It’s easy to understand why someone would choose the Patriots as their favorite sports team.
They’ve won five Super Bowls over the past 16 years.
Shoot, they’ve BEEN to 10 of them, more than any other team.
With Tom Brady, they probably have the greatest quarterback of all time.
It kind of hurt to say that.
The team has consistently been so good for so long, that it’s a bit of a surprise to find out they don’t have the largest fan base.
That would be the Dallas Cowboys, a team that has been to zero Super Bowls over the past 16 years.
You know who else has a lot of fans? The Chicago Cubs.
They have more Major League Baseball fans than all other teams except the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, and Boston Red Sox, despite not winning a World Series for 108 years.
That’s like over four generations- the Cubs did not win one championship, yet their fans remained loyal.
This 100 year old lady waited, well, you know, 100 years for this moment to happen.
I only had to wait 30 years for my Royals to win a championship, but I guess it felt like 100 due to years like 2004, 2005, and 2006, where they averaged 103 losses a season.
Yep, I went to Royals games those seasons. Tickets were cheap.
And then there’s my Kansas City Chiefs.
I’ve been a fan for almost my entire life, and during my entire life, they haven’t even made it to one Super Bowl.
They won their one and only Super Bowl back in 1970, 48 years ago.
What the heck? Why do fans like me, year after year, cheer for mediocre or just straight up bad teams?
First, it’s important to understand why, at a certain point in someone’s life, they decide to pick a sports team and decide to like them to begin with.
These reasons vary. Often this person is simply just heavily influenced by someone heavily influential to their lives.
Uncle Billy, who this person loves, loves Arsenal, so now this person loves Arsenal, too.
Or perhaps this person falls in love with a team because the team infatuates them through glory, like how I fell in love with the Kansas City Chiefs as they made playoff runs during the early 1990s.
Even mediocre teams are good some years.
Or perhaps this team is the hometown team.
The person grew up in Denver, and thus, inevitably, cannot escape being a Denver Nuggets fan.
Whatever the reason why the person first liked a team, at some point later on, this person may decide to go all in.
Stocking up on apparel. Commenting on their team’s message boards on a daily basis. Buying season tickets. Tailgating before every game.
Regularly hanging out with people because they like the same team, even if they’re a jerkface.
I’m hoping you notice a pattern here. After becoming a super fan, it gets communal fairly quickly.
About the time the person starts referring to their team as if they were on it
We won last night! No, no you did not win anything
they also develop a special bond with the community of fans just like them.
Season ticket holders of the seats next to this person become one of this person’s best friends.
Humans desperately want to feel connected, to be part of a community, and being a sports fan is a great way to fulfill that.
Even as players change, it doesn’t seem to matter. Super fans care much more about the uniform than the players.
But what about if this person’s team rarely wins? Or really rarely wins.
In most cultures, people who win are praised and people who lose are forgotten.
But the truth is, we are all losers.
Only a lucky few can come out on top, and every sports team that competes except one loses their last game of the season.
including the Patriots this past year.
In our own lives, it’s the constant disappointment that makes the occasional fortune so much more glorious.
What’s fascinating is, the worse a team is, the more a superfan will remain loyal to them.
But it’s true, this person’s team is an extension of their identity.
Fans stick with bad teams because most become fans before they come of age.
Many watch a sports team for the first time with a loved one, and therefore associate the emotional bond with the loved one with the team.
Fans also stick with bad teams because those teams are a permanent fixture of their community.
By having a connection to the team, they have a connection to their city.
I know this is not the best comparison, but think of the bonds soldiers develop in horrible combat.
Those who experience pain together become closer.
Psychologists have concluded that shared pain has positive social consequences.
That’s right, folks, so what I am saying is fans of bad teams show more cooperation and solidarity than fans of good teams.
And when those bad teams finally win it all, this is what can happen.
Here’s 800,000 Royals fans swarming downtown Kansas City to celebrate their 2015 World Series win.
800,000 former losers, now winners.
Strangers high fiving and hugging each other. People who came from hundreds of miles away, who couldn’t find a place to park so they just left their car on the highway.
Of the 800,000 in attendance, there had to be thousands of kids who just became Royals fans that very day, and will likely be Royals fans the rest of their lives, even if the Royals never make the playoffs again. They’re stuck.
And if baseball, a simple game invented less than 200 years ago, can cause this much unity and this much jubilation I think we’d best keep it around, despite all the misery it usually brings.