No one likes to cheer for a team that loses. When I talk about fair weather fans, I generally am referring to those people over the age of 12 who can control what team they like and teams that have experienced good and bad seasons. Basically, people who jump on a team's bandwagon because that team is successful and then act as if they won the lottery when the team wins a game, but a few years later when the team is less successful that person does not have as much time to go to games and does not really follow along but has been seen wearing other team's hats and apparel.
There is nothing wrong with this morally and legally, but people who do this shit should be tortured or at least ridiculed in a public fashion. Anyone who follows sports should be annoyed by fair weather fans because they are fictionally feeling the joy of a team's success to be a part of a group and that is annoying and very lemming-ish. There are varying degrees and types of fair weather fans, I won't pull a Bill Simmons and list them, but suffice to say it annoys me and there are more than a couple of types.
Jemele Hill disagrees. Kind of. Mostly, she also completely misses the concept of a fair weather fans and how you can't attach that label to a franchise that is 10 years old. Then she talks about every other team that has bandwagon fans, making it seem as if it is fine to be a bandwagoneer. (Is there anyone else better at taking a completely incorrect point of view and just fucking running with it?)
When the cameras panned the Rays' games during the ALCS, they zeroed in on a group of young ladies wearing Rays halter tops, who, unless they started cheering for Tampa Bay as embryos, it's safe to assume they probably weren't lifelong fans.
Jemele Hill uses her investigative abilities to deduce this fact. They were probably not lifelong fans and these are a type of fair weather fan that annoys me. Clearly these women have self esteem issues that need to be addressed with a psychiatrist or their father did not truly love them.
Really these girls are not the fair weather problem. Check out the first photo displayed in the article. THAT is the problem. These guys are huge Rays fans as of two weeks ago and if the Rays make consecutive World Series they will be telling friends what huge fans they are and writing in to the Tampa equivalent of Bill Simmons making jokes about the team. Seriously though, those three guys deserve a pop quiz on Rays history. Severe fair weather fan douchebags. The problem is that the Rays are 10 years old. This is their first taste of playoff success, so pretty much every fan is bound to be a bandwagon fan. They have never experienced this type of success before. I think we can excuse them for the enthusiasm. Jemele just starts losing me when she compares their fans this year to other teams fair weather fans...as we will see when I stop rambling about fair weather fans.
There is a difference in the Rays situation and other franchises. Let me give an example from one of my favorite teams which is also pretty young: In 1996 the Carolina Panthers made the NFC Championship game against Green Bay, the stadium was packed and everyone loved them. In 2001, I attended a game where there were 15,000 people in a 76,000 person stadium when the Panthers were 1-15. Then in 2004 I attended a football game against the Dallas Cowboys where the stadium was packed again with fans who loved the game and the Panthers so very much. The fair weathers showed up again.
A team has to experience a high and a low before the fans can be considered fair weather. It just makes sense. You can't call a fan base that has never had a winning season fair weather when the team does have a winning season for once. If the Rays suck for three more years, then this season happens, then I would say these are a lot of fair weather fans that cheer for the team.
NOW Jemele loses me when she misunderstands this and compares them to more established franchise's fan base.
Surely, you've noticed Rays fans have multiplied like Gremlins since Tampa Bay disposed of the Red Sox and advanced to the World Series. It doesn't make Rays fans less authentic. In fact, it makes them more real.
Using her previously mentioned investigative skills, Jemele Hill understands the concept that popular teams will generally have more fans come to games. Also, just because the team is more "real" for having fans is not a reason we should not criticize these fans for jumping on the bandwagon. The key point is this though. No one is criticizing the Rays fans for being bandwagon jumpers. At least that I have read about.
So yet again, Jemele Hill is creating something that doesn't exist, only to refute it.
Rays fans didn't behave any differently than practically every die-hard fan base. Show me an established team, and I'll show you how their immense popularity was almost always tied to winning
No shit, Einstein. I would not quite call the Rays fan base "die hard" quite yet though. This is the very definition of a bandwagon fan, someone who ties his/her love for the team to that team's popularity. That doesn't make the bandwagon fans any more annoying or allow us to make excuses for these people.
At one time, Red Sox Nation was eerily similar to Tampa's cowbell crowd. The year before the Red Sox appeared in the 1986 World Series, their attendance was lower than Rays' this season.
Red Sox Nation! I will take "fake terms created by the media" for $100 Alex.
Attendance kind of annoys me as an indicator of fair weather fan-dom. I personally can not afford to go too many of my favorite pro football team's games, not because I don't love them and would not die for them in a William Wallace fashion, but because the tickets are outrageously expensive and it is a pain in the ass to drive in insane and crazy traffic 8 times a year. Am I lazy? Yes, but I watch every game and follow the team religiously and have since their inception.
I think a person can follow a team, not go to games, and still not be called a fair weather fan. I think the true test comes when all of a sudden people who can't name a single player for a team start talking about a team and it is pretty obvious these type of people showed up yesterday.
The Celtics' storied history did not make them immune to waning fan support, either. They ranked as low as 24th in attendance in 2004-05 before winning the NBA Finals last season.
I think we have established the fact all teams have fair weather fans and that all successful teams will continue to have them. What I don't understand is why this is acceptable to Jemele Hill. If you want to know this answer you are going to have to email her at ineverexplainanythingbutjustmakestatementsthathavenoproof@yahoo.com.
Just because everyone is doing it, does not mean being a fair weather fan is acceptable.
The Braves were at the bottom of the National League in attendance for three years (1988-90), but rose to be the No. 1 draw in the league by 1992. In 1991, the Braves soared from worst to first in the NL West standings, just like these Rays.
Braves fans are the absolute worst fans in the world. They are quiet at games and for being one of the top 3 most popular baseball teams in the United States they sure can't seem to draw a very good crowd. I find this unacceptable and if I lived in Atlanta I would attend frequently. They just drive me crazy. I will save my thoughts on them for an entire different post. It's coming I warn you.
"You have people who wore Red Sox gear to the first regular-season series in St. Pete and now they go to the playoff games decked out in their Longoria jersey shirt as if they were Rays fans all along," said R.J Anderson, editor of DRaysBay.com, a three-year-old Web site that offers comprehensive coverage of the Rays.
This is completely unacceptable, and if true, gives Red Sox and Rays fans a really bad name. Jemele supports her hypothesis that all teams like the Rays have fair weather fans by inteviewing a person who is a Rays fan. Probably should have interviewed another team's website editor I would think, just to help support your point. Of course, she has little clue on how to write a column, so this mistake is understandable.
Still, the articles says "Don't bash the Rays bandwagon" and she has never answered why we should not. "Everyone else is doing it," is not an answer. Next to world hunger, fair weather fan-dom is the next closest problem the world as a whole has.
The 1982 Cubs team that lost 89 games drew only 1.2 million fans, 10th among 12 NL teams at the time. Two years later, the Cubs' attendance spiked more than 50 percent after they won the NL East in 1984.
The Yankees sunk as low as 11th in the AL in attendance in both 1991 and '92 after failing to reach the postseason since 1981. Even during their run of four World Series titles in five seasons from 1996-2000, the Yanks never finished higher than third in AL attendance.
Blah, blah, blah. We believe you that all other teams do it, so why should we not bash the Rays bandwagon? (Though I don't believe it is a bandwagon yet, due to the fact this is their first taste of success)
Simply because all teams have bandwagons does not make it right to jump on the bandwagon. I don't have to explain this, it is just true.
If Jemele Hill stuck to this principle she would write shitty columns filled with poor logic and reasoning like everyone else does, as opposed to columns that consist of a fake argument she can refute poorly.
It took the Red Sox 40 years of winning to become Red Sox Nation, so it's unfair to criticize the Rays fans when their team isn't even as old as Dakota Fanning.
Red Sox Nation! The term ESPN has made up and continues to use.
This is kind of a reason why the Rays fans should not be mocked for being bandwagoneers. The problem is, no one is criticizing the Rays fans for being bandwagon fans. Again, not that I have read. I Googled "Rays fans bandwagon" and Jemele's article was the 3rd one that showed up, behind two hits for Yahoo Answers. She literally made up this argument and then refuted it.
There is no Rays bandwagon. It's just an open invitation.
Exactly, and then when the Rays start stinking again the fans will all disappear. Once they show up again, then they are bandwagon fans. I hate bandwagoneers.
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