, or sport and hopes for their success,” then the stakes are lower. The exception is that we are all emotional creatures. Coupled with the perennial temptation to idolatry, and we had better be careful about what we give ourselves to. To paraphrase a cliché, God isn’t worried about us having stuff, but He is concerned about stuff having us. Undying loyalty and emotional fealty to the outcome of games sounds like “being had” to me.
Just take a look at the featured image associated with this post. (Credit to David Jensen). This is what South Carolina fans did after a big victory over Kentucky in January. They stormed the court, costing their university a $100,000 fine.
Was it worth it? I suppose if you didn’t have to pay the fine directly, it felt good to explode onto the court. But what did you really win besides a regular-season game? I’m reminded of some classic grown-up advice: “Act like you’ve been here before.”
I don’t know how other big USC fans like Gowdy Cannon over at REO would feel about this argument. There is a positive case to make for sports and fandom. (I’ve alluded to it here already.) But I’ve lately been persuaded of the benefits of taking a disciplined step back from teams, while reengaging later when the promise of team success is heightened. This is just what I plan to do as the NCAA Tournament approaches and South Carolina’s men’s hoops hopefully makes a surprise return.
In All Things, Temperance.
Philippians 4:8 invites us to dwell on the true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and praiseworthy. Sport (yes, singular) can be that. Physical competition can, at times, provide that. But any good thing can be corrupted. Even if the problem lies more with us as participants than the activity itself, sometimes good judgment says, “Step back until you learn not to take this too seriously.”
Of course, such an attitude is also appropriate in other contexts. Sometimes we substitute love for God with serving God. It seems like a fine distinction, but the gap is revealed whenever we don’t feel we can love God unless we are serving Him in a very specific way. The Local church becomes a means to our emotional and psychological ends, not the pillar and buttress of truth (1 Tin. 3:15). But we instrumentalize service to our detriment.
Likewise, if we make fandom about identity, meaning, purpose, or pride, then we’ve lost the good of sports.
Follow-Up:
In my last newsletter I mentioned the importance of rightly reading news stories versus headlines. This is especially true concerning the most contested issues of our time, such as the body, gender, sexuality, and fertility/infertility. I was reminded of some of Matthew Lee Anderson’s wise words from a past newsletter about how we’re thinking (or not thinking) about the problem of America’s “surplus embryos.” Only could such a phrase (and subject) be plausible in a time and place like twenty-first century America. It’s especially important as we try to think and speak wisely about developments surrounding the moral and legal status of embryos, surrogacy, and practices like IVF.
Now I wish Anderson said more about the legitimacy of embryo adoption—something people will know that my wife and I have a rather clear view on. But I do appreciate him helping us recognize the massive scale of our moral dilemma before suggesting any one specific practice as a kind of solution.
What I’m Reading or Rereading:
Émile Perreau-Saussine, Alasdair McIntyre: An Intellectual Biography.
Teresa Lynn Sidebotham, Handling Allegations in Ministry: Responses and Investigations.
Quote of the Week:
The road to Paradise, whether viewed as the way back or the way ahead, is now barred to rebel mankind. The profoundest way to read history is to recognize that the human race has, in effect, been trying to get back to Eden under its own steam all along; the utopian motive has been there, sometimes veiled but always potent, throughout the whole checkered career of humanity. But our fallen race has never managed in this way to reenter Paradise, nor will it ever. No godless heaven will ever be found, or built, on earth, no matter how far we search or how hard we try. God has decreed that utopianism will fail. He has other plans.
J. I. Packer and Thomas Howard, Christianity: The True Humanism.
Common Grace Wisdom (CGW): Truths about Poverty and “Luxury Beliefs.”
I’m intrigued by Rob Henderson’s new memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. It has struck a nerve with many reviewers. I think Rod Dreher is correct when he suggests that this book will become for 2024 readers what J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy was to readers in 2018.
One reason I appreciate Henderson is how he provides a more personal look at what so much of the empirical research shows about the nature and dynamics of poverty, class, and social advancement: family structure matters! Perhaps Henderson’s most unique contribution to the discussion is the concept of “luxury beliefs,” which refers to beliefs and opinions which “confer status on the affluent while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.”
“Defund the Police” could be said to be one such belief. It’s quite convenient to be the university student (raised in a gated community) protesting an incident of police brutality, arguing for the abolition of police as the solution. And yet less policing overwhelmingly hurts poor communities—ones the protestor purportedly is helping through his social justice activism.
For more on Henderson’s story and thought, check out this abridged discussion with Glenn Loury.
Parting Shot
The 2024 Total Solar Eclipse is fast-approaching (April 8). Missouri is not only one of a handful of states from which the eclipse can be viewed, but my own region (plus a little further south) is one of the very best spots to view it from. For a small fee (or maybe just a cup of coffee), I’ll rent out my downstairs bedroom for those who feel like coming out to witness history. It’s your last chance until 2044 to view such a celestial event!
