American Football this past weekend, those who watched it will tell you, was as good as it gets: four close, exciting games with everything from a blocked punt to a 13-second drive. Here is the point in this post where you can either sit up and pump your fist and say “yeah!” or lean back, roll your eyes, and snort, optionally muttering something about how the players are paid absolutely stupid amounts of money to clobber each other senseless when teachers across the land have to buy their own school supplies. I myself do all of the above, fist pump to eyeroll. I am a teacher, I have bought some of my own school supplies, and I found out recently that even the lowest-paid NFL rookie makes literally ten times what I do. Granted, they risk life and limb for their job; on the other hand, my school performs regular active shooter drills, so there’s that.
I’ve been watching football since I was a child. My father used to iron his dress shirts Sunday mornings while games were on, and my sister and I would watch with him, lying on the floor eating our breakfast cereal (this was Hawaii; games were on really early). Because he went to school in the Bay Area, he always rooted for the 49ers. They won a lot back then, which certainly didn’t hurt my lifelong interest in the game.
My sister has remained a 49ers fan, even though she’s never lived in the Bay Area. Like my dad, I went to school there, though I haven’t lived there or Hawaii in decades and I have zero loyalty to any particular team any more. But I still watch football, and I’ve developed a complex methodology for picking which team in any given game I’ll cheer for. I’ll pick teams of cities I’ve been to and enjoyed (New Orleans, San Diego) over cities I’ve been to and feel mostly meh about (Phoenix, Pittsburgh), the north over the south because I’m a damn Yankee (though I do not cheer for the baseball Yankees because duh), and the Midwest over pretty much everyone because this is my home now, with a perpetual nod to the 49ers because they’re the reason I started following this sport in the first place.
I like this way of picking favored teams because it gives added interest to the game while also acknowledging that the concept of “team loyalty” is somewhat absurd. Almost no one who plays for a pro sports team has any real bond to its place and people; for the right dollar amount they’d join the Antarctica Albatrosses and play football in a stadium of overdressed emperor penguins. And of course there are many far more problematic aspects of fandom. Football is brutal and full of appallingly bad behavior, on and off the field. Support of the game often makes me feel like I’m supporting some of the worst aspects of humanity.
But bad behavior in idols is hardly limited to sports. This beloved novelist is virulently transphobic; that famous singer was truculently anti-vax. Again and again, if you’re a fan of anything at all, you’ll end up asking yourself what you’re supposed to do now that your hero has proven to be less than laudable. You feel disappointed, of course, yet you need not feel compelled to defend them, nor should you feel the need to defend yourself. Liking their work does not entail a blood oath.
Sometimes, of course, you do stop caring about them. There are things that are simply unacceptable. It’s possible one day, because it has happened before, I’ll once again be so disgusted by a writer or musician or perhaps even all of professional sports that I’ll eliminate them entirely from my consideration, the way I stop buying products from companies that perpetrate egregious human rights violations. I’m under no illusions that my boycott matters to anyone but me, yet I don’t do this merely to feel self-righteously smug. This is how I choose to balance enthusiasm with awareness. I enjoyed last night’s game with a bowl of chili, because it’s the best thing to eat if you’re watching football, and I made the chili with plant protein instead of beef, because cutting back on meat consumption is a really good idea on a number of levels. Cheer or eyeroll as you see fit; this is how I do fandom.
No comments:
Post a Comment