Americans and Sports


I’ll try to answer as best I can. Teams do have fans and there are season tickets that are sold. Fans are spread all over the place in this country. I was born is Virginia far away from Washington DC. From birth I essentially inherited my parents loyalties to the teams in Pittsburgh since there were no local teams where I was born. With no fear of relegation or the excitement of promotion, my weekends aren’t even dented in the slightest if any of them lose. Teams that lose consistently over here are rewarded with a high draft pick in of itself has a high value attached to it.

In comparison My weekends take a huge hit when the lads let me down.
I follow the nba a bit and the concept of "tanking" is mental. If teams clearly aren't able to compete for the play offs the season is a write off and in many cases this can be very early on in the season.

American sports are great. Can be great entertainment, but just don't seem to have the emotion attached to them which we have for football in Europe and other places around the world. We should do everything to protect the emotive element. Unfortunately, I think that's being chipped away at with the implementation of VAR, and the general direction football is headed.
 
The legacy system is a thing in colleges. And the alumni system that nurtures post college involvement.

The US Collegiate is basically a pyramid scheme crosses with the masons.
You means sons and daughters follow in their parents footsteps to the same colleges? I've seen this kind of thing in films and the upset it sometimes causes as a bit of a plotline when darling child wants to go off to California instead of Connecticut but I dinnar how big a deal that kind of thing really is.

And the sports team isn't exactly the main factor regardless.
 
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I follow the nba a bit and the concept of "tanking" is mental. If teams clearly aren't able to compete for the play offs the season is a write off and in many cases this can be very early on in the season.

American sports are great. Can be great entertainment, but just don't seem to have the emotion attached to them which we have for football in Europe and other places around the world. We should do everything to protect the emotive element. Unfortunately, I think that's being chipped away at with the implementation of VAR, and the general direction football is headed.
Tanking Is one big issue out there. There’s no punishment for it since there is value in having a high draft pick.
 
I went to s college football game in Missouri , Tigers v South Carolina. , there was 80,000 home vans and a bus load of away fans , when I commented on this my pal replied , it’s a 3hr plane ride or two days by car for SC fans. That puts into perspective away days lol. Most fans over there love our promotion and relegation , if we could have their draight system and a wage limit which would prevent the top clubs hoovering up the best players , football would benefit so much in Europe.
 
There's an American, well quite a few actually as I live near the American school in my block of flats, but this one in particular works for espn, one day he wears a man Utd shirt then a week after he was wearing a man city shirt, I asked him how come and he said he likes soccer and gets the shirts for free. Says it all about the Americans and football for me.
 
It's perverse, as teams at the bottom are rewarded with the highest draft picks. Supporters actually get upset when a team at 0-14 go on a 2 match win streak to end at 2-14 and miss out on the top draft pick (the next super QB coming out of college).
I bet that doesn't lend itself to suspicious behaviour whatsoever I should imagine.
 
You means sons and daughters follow in their parents footsteps to the same colleges? I've seen this kind of thing in films and the upset it sometimes causes as a bit of a plotline when darling child wants to go off to California instead of Connecticut but I dinnar how big a deal that kind of thing really is.

And the sports team isn't exactly the main factor regardless.
I think he means local people will go and watch their college team not the relatives of the players.
 
I went to s college football game in Missouri , Tigers v South Carolina. , there was 80,000 home vans and a bus load of away fans , when I commented on this my pal replied , it’s a 3hr plane ride or two days by car for SC fans. That puts into perspective away days lol. Most fans over there love our promotion and relegation , if we could have their draight system and a wage limit which would prevent the top clubs hoovering up the best players , football would benefit so much in Europe.

But then the franchise can trade a top draft pick from multiple good draft picks? It’s still open to abuse just with the poorer team with more control I suppose?
 
But even then, isn't that something that's fostered through their education in their late teens/early twenties? Do they stick with that varsity team? Surely you're not born into it?
I couldn’t tell you. The only reference point I have is from watching the Goldbergs. They are from Philadelphia and are big Eagles fans from being young children.
 
You also tend to get a lot of franchise supporters. People with no connection to the city the team is 'from' but are diehard fans.
 
Some of our American based posters might be best placed to shed a bit more light on this, @burchmackem, @NYMackem, @njmackem etc...

With your various sports, franchises, conferences, teams moving across country etc - Do Americans actually get it? Are they just sports fans, or do they have supporters?

Take for instance when the Dodgers left Brooklyn - what the frig happened to their fans? Did they even have any? Were people upset?

More recently the Raiders have bounced from Oakland, to LA, back to Oakland, and now reside in a swanky new stadium in Las Vegas. This is a team with 3 Superbowls to it's name. Have all their fans bounced along with them? The ever faithful cross the Sierra Nevada every other week to cheer them on?

Do season ticket holders exist? Would Phase 3 ever be a thing?

Do grown men cry when success/abject failure rears it's head in the post-season?

Do fathers pass their loyalties onto their sons?

Are weekends completely ruined when their team loses?

Do they care?
I think anyone that thinks that American fans aren't every bit as passionate as British or global fans would be naïve at best.

Living in NJ, I am in close proximity to an actual rivalry NY Giants and Philadelphia Eagles - now these games have fans of both sides in attendance, and although the singing, chanting is different the passion and abuse and the banter handed out is no different.

Yes season tickets are a huge thing here, I know that there are waiting lists for Giants season tickets, with them being passed down through multiple generations (especially for the highly sought after sitting areas).

Your last four questions, are all resounding YES

The franchise thing is a little different, to the UK.... The Raiders from there 70's/80's reputation get a lot of followers around the country who don't really care about the location of the city. Franchises outside the main ones are much more mobile things and you are a Raiders or a Chargers fan more than an Oakland or San Diego fans.
 
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How shite.


I'm fourth generation Sunderland. Us Wallaces have been supporting Sunderland for over 100 years.
Think someone made a good point earlier. As the country is so big unless you live in a big city your only likely to have supported the team via watching on TV so its not going to mean as much if they move as you'll still be supporting them on the TV.
 
Some of our American based posters might be best placed to shed a bit more light on this, @burchmackem, @NYMackem, @njmackem etc...

With your various sports, franchises, conferences, teams moving across country etc - Do Americans actually get it? Are they just sports fans, or do they have supporters?

Take for instance when the Dodgers left Brooklyn - what the frig happened to their fans? Did they even have any? Were people upset?

More recently the Raiders have bounced from Oakland, to LA, back to Oakland, and now reside in a swanky new stadium in Las Vegas. This is a team with 3 Superbowls to it's name. Have all their fans bounced along with them? The ever faithful cross the Sierra Nevada every other week to cheer them on?

Do season ticket holders exist? Would Phase 3 ever be a thing?

Do grown men cry when success/abject failure rears it's head in the post-season?

Do fathers pass their loyalties onto their sons?

Are weekends completely ruined when their team loses?

Do they care?
I'm not American, I'm from Houghton. I only lived there three years.

So I can only speak from a very limited experience, but I worked with tons of different people and watched various sports all over the country when I was there.

Firstly teams that move do so fairly infrequently and always for money. When a team is leaving a place it is usually somewhere with minimal support or interest moving to a market with strong demand for the missing sports team. The odds of the Giants or the Yankees leaving New York is zero. I'm sure the relocation of the Brooklyn Dodgers caused a lot of upset back in the day, but teams like the Raiders and the Rams have moved a few times so the support in the city they leave behind isn't that deep rooted.

There are a few fans of "franchises" who support the same team wherever they end up, but the vast majority of sports fans I knew supported their local team only, and they were all teams that would never leave NY.

Season ticket holders definitely do exist. I had one for the Rangers. You aren't getting into the Giants or the Jets without one. Fortunately they haven't had the same issues with crowd violence we had in the 70s and 80s (though I have seen rival supporters chinning each other at Madison Square Garden and Giants Stadium), so once you have a season ticket you can re-sell tickets to individual games to anyone you like, as long as it's not within quarter of a mile of the stadium. I got tickets for all games and all sports through StubHub without issue and sold them there myself.

Away fans not so much. There were always a section or two of away fans at Madison Square Garden, and I've been an away fan at a Washington Capitals game, but I think they turn up because they are there already rather than travelling specifically to watch the team, at least in regular season. I saw the Jets play Miami and there were very few away fans, but against the Steelers there was a couple of thousand of them (a decent minority of whom got pissed and fighty) - I assume this is just down to relative distances between teams, and NFL also has that tailgating culture of BBQs and drinking in the parking lot that people are more likely to travel for.

Depth of passion depends on the sport and the team. There are definitely Yankees and Red Sox fans whose entire happiness rests on the performance of their team, but I don't think fans of (say) the Arizona Diamondbacks have the same level of passion. It was similar with the NY Rangers, who are the Sunderland of Ice Hockey. The lads I worked with who supported the NJ Devils or NY Islanders hated the Rangers, but Giants fans were indifferent to the Jets (the Jets big rivalry is with Miami for some reason), and Yankees fans care more about beating Boston than they do the Mets (NY - Boston seems to be a rivalry in all sports).

I think support runs in families, at least for NY teams, but I could never work out what the dividing line was between Jets and Giants or Mets and Yankees - it wasn't geographical.
 
The thought of being happy to get best 7-0 every week so you have a better chance of signing messi next season
This. In the NFL years ago there was a big saying going around when Andrew Luck was available to be drafted. It was literally called the “Suck for Luck” campaign in which the Indianpolis Colts. narrowly best out the then St. Louis Rams who had an identical record of 2 wins and 14 losses but accumulated Those loses against and rosier schedule.

This years NFL race to be the worst was call the “Tank for Trevor” as a race to get Trevor Lawerence. In this race the Jacksonville Jaguars narroy beat out the New York Jets who had identical 1 win and 15 loss records but Jacksonville accumulated these losses against an easier schedule.
 
I think anyone that thinks that American fans aren't every bit as passionate as British or global fans would be naïve at best.

Living in NJ, I am in close proximity to an actual rivalry NY Giants and Philadelphia Eagles - now these games have fans of both sides in attendance, and although the singing, chanting is different the passion and abuse and the banter handed out is no different.

Yes season tickets are a huge thing here, I know that there are waiting lists for Giants season tickets, with them being passed down through multiple generations (especially for the highly sought after sitting areas).

Your last four questions, are all resounding YES

The franchise thing is a little different, to the UK.... The Raiders from there 70's/80's reputation get a lot of followers around the country who don't really care about the location of the city. Franchises outside the main ones are much more mobile things and you are a Raiders or a Chargers fan more than an Oakland or San Diego fans.
Interesting.

Must be the exception rather than the rule though, given the relative proximity etc.

Also seems a tad bizarre that the Eagles would consider the Dallas Cowboys their main rivals...

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'Muricans.
 
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