The Common Fan

“Run the damn ball!” “I could’ve called a better game!” “Hey coach, how could you possibly miss what my friends and I clearly see?” If you engage people in sports debate, you will meet a lot of “sofa-coaches” (a term I created to better describe a person who makes conclusions about sports from quasi-sources like ESPN highlights). 

As fans, we must be aware of our inherent biases, especially our partiality to the home team; not only do we overrate our favorite hometown players and underrate the players we hate, we succumb to the pressure of majority opinion.  Living just outside of Philadelphia has subjected to me all sorts of crazy sports opinions.  You learn more about the groupthink of fans while stuck in traffic on I-95 than you could ever imagine – aside from spending a few hours at a Philly pub following a brutal Eagles loss. 

The euphoria and agony that reverberates through school hallways and office cubicles alike is inescapable.  Even the soccer moms, the tree-huggers, and the elderly cannot escape the ubiquity of sports opinion (excuse my use of these pejorative terms). 

Exhibit A: Football.  Not only do the pseudoscientists who call themselves color commentators blind the casual fan to the unadulterated truth, but also HALF the screen is actually cut-off during NFL broadcasts.  Half! You know, like fifty-percent.  The fact that we cannot see what is going on in the secondary (unless we are viewing ‘coaches’All-22 film or attend the game) alters our perception of football reality.  This prevents us from seeing all successful coverages because the ball does not go to a particular receiver – it also it accentuates blown coverages (because that is usually where the ball goes).

When a team makes a ‘head-scratching’ draft pick or play call, the casual fan is instantly transformed into an assistant coach.  Let us examine this phenomenon – a casual fan deduces his opinion from commentators, ESPN, and other casual fans, while head coaches spend their entire life dissecting and analyzing every decision (much the same way people do in their own respective careers).  Whether or not their decisions works out, it is always more informed and researched than our own impulsive judgments.  This should go without saying, but it must be said considering that entities like the ‘Dirty-30’ actually exist – a ‘mob-esque’ conglomerate of Eagles fans that assemble on draft day to boo the team’s pick – originating at the 1999 NFL draft when the Eagles controversially (but correctly) selected Donovan McNabb over Heisman winner Ricky Williams.  

It should be of little significance what the casual fan believes, but the way credulous fans digest commercialized sports analyses is incredible – they will vehemently stand by ‘their’ opinion, almost as if it was fashioned entirely within their own mind.  I liken this to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knocking on my door and expecting me to spontaneously join their faith – only its Sunday NFL countdown leaching into my brain through osmosis while Chris Berman dubs “whoop, whoop!” over weekly NFL ‘ankle-breakers.’ 

As we move forward, we should transition from using these various media as a source of concrete knowledge to a source of entertainment that sheds a dim-light on the intricacy of sports.  Not everyone wishes to be an expert, but the dichotomy between the “sofa-coach” and professional sports personnel is greater than we imagine.

Would you tell an architect that his building is structurally unsound because you walk by it everyday?  This rhetorical question is a device used to illustrate how absurd it truly is to think you know more (in any instance) than your favorite team’s coach, GM, or personal trainer.  So when you scream “F*** you!” from the nosebleeds, expect hoards of inebriated fans to stroke your ego by nodding their heads in agreement and perpetuating the legend of The Common Fan.