Sports fans and their engagement with athletic communities

Sports Fans

Are you a HomeTowner or an Encyclopedia? Sport Fans Classified.

Have you ever taken a personality test, either for a job interview or even to gain entrance to a school? The results of those tests are designed to help figure out what makes you tick. An employer can figure out how you would work on a tem, or whether or not you'll be stealing pens from the supply closet. A school may be interested in how self-motivated you are. Usually these tests don't have clear cut answers -- each one of us seemed to have a little bit of this and a little bit of that all thrown in together. What if there were a similar test for sports fans? How would we classify them, and what kinds of categories would stand alone and which would overlap? Because there are so many different kinds of sports fans, this essay is devoted to just a few of the kinds. As in the mainstream personality tests, there is no clear answer when trying to classify sports fans.

The first type of sports fan is the HomeTowner. This fan loves all the local teams, and they're said to "bleed" the teams' colors. They either grew up in the city whose teams they love or had a parent who influenced them strongly in childhood. HomeTowners don't care very much about a game if their home team isn't involved or directly affected by the outcome. HomeTowners also have a hard time seeing the deficiencies in their own teams. If they're not careful, HomeTowners can easily become Entitled Fans. These fans believe that their team should always win, and that they are owed a title of championship. The good thing about Entitled Fans is that they are always optimistic. HomeTowners also give rise to the third kind of sports fan, the Romantic. This fan keeps a special place in his heart for favorite players and teams of bygone eras. Over time, the facts about these players and teams become obscured by nostalgia, and the Romantic can spend many hours lost in the past. Be prepared to hear repetitive stories from the Romantic, especially when the current team is having a bad year.

Some sports fans have shifting loyalties, and unlike the HomeTowner and the Romantic, they do not always cheer for the same team year after year. One type of this kind of fan is the Bandwagoner. This fan hops onto the coattails of whichever team is in first place at the time. These fans don't invest their time and energy and passion in one particular team. Instead, they cheer only for the best of the best. One way to tell if a fan is a Bandwagoner is to look at where their favorite teams are from. They often have favorite teams in different sports that are from different states, because they have no connection to place, only to winning. The opposite of the Bandwagoner is the Left Behind Fan. This person hasn't followed the team since it was in its glory days, but still thinks he or she knows all about them. An example would be a fan who doesn't know any of the Denver Broncos' quarterbacks since John Elway played. This fan can be a great match for the Romantic.