Reasons to be a fan of a football team...
1) Connection to your youth.
In the sport of football, the 49ers led by Steve Young and Jerry Rice were my favorite team in all of sports. They were an entertaining team that was for nearly a decade during my youth on the short list of Super Bowl contenders. In other words, they were easy to root for. Then for my young adult life, the Niners were the exact opposite of my childhood. From 2003 til 2011, they were arguably the worst and least entertaining team in football. But because of the childhood connection, I stuck through it then enjoyed a three year run that was as good as any team in the NFL during that time before suffering through the meltdown of last year and this off season.
2) It's where you're from and it's the local team.
I'm from Iowa. I didn't really get college football during my younger years so I wasn't as connected to it. As a result, I grew up casually rooting for the Iowa Hawkeyes. My understanding was that they were good enough to beat the bad teams, not good enough to beat good teams, and they always beat Iowa State badly. Honestly didn't become a big fan until my teen years when ironically they were not very good. One of my favorite memories was listening to the radio while I was cleaning stalls when they beat Michigan State in 2000 ending a 13 game losing streak. I believe they were ranked, so I thought of it as a pretty big victory since Iowa was probably among the worst programs at the time. I remember thinking "**** yeah, way to go Hawks. Way to get some pride back." It was the first time that I felt connected to the team. That experience doesn't happen unless I'm from here.
3) You enjoy the way they play. X's and O's, team personality, level of excitement.
I have a friend of mine that is the same age as me that grew up as a Florida Gator fan. He enjoyed the fun n gun style of play which was of course fun to watch and was sort of unique when compared to the style of play most teams played at the time. Maybe you enjoy the fast paced read option of Oregon or the smash mouth style of Wisconsin. Wins are always the primary goal, but an exciting team can take the sting out of some losses especially when you know that after a tough loss that they can take it out on their opponent next week.
4) You enjoy what the program stands for. Whether it's graduation rates or how they mold young men to contribute to society.
You can look at this one of two ways. You're proud of your program doing it the "right way." Kids got to class, they graduate, and they are for the most part model citizens during their time on campus and represent the university well. Or maybe the program you root for takes on the challenge of bringing a talented but troubled recruits to campus. Sure, sometimes it backfires in your face, but for every backfire you get a few people onto campus and help steer their lives in the right direction. This would be the Bobby Bowden principle. Either approaches are admirable to me and I could see someone attaching themselves to a team or at least making the connection to the team stronger because of this.
5) They win all the damn time.
Not much feels better than winning.
6) You are alumni.
You went to school at the school and got caught up in the success they were having at the time.
With all of this said, how intelligent is it to keep banging your head against the wall if your are unsatisfied with the team and coaches performance week after week or even year after year based on reason #2? Why should the slow witted folks down in Alabama (I kid) get to have all of the fun when rooting for their favorite college football team every Saturday during the fall and the simple folks in Indiana be disappointed week after week and year after year based on the geography of your birth?
Reason #1 isn't much more logical than reason #2 if you are unsatisfied with your teams continual performance although I will say that after several down years, seeing that team you loved during your childhood winning again brings back some old memories. Reason #6 kind of falls in this category as well. It's not quite as good as a time machine, but it's cool and makes it worth sticking around. It also gives you a good reason to put that old team T-shirt you got 10 birthdays ago back on if you can still fit in it.
If there is a truly logical reason to support a team or a program, it is reason #3. When you truly enjoy the product, that is when it is worth your time and dollars. I think of it like this, if I grew up always liking Pepsi over Coca Cola, but then Pepsi changed their recipe for the worse and Coca Cola changed their recipe for the better, I'd be a idiot to keep drinking Pepsi even though I don't like it as much anymore and I'm aware that there is a better tasting product out there.
Who cares about reason #4? Football is mainly about entertainment so who cares about graduation rates? Well if everything is equal or close to being equal, would you want your earned dollars and free time spent rooting for and associating with an organization that follows the rules and represents the good in society or the program that doesn't? I understand that the whole what's right and what's wrong with college sports is very blurred. What's a player's obligation/commitment to school compared to what's the school's obligation/commitment to the player and all that. That's another topic altogether. Honestly, I'm more about wins and exciting football anymore, but I still find it hard to root for programs that don't seem to care about their players futures once they are done with football and support a less than moral culture.
Reason #5 is the easiest. It's logical and it probably goes in line with reason number #3 although I will point out that sometimes winning can be less than visually pleasing sometimes (looking at you LSU) so I put them in different categories. It's fun to root for the team that always wins, but keep in mind you're going to buy a lot of t-shirts. When success is achieved in life, often it's the struggle that makes the achievement all worthwhile. Really, the true struggle and effort is put in by the players, coaches, and staff. As fans though, we get to vicariously live through that and in its own goofy and twisted way is very rewarding. Aligning yourself with whoever the hot team is of the moment kind of deprives you of that.
With all of this said, if you enjoy rooting for the Iowa Hawkeyes for any of these reasons then that's fine. The message boards here have become quite as nasty place for negativity over the past few years. It's almost as if now a certain group of the fan base is almost rooting for failure and almost enjoy it. Kind of like a self fulfilling prophecy type of deal. If you are on that negative fringe and you are a Hawkeyes fan based on reasons #1 and #2 and you hate the coaching staff because of their stubborness and perceived unwillingness to change, than you are really no different than they are. There are options other than banging your head against the wall, complaining about the product on message boards and belittling the people that disagree with you and commenting on their grammatical errors. Such as watching a team you do enjoy watching, getting on their message boards, and belittling those people about their grammatical errors. Or you could just stop letting the success and failures of a group of people in cloth effecting your life so much. Either way, I hope you find some happiness somewhere because it doesn't look like you're finding it here.
1) Connection to your youth.
In the sport of football, the 49ers led by Steve Young and Jerry Rice were my favorite team in all of sports. They were an entertaining team that was for nearly a decade during my youth on the short list of Super Bowl contenders. In other words, they were easy to root for. Then for my young adult life, the Niners were the exact opposite of my childhood. From 2003 til 2011, they were arguably the worst and least entertaining team in football. But because of the childhood connection, I stuck through it then enjoyed a three year run that was as good as any team in the NFL during that time before suffering through the meltdown of last year and this off season.
2) It's where you're from and it's the local team.
I'm from Iowa. I didn't really get college football during my younger years so I wasn't as connected to it. As a result, I grew up casually rooting for the Iowa Hawkeyes. My understanding was that they were good enough to beat the bad teams, not good enough to beat good teams, and they always beat Iowa State badly. Honestly didn't become a big fan until my teen years when ironically they were not very good. One of my favorite memories was listening to the radio while I was cleaning stalls when they beat Michigan State in 2000 ending a 13 game losing streak. I believe they were ranked, so I thought of it as a pretty big victory since Iowa was probably among the worst programs at the time. I remember thinking "**** yeah, way to go Hawks. Way to get some pride back." It was the first time that I felt connected to the team. That experience doesn't happen unless I'm from here.
3) You enjoy the way they play. X's and O's, team personality, level of excitement.
I have a friend of mine that is the same age as me that grew up as a Florida Gator fan. He enjoyed the fun n gun style of play which was of course fun to watch and was sort of unique when compared to the style of play most teams played at the time. Maybe you enjoy the fast paced read option of Oregon or the smash mouth style of Wisconsin. Wins are always the primary goal, but an exciting team can take the sting out of some losses especially when you know that after a tough loss that they can take it out on their opponent next week.
4) You enjoy what the program stands for. Whether it's graduation rates or how they mold young men to contribute to society.
You can look at this one of two ways. You're proud of your program doing it the "right way." Kids got to class, they graduate, and they are for the most part model citizens during their time on campus and represent the university well. Or maybe the program you root for takes on the challenge of bringing a talented but troubled recruits to campus. Sure, sometimes it backfires in your face, but for every backfire you get a few people onto campus and help steer their lives in the right direction. This would be the Bobby Bowden principle. Either approaches are admirable to me and I could see someone attaching themselves to a team or at least making the connection to the team stronger because of this.
5) They win all the damn time.
Not much feels better than winning.
6) You are alumni.
You went to school at the school and got caught up in the success they were having at the time.
With all of this said, how intelligent is it to keep banging your head against the wall if your are unsatisfied with the team and coaches performance week after week or even year after year based on reason #2? Why should the slow witted folks down in Alabama (I kid) get to have all of the fun when rooting for their favorite college football team every Saturday during the fall and the simple folks in Indiana be disappointed week after week and year after year based on the geography of your birth?
Reason #1 isn't much more logical than reason #2 if you are unsatisfied with your teams continual performance although I will say that after several down years, seeing that team you loved during your childhood winning again brings back some old memories. Reason #6 kind of falls in this category as well. It's not quite as good as a time machine, but it's cool and makes it worth sticking around. It also gives you a good reason to put that old team T-shirt you got 10 birthdays ago back on if you can still fit in it.
If there is a truly logical reason to support a team or a program, it is reason #3. When you truly enjoy the product, that is when it is worth your time and dollars. I think of it like this, if I grew up always liking Pepsi over Coca Cola, but then Pepsi changed their recipe for the worse and Coca Cola changed their recipe for the better, I'd be a idiot to keep drinking Pepsi even though I don't like it as much anymore and I'm aware that there is a better tasting product out there.
Who cares about reason #4? Football is mainly about entertainment so who cares about graduation rates? Well if everything is equal or close to being equal, would you want your earned dollars and free time spent rooting for and associating with an organization that follows the rules and represents the good in society or the program that doesn't? I understand that the whole what's right and what's wrong with college sports is very blurred. What's a player's obligation/commitment to school compared to what's the school's obligation/commitment to the player and all that. That's another topic altogether. Honestly, I'm more about wins and exciting football anymore, but I still find it hard to root for programs that don't seem to care about their players futures once they are done with football and support a less than moral culture.
Reason #5 is the easiest. It's logical and it probably goes in line with reason number #3 although I will point out that sometimes winning can be less than visually pleasing sometimes (looking at you LSU) so I put them in different categories. It's fun to root for the team that always wins, but keep in mind you're going to buy a lot of t-shirts. When success is achieved in life, often it's the struggle that makes the achievement all worthwhile. Really, the true struggle and effort is put in by the players, coaches, and staff. As fans though, we get to vicariously live through that and in its own goofy and twisted way is very rewarding. Aligning yourself with whoever the hot team is of the moment kind of deprives you of that.
With all of this said, if you enjoy rooting for the Iowa Hawkeyes for any of these reasons then that's fine. The message boards here have become quite as nasty place for negativity over the past few years. It's almost as if now a certain group of the fan base is almost rooting for failure and almost enjoy it. Kind of like a self fulfilling prophecy type of deal. If you are on that negative fringe and you are a Hawkeyes fan based on reasons #1 and #2 and you hate the coaching staff because of their stubborness and perceived unwillingness to change, than you are really no different than they are. There are options other than banging your head against the wall, complaining about the product on message boards and belittling the people that disagree with you and commenting on their grammatical errors. Such as watching a team you do enjoy watching, getting on their message boards, and belittling those people about their grammatical errors. Or you could just stop letting the success and failures of a group of people in cloth effecting your life so much. Either way, I hope you find some happiness somewhere because it doesn't look like you're finding it here.
