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Throughout my life I’ve been both types of fan, loyalist and leach, depending on the sport. There is logic and even romance in each. But as I age I’m attracted more and more to the latter, to the Chuck Klosterman sort of sports fandom that resembles musical taste – polygamous and fickle. I think this is common for a lot of modern sports fans, the mass consumers of entertainment that we are. But such anti-affiliation, although aesthetically pleasing and easy, undercuts some of the most fundamental aspects of fandom no matter how much it tries to objectify a sport.

The trend toward changeable fandom parallels social trends. Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski don’t say this explicitly, but seem to imply it in an extract from their new book, Why England Lose: And Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained. They show, using numbers that seem a little dubious, how loyalist fans (whom they call Hornby-types in reference to Nick Hornby’s classic Fever Pitch) are actually a rare breed in modern British society despite stubborn myths to the contrary. They suggest that modern mobility of place and class cause changing devotions. They also suggest that such mobility causes the myth of the Hornby-type to persist. Rootlessness prompts a reactive nostalgia, a desire for an authenticity and identity that isn’t there.

Like the authors say, “fandom is not a static condition but a process.” Changing affiliation can come as a natural part of our development. As impressionable youths we latch onto a team with all our starry-eyed might. We crave idols and identity and acceptance and a professional team overflows with these things. That, or our dads make sure that a certain baseball team came as part of our genetic code. So we are loyal, at least for a while. But as we grow, more mobile and more discerning about our tastes, we feel freer to change affiliations. We realize that rootless fandom is easier and a lot less painful than unconditional devotion. Our fandom depends on taste, on the style we relate to or the players we like. Or it depends on convenience, where we are and when. It depends on us, not on the randomized geography of birthplace or our father’s heavy-handed indoctrination via the bed sheets he bought for us on our fourth birthday. This is how I watch most soccer, free and easy. And I’ve always believed it has given me objectivity, more sensitivity to the nature of the game because I’m not biased to the trivialities of one team . It’s not necessarily about the result. I route for good soccer and the teams that play it.

I’ve tried to adopt many foreign teams over the years, not just for their aesthetics. As a kid I liked Nottingham Forest because it sounded like some sort of fantastical place where goals grew along with the moss and trees. Since 2004, I’ve routed for Manchester City, after I told a Manchunian friend that I would adopt City if he adopted my then hapless Boston Red Sox. I tried to convince myself of my City fandom. I always liked Claudio Reyna, I reasoned. I liked the way City were a second-fiddle team in a soccer mad city with a first rate fan base. I liked that they had history. I felt like I owed it to City after the Red Sox won the World Series. I still say I like them, mostly to piss off fans of the other Big Four teams, and to keep appeasing the Sports Gods. But it never felt authentic.

No matter which club I try to adopt, foreign or American, something is missing. What attachment do I have to a club thousands of miles away? How much do I really know about their history, their pain? It’s in these questions that the loyalists have us beat, even if their attachment traces back to time they spent watching a certain team with an otherwise negligent dad – especially if it traces back to this. There are old world values in unconditional loyalty. You love a team like you love a father or wife, in sickness and in health, alcoholism or betrayal. Sometimes you don’t even know why you love them. You just do. They chose you.

The only soccer team I’ve ever supported unconditionally has been the U.S. national team. It has been painful. Occasionally glorious, but mostly painful, even when we squeak out wins against Trinidad and Tobago. But I feel invested in my fandom, in my infinitesimal stake in the team. I know the team’s history, its faults and its potential for success. But most importantly, I know what it feels like to truly route for them, to be crushed and then hopeful, over and over. Such devotion, as foolish or false as it can be, ties us to our surroundings – to our neighbors, to the communities and countries where we live. Loyal fandom helps us pare down the swirling and infinite chaos of the world, even the soccer world, to something we can hold onto and make sense of, to one game at a time, to wins and losses. We can see and feel the game in a way that means something to us, or at least means more than its entertainment value.

I think this is what separates sports from art or other entertainment fields. Although fans obviously want to be entertained, sports rely on a different value system than say music. Competition, or the idea of winning and losing, lies at the heart of any sport’s worth. Although winning can serve as one function of entertainment, it also serves as a value system that functions separately from, often in opposition to, a game’s style or capacity to entertain – however much us unaffiliated wish it didn’t. As much as fans follow sports be entertained, we also watch to feel the ecstasy and despair and hatred that wins and losses cause. We can’t feel the drama of the sport fully unless we attach some sort of loyalty to our fandom. The more loyalty, the greater the payoff or the let down. Without loyalty we lose the fundamental aspect of investment (economic and emotional and physical) in the teams we follow. We get stadiums muted by shrugging critics with pursed lips, polite and ultimately feckless. We get lower highs and higher lows.

I’m as responsible for this as anyone. But I hope I’m not representative of of too big of a trend. Otherwise we’re turning into a society of squabbling philosophers who don’t know what it means to be xenophobic toward “other” people for no reason. And where’s the fun in that?◊

Thanks to fredorrarci for compiling the quality pieces that spurred this belated post.

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