The Lifecycle Of A Bandwagoner
The Draw Play has essentially existed during what I would consider the rise and fall of the Seattle Seahawks golden era, and as a person who lives in the pacific northwest and has witnessed it firsthand, it’s been an interesting experience. I basically witnessed what was almost a small-scale cult fandom balloon into a national powerhouse as the team sharply rose and gained prominence like never before, and then have witnessed that same fandom come to terms with the realities of time in sports.
Many of the so-called “twelves” who were such annoying, loud, brash, dipshits have become…actual fans. Angry, bitter, hopeful, and realistic. If they’ve stuck around. During the height of the Hawks power in 2012-2015, it was hell. I’ve never seen so many damn bumper stickers and flags hanging off every car and house, and I don’t even live in Seattle. You could walk down a random street in Portland and there would be a 50% chance you’d see a 12 flag within 3 blocks. You could go to a sports bar and half the bar would own the same Russell Wilson, Richard Sherman, or Marshawn Lynch jersey. A few men of culture would wear Kam Chancellor jerseys. Every once in a while you’d see the real unicorn. A Hasselbeck, Largent, or Lofa Tatupu jersey. Those were the ones I was happiest for, because they had been there…before.
The Bandwagon fan is a vital part of the fandom economy, as much as we hate them. They are newborns who are birthed in success and ride that high. They are easy to loathe because they are loud and proud and haven’t experienced heartbreak. But time takes no prisoners. Even Patriots fans born in the last 20 years will someday actually understand genuine sports misery. When the team dies, many of those bandwagoners die off. The fun is over. They might come back and be annoying when the team experiences a small surge or rebuild, but if they turn fairweather, they won’t ever truly come back. But not all of them will vanish. Not all of them will veer off for greener pastures. A percentage of those bandwagoners will stick around, and become like us. They will understand the way the sport works and appreciate their time in the sun as they watch their team regress and make bad decisions. They will be miserable when the team makes dumb free agent signings and bad draft picks, and hopeful every time they win a tight game and show promise. They will actually talk to you and make good conversation at the bar because they aren’t stupid loyal puppies anymore. We all start somewhere.
I think Seattle is probably boned for a while now. Russ is gone. The LOB is gone. Pete Carroll is dumb and old. The rest of the division is stacked. I used to hate Seahawks fans, but now most of them get it. I see the dead look in their eyes that shows the scars of reality. I appreciate them now, and consider them brothers.
I started playing youth football at coincidentally the same time the Seahawks were good in the mid-2000s and before that they’d been bad my entire life, so as much fun as it was in 2013 I was already an established fan at that point. Watching the bandwagoners bitch and complain about seasons where the Seahawks won double digit games and act like any game we didn’t blow out the opposition was equivalent to a loss was honestly more annoying than actually seeing the team do badly. Like bitch, you’ve never seen bad football in your entire life, shut the fuck up and savor this while it lasts. If there’s one good thing about the team going to crap, it’s hopefully shedding the most annoying bandwagoners who think winning the Super Bowl every year is a reasonable expectation.
Of course the polar opposite of the overly enthusiastic bandwagon fans are the sad sack fans who are doom and gloom all the time and almost seem to prefer their team losing because it justifies their bad attitude and just suck all the fun out of the room. Those fans suck too, like why do you even watch football if you don’t even enjoy when your team wins?
I saw a Dave Krieg jersey, once. Now THAT guy was a fan.
I was at a Browns game against the Titans one time in 2015 or 16. I saw a visiting Titans fan wearing a game-authentic Jake Locker jersey. Heavyweight cloth, dazzle paneling, the works. This is a person who spent upwards of $300 on a jersey for a player who didn’t last his rookie contract, and not only wore it in public, but as a visiting fan. I didn’t know if I should be impressed with him or pity him.
I saw an Akili Smith jersey when I went to a Bengals game. I didn’t know whether to admire his fandom or stage an intervention.
I was at the Texans home game against the Titans last year, the funniest part was that both fandoms wore Oilers jerseys so I couldn’t tell who was a Texans fan and who was a Titans fan
The 3 Jerseys that signify a true Texans fan are Aaron Glenn, Tony Boselli, and David Carr
Bonus points for the people who still wear their Carr jerseys with “Schaub” written on the duct tape they used to cover up Carr’s name.
I lived in the Seattle area for a few years during the Seahawks’ recent strong run, and can count the number of times I saw someone wearing the older, less aggressive bird logo on one hand.
Sad hawk is the best hawk logo, bring it back seahawks
Agreed
I don’t actually hate fairweather fans. I am one when it comes to baseball so I can’t throw stones. Just don’t act like you’re a diehard fan.
How to put this that doesn’t sound super condescending… fairweather fans are most annoying when they act like they know stuff.
Like if you’re still asking procedural questions while watching the game, and you can’t name any of your team’s offensive lineman, don’t be pushy with your opinions. I don’t expect the average fan to memorize the rulebook or follow offensive line play around the league. I do expect the average fan to be able to follow the game, and to know their own team better than just the big names.
Same here. But that might be because I’ve seen something worse than a fairweather fan, and I don’t know what name to give it. I’m tempted to call it “Turkey Vulture Fan,” or something like that. My mother-in-law basically chose to root for 8 teams, one from each division, just flying around sucking the meat off the bones of whoever was doing well at the moment.
And this was not a casual fandom. I think Josh Allen is a nice kid, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Buffalo win, but I would never even dream of calling myself a Buffalo “FAN,” even after the Giants took what seems like half the staff. But she 100% considered herself a diehard for each of these teams. She bought hats and other memorabilia, and she had an average-ish knowledge of their players. What irked me was, whichever one was doing the best, THAT is the jersey she would wear, so that regardless of situations, she could always have a winner. “Your team sucks, but MYYYY team is doing great.”
Now, a big part of the reason she did this is because she was an AWFUL loser, and having 8 “favorites” to root for significantly increased the odds of her getting to celebrate every year. And if any of them won, she would 1000% consider herself entitled to partake in the festivities. She is the first and only Patriots, Steelers, Vikings, Giants, Colts, Saints, Broncos, and Cardinals fan I’ve ever met, lol.
The fact that she actually kept up on players on all of those teams, bought merch, and found ways to celebrate and be happy about different teams sounds like she enjoyed supporting football, winning, and living life to be happy. She seems like a genuine fan of the sport and football culture, can’t fault that. You said so yourself, she is not a casual.
The fun thing about football and fandom is it is all voluntary. It’s not like you are sworn into a secret order that you cannot betray under pain of death. Some fans treat it that way, and just suck all the fun out of it.
The worst kind of fairweather fan for me is the one who just doesn’t understand things on a fundamental level and gets really loudly angry about it, especially in baseball. It’s a 160 game season. Slumps happen. Hot streaks happen. If a guy is hitting .150 through the first 20 games of the season, it’s okay. If the team is a few games behind first place, chill. The team isn’t failing, we shouldn’t sell the farm, we’ll have plenty of time to catch up over HE ENTIRE SUMMER. Or any fan that demands perfection and every missed pass or tackle means that we need to cut somebody. Like, it’s sports. Chill out and try to enjoy yourself.
That era was very important for Seattle people to stay with the NFL instead of just abandoning it for the Sounders. As a former St. Louis Rams fan, Seattle killed their best, last chance to go to the playoffs to start their run so fuck ’em. I will never be ashamed of my love for Sam Bradford.
I think there is an important qualifier in that last step. Is the team bad because of the natural cycles of the sport or has it become bad due to negligent management and/or scandal. Like many in Chicago I got on the Blackhawks bandwagon when the team suddenly emerged from a decade of obscurity to become a regular competitor. But because of the horrific abuse scandal that’s come to light I no longer consider myself a fan.
I mean there’s always a lot of nuance to anything I certainly greatly simplified it for comedy here
I think if a team is bad for a long time and then resurges, you are less Fairweather and more back at the beginning of the Bandwagon cycle
The Bengals Lifecycle is different. Its spent mostly in the bad half of the circle, but its last four steps are a loop:
We’re good? (On border: 25% Good/50% Bad)
We’re good?! (On border: 75% Good/25% Bad)
We’re good!!! (100% Good side)
Oh, right. We’re the Bengals. (100% Bad side)
After that its a Die Roll to see how far back we go.
So who did you root for in the Seahawks-Patriots Super Bowl? Or did you just opt out of football for that one, the way I would if the Giants and Colts ever met?
I guess I was rooting Seahawks but when they blew it at the end I was dying of laughter for days
The only time I ever rooted for the Pats, because I am a Packer fan who had recently taken up residence in Portland. Forever fuck the Seachickens, I am enjoying their new found mediocrity.
So, question: Is being a fairweather fan actually worth ridiculing as long as the person isn’t obnoxious about it? Like do you have to have been obnoxious at some point to be considered fairweather? I am of the opinion that everyone gets something different out of sports. If someone just wants the happy times and finds it easy to disconnect during the dark times, that’s fine on its own right?
I think it varies on the level of Fairweather. The ones I hate are the ones who are Fairweather on the micro level, who only want to talk football when the team wins, and when they do talk about them, they aren’t discussing the sport just trash talking or bragging. They use success as a way to act superior
Other than that Fairweather fans are fine. Most of us are ones to some degree. Hard to have the same level of passion for a team that has spent years being garbage
Dave,
You hit the nail on the head by recognizing the superiority aspect. It’s about feeling superior to another human being with nothing to back it up other then “I associate myself with this.”
It is the fine line between
“No thank you, that ketchup packet has the Colts logo on it, I’d rather eat my fries dry. ;)”
and
“Looks like a bad car accident up ahead, maybe I should help out… but he’s a Colts fan so never mind.”
I was a bandwaggoner who jumped on the Giants bandwagon in 1990 when they were already like 10-0. I celebrated the Super Bowl win like I’d been waiting for it my whole life when I didn’t give a crap about football before then.
I like to think that I paid my dues for that by sticking with them and becoming a true fan despite the misery that was the rest of the ’90s and for Super Bowl XXXV–or really for pretty much everything since the ’90 season outside of the ’07 and ’11 seasons.
Dude, if I see a Seahawks fan wearing a Hasselbeck jersey, they are getting smacked in the face. Anytime that name is mentioned, I shudder, and then force all those around me to listen to my belabored tale of how I went to BC when he and his stupid little brother were there. His brother lived across the hall from me one year, and they were annoying @$shats who took special delight in having everyone bow before them.
Any LEGIT OG Seahawks fan should be wearing a BOZ jersey, lol. If you’re too young to know about the Boz, here’s a taste:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-Ru7PsF4Js
I would think a Seahawks lifer would be more apt to wear a Curt Warner jersey.
Well, if we are talking about *legitimate* players, absolutely. If we’re talking about hilariously overhyped flameouts with a line of ridiculous posters… THE BOZ, MAN. XD
Majority of us may very well be hybrids of true fan and fair weather fan it seems. We’re pretty much up and down depending on the team it seems.
I think most sports fans are diehards for one particular team and then fairweather for the local teams that play another sport. Like I’m a huge Seahawks fan and I also sort of pay attention to the Mariners, Sounders, and Kraken.
Having lived in Seattle for most of the Boom era for them, it definitely felt as though hawks fans (fair weather or not) went obnoxiously out of their way to let you know that they are a fan. A guy in my neighborhood painted his house highlighter green to show off his fandom, but now he couldn’t even name a QB on the team
“Even Patriots fans born in the last 20 years will someday actually understand genuine sports misery. ”
I’ve talked to at least one who is “woe is me”. Geez, it was just a first round playoff loss to Buffalo. Get over it.
I remember the 1-15 that landed them Drew Bledsoe. Worry not, their time to really suck ass will return.
I feel like there’s a third split where they go back to obnoxiousness and stay there
This is the modern Cowboys fan stuck in the 90s.
Or maybe, the super rare but still out there, Boomer Dolphins fan stuck in the 70s-80s.
Yup. When the Chiefs won the Super Bowl? I was TURBO JAZZED but also considered it karmic rebalancing for being a fan during the Damon Huard/Matt Cassel era along with all those other duds like Palko or Stanzi. Our entire offense was Jamaal Charles and every single game the opposing D would just stack the box every play because they KNEW our QBs were useless.
Jamaal still crushed it almost every single game though.
I agree with all of the sentiments in the comic and paragraph below, but I also believe that fairweather fans are the most important fans in the sports ecosystem. Imagine two teams, one with all True Fans and one with all Fairweather Fans. While the conversations with the True Fan team would be much better and nuanced, what would the consequences of the team’s failure be? Probably mostly talk radio slander. The Fairweather Team would be insufferable when good, but also (in non-NFL sports) possibly broke when bad… that’s a situation any team really wants to avoid!
This might work better in hockey where there is less money and less revenue sharing, which may be why we see True Fan teams (like all of the ones based in Canada) fail every year and the cup go to teams where ice literally never happens outdoors: Tampa, St. Louis, and Washington have won the last 4. It might also explain why some teams remain terribly mismanaged like the Cowboys or Knicks, though obviously there are other factors involved.
Another tough part is the true fans who get accused of being bandwagoners because their team is in a period of notoriety. I’m a Vikings fan, but when I was younger, my favorite players would move to other teams and I became a fan of those teams. John Randle became a Seahawk, so I liked the Seahawks. Kevin Williams, Percy Harvin, etc. Then all of the sudden they were good and I got a Kam Chancellor jersey and people accused me of hopping on the bandwagon.
I’ve also been a fan of both Man City and PSG since the early 2000s. Now that both are spending money like crazy and becoming evil empires (of varying competence) and I’m enjoying some consistent star power, I get accused of hopping on the bandwagon again.
Point is, you’re right, after rewarding long (or short) suffering fans, the cycle continues as each team returns to natural mediocrity in its own time.
Sunderland since I was a kid.
Miami as soon as I was aware of football. Love dolphins anyway, and drafting Marino helped.
Orlando (Magic & City) since seeing Shaq obliterate that backboard, might as well stay in-state, and I pwned with Anderson & Skiles on SNES NBA Jam. Murdered Chicago by 75, biøtch.
Florida (Mariins & Panthers) since their leagues expanded there, might as well stay in-state, and f**k Tampa.
Y’all think y’all know pain.