Can You Really Be A Fan Of A Sports Team That Isn't Based In Your Town? Teshale

Recently the soccer* world was stunned shocked mildly to moderately surprised by the news that striker Michael Owen had signed a deal to play for Manchester United, a team so evil that they actually have a devil on their crest.

The shock of the signing is twofold. First, Owen is a product of Manchester United’s most high-profile rival, Liverpool FC. From his introduction to the first team in 1997 at age 18, until his controversial move to Real Madrid in 2004, Owen (along with Liverpool idol Steven Gerrard) had been a rising star in a then-average Liverpool team. Many Liverpool fans still harbor residual anger over the nature of Owen’s transfer to Real, the chief reason being that Owen ran down his contract so that Real could buy him for far less than he was actually worth at the time, effectively stifling Liverpool out of extra funds for other transfers.

Second, Owen’s fortunes have taken a decidedly downward turn since his move to Madrid. The year he left Liverpool, they won their first European Cup since 1984, and their fifth total, in a historic campaign, and since then have competed regularly in the Champions League along with challenging for the Premier League.** Owen, on the other hand, was constantly benched at Real, hampered by knee injuries. He lasted only a year before moving to Newcastle FC back in England, a team whose luck was even worse than his own.

This past season Newcastle was relegated to the second division of English football for the first time since 1993, and Owen found himself a free agent. Eager to revive his career, 29 years old (quite old for someone who often relied on pace), and finding an opportunity to join a team that’s been winning leagues since 1992, from Owen’s point of view it seems a perfect job opportunity.

So, Owen is joining Manchester United. To get a sense of how some Liverpool fans feel about this, imagine being a Red Sox fan and hearing David Ortiz saying these things regarding a move to the Yankees, or a Cavs fan (ahem, Stanek) hearing Lebron James saying said things about moving to the Celtics. Mind you, these comparisons are not quite accurate; Michael Owen has always been something of a journeyman, and in his heyday he was an extremely good player but not one of the greats; deeply admired, perhaps, but not necessarily loved.
Anyway, it appears that Owen’s main concern is not for any particular club, but for gaining a permanent spot in England’s national team, a desire that has managed to make others indifferent at best and infuriated at worst. Michael Owen’s first concern is how well he as a footballer and as a person will do; it is his job, which is a reasonable enough take on it for a professional.

This brings us, finally, to the subject of support. Most sport fans accept that, in a broad sense, the players on a team are doing a job. An amazing job, of course, but at the end of the day a job where they show up, work hard, and then go home again. Sure, they’ll talk about how all they ever wanted to do was play [insert sport here] and how it’s an honor to play for [insert team here] and that’s probably true. But I would posit that it’s rare, in this day an age, for an athlete not to move teams at least once in his career. Sure you have your Kobes, your 1990s-era Brett Favres, your Jeters. But in the end, a player is there to play a sport as a career, not play a sport for X team and X team only as a career. We would like to think that they are superfans just like the rest of us, but to be frank, they’re generally not. They’re going to go to whatever team offers them the best chance for them to grow as a player. They have a pretty good reason to switch loyalties to whatever team they’re playing for, I’d say, because it’s literally their life.

So? You may ask. What does this have to do with supporting a team?
Simple. A fan has none of the above obligations. It doesn’t matter whether or not I support the Blazers or the Lakers or the Knicks or whatever, because sports are entertainment. Sports are a way to unwind after a hard day at work/school/whatever. They are not my job; I have no obligations past, perhaps, social ones to support any team. I don’t even have to like sports at all! It doesn’t matter either way. So why would I bother supporting a team at all, if I didn’t legitimately like doing so? The only enjoyment I may get out of faking a love/like for a team is making people think I’m cool, somehow, or fitting in with a group, but that’s a lot of effort— especially when they find out that I’m only doing it to impress them and I don’t actually know much about the team, and then it’s definitely Uncool.

I posit that it is, in fact, possible to be a fan of a team—not necessarily a fan with the same relationship as a local, but a legitimate fan nonetheless—without being fair-weather. I have had this discussion with my fellow blogger Stanek, chiefly because I follow Liverpool FC despite having no familial ties to the city, and he follows the Cavs because they’re his local team.

So why bother supporting a team that doesn’t represent my city in any way?*** Because, although sports teams represent the city they’re based in, I argue that they above all represent certain values that are not necessarily specific to that city. The city may well embody these values, and often they do—but what I’m saying is that these values are universal, as illustrated in the fact that often much of a team is composed of people who aren’t local. Heck, sometimes the team is even moved—looking at you, Sonics.

I don’t even know who on the Blazers is from Portland and who isn’t, but what I do know is that they, like any team, approach winning with a specific philosophy—one that you don’t have to be a Portlander, or an Oregonian, or even an American, to appreciate and subscribe to. If this is true for a bunch of people who need to get behind the team in order to make a good livelihood, then why isn’t it also true for people who watch the team, who have no relationship with it past one they feel on their own part, strange as it may be? I’ll definitely accept that, were I a Red Sox fan, I wouldn’t understand the culture of being a Bostonian and a Sox fan as well as Mark Wahlberg or someone—but does this mean that my appreciation for the team is shallow on the whole? I say no. Living in Chicago wouldn’t make me a more legitimate fan of, say, the White Sox, than someone who’s never been to Chicago if I bandwagonned after 2005, would it?

It’s perfectly possible and perfectly fine to like a team for a myriad number of reasons, but to me, a proper team fan is someone who supports the team—not the player—whether or not they’re winning, and has a reason for doing so. It’s common to start liking a team because a certain player plays for them, and that’s completely fine—the whole point of sports is to have fun—but again, that doesn’t necessarily make you a fan of the team.

For me what is more problematic is supporting a national team that isn’t your own. National teams are, by definition, representations of your country—you can’t be on the team unless you’re from there, or one of your parents is. I don’t want to get into the complications of deciding which NT you want to play for if one (or both!) of your parents is (are) foreign, but the point is that you have to have at least some birth connection with the country to play for its national team. This is a situation where I would suggest that people who support national teams that aren’t their own are in this case bandwagon fans in the most literal sense. There are a lot of Americans who might say, “Oh, I want Spain to win, their passing game is amazing,” or “Oh, I want Argentina to win the World Cup, Messi is brilliant” and this is textbook bandwagoning. I’d argue that national teams represent national culture far more accurately than city teams represent city culture, simply because you have so much more diversity in a city team than a national one. You already have an inbuilt connection to everyone on your national team, and that’s not something that can be traded or taken away. If the US were to get kicked out of the World Cup early, I might say I’d like Spain or Argentina or Brazil or Holland to win. But I’m not from any of those places, so I don’t really care and it doesn’t affect me either way, and I wouldn’t understand why someone who didn’t have ties to those countries would care.

A city team, on the other hand, is more of an amalgamation of ideas and styles—its identity can change, depending on who’s coming in and who’s leaving—so I could see why, for example, someone not from New York could come to follow the Giants.

Alternatively, this could all be an elaborate rationalization of why I care, irrationally, about the triumphs and heartbreaks of a team over 2000 miles away that I have no physical connection with.

But then again, sports are dumb.

*hereafter referred to as “football”

**They haven't actually won it for 19 years, but the reasons for Liverpool still being considered a contender for the league despite this are far too involved to address here, and rather boring anyway.

*** I should add that I do like the Portland Timbers, and if forced to choose, my allegiance would fall with them—in this case, I agree with Stanek, one’s city’s reputation is at stake. The point is moot, though, as Liverpool and the Timbers play in completely different leagues and countries and would never meet except, perhaps, in a friendly.