Psychology of the Sports Fan

Psychology of the Sports Fan
Some people have a passing interest in sports, while others are . . . TRUE FANS
By Jim Patrick
The Salt Lake Tribune

Joe Mannino seems like a normal enough guy. He's in his 30s, he has a wife and a daughter and people expect normal enough things from him.
Except when it comes to soccer.
An hour and a half before a recent Real Salt Lake game, Mannino was sitting out by the parking lot of Rice-Eccles Stadium in a $65 RSL jersey. He was waiting on a press credential from a Mexican newspaper to arrive for him to get into the press box. This isn't how he sees every game, but he clearly is excited about going to the RSL game.
Maybe a little too excited.
He faced a tough choice a few weeks ago. His daughter had a church ceremony that conflicted with an RSL event.
Tough call.
"In the end, I made the right choice and did the family thing," he said. "But at the end of the day . . . ," his voice trails off.
He would have preferred to be at the game.
Ed Hirt, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Indiana, has studied what drives sports fans.
"Being a fan has a self-esteem benefit," Hirt said. "It's the same thing as a parent with a kid who lives vicariously through the kid's achievements. There are things like that in everyday life. We drop names all the time about connections we have, people we went to school with. By doing that, we're trying to associate ourselves with something bigger than ourselves."
There's no shortage of fans doing that in Salt Lake.
If you want to see some fans that identify themselves - strongly - with a team, show up at an RSL game. You don't even have to leave the parking lot to witness the devotion. Fan groups such as The Loyalists gather at the edge of the parking lot to eat, drink and get pumped up for the game. Members of The Loyalists debate on just how fanatical their fanship is.
"I'm insane. My wife would probably say that," Scott Stucki said.
Said Loyalists president Glenn Webb: "I don't know if it's crazy or unbalanced. We're normal people with normal lives. People expect normal things from us."
And yet, they aspire to some abnormality.
Members of the group talk about an exhibition game RSL played against Mexican team Morelia a few weeks ago as an eye-opening event. Those fans had tears in their eyes when their team took the field.
Hirt, the Indiana psychologist, says a large part of the behavior is fans taking their cues from other fans. In the case of soccer, RSL fans are looking at die-hard international soccer fans and trying to emulate them.
RSL and Major League Soccer are different from other top-level professional leagues in the United States. RSL practices are open to the public, and fans can get right next to players, more or less, as they go about their drills.
Imagine if the New York Yankees had fans down on the field as Alex Rodriguez took batting practice.
Albert Baumann was at a recent practice. Wearing jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt with a pair of glasses tucked into a pocket at the top, the 69-year-old bearded man barely looks like a radical fan. But, try asking him how often he comes to practice.
"I never miss a practice," said Baumann, a former goalkeeper who played 2 1/2 seasons in the top German league, the Bundesliga. "This is my life, you know. I'm an old man. I have nothing else to do. They feel like family to me."
Fans used to be able to get this close to players for a Utah sports institution: the Utah Jazz.

BIG-TIME FANS

The Jazz are so popular in Utah that, at one point, seemingly every sports team in the state had two Z's in its name, in an effort to play off the Jazz's success.
Howard Nakagama was around when the Jazz first came to Utah. He's fished with Mark Eaton and used to get to travel on the team bus or stay at the team hotel when the team went on trips.
"Now, it's probably next to impossible to do all of those things," Nakagama said. "But back when they first made the playoffs, it was pretty easy to do."
Not any more.
Tickets alone pose a problem for fans trying to go to 41 home Jazz games. With a few $10 seats relegated to the upper reaches of the stadium, and with parking and food exacting a premium, going to a game is a once-in-a-while affair for most Jazz fans. Hence the rise of TV viewership for Jazz games.
Daniel Wann, an associate psychology professor at Murray State, wrote the book "Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators." In it, he details why people would be fanatical about a team they watched play live and in person once or twice a season.
They include:
l Eustress - the need for positive stress
l Escapism
l Entertainment
l Gambling
l Group affiliation
Jazz fans, Hirt said, probably feel a strong sense of community derived from being a fan. Just turn on a sports radio station and listen to how people talk about the Jazz. This past Wednesday, callers to a local radio show were bemoaning a shot Michael Jordan hit over Bryon Russell.
"We never got over that one," one caller said.
That was eight years ago.

STAYING THE COURSE

Some groups of fans are explained more easily.
College fans, for example, are primarily college-aged or alumni from the institution. As they grow older, many college fans become less rabidly involved with their teams.
But what about NASCAR fans and golf fans?
Hirt says they're a different breed. They look for drivers or golfers who exemplify something people like about themselves. Tiger Woods represents being the best athlete in the game. Dale Earnhardt was a straight shooter who would shove you out of the way for a win.
"With golf, or with auto racing, there's a sense of the entourage," Hirt said. "Some of the facets of being a fan are there, but there's a sense of what that sport means to you. That person you root for reflects something about yourself.
"It's more like the fans of a rock band."
Salt Lake Bees manager Brian Harper has seen the best and worst of sports fans. In 1991, Harper was the starting catcher for the Minnesota Twins and played in the "Thunderdome," as the Metrodome was renamed for its rowdy constituency.
As manager of the Bees, Harper gets heckled by a few members of the home crowd.
"I have a couple of fans on me all the time in Salt Lake," Harper said. "There are times where, as a player, fans don't understand how difficult it is to play at this level."
Still, Harper says he runs into fans around Salt Lake all the time and enjoys the experience. On the road, a Bees fan on summer vacation showed up in Omaha, Neb., to watch the Bees play.
As a player in the majors, Harper said the most crazed fans were in the Northeast, where Boston and New York Yankees fans routinely taunt each other.
"Fans differ from region to region," he said. "On the East Coast, fans are rabid. In the Midwest, they're knowledgeable but not crazy.
Out West, they're more laid-back, but still very knowledgeable." Mannino, the RSL fan, comes from the West Coast, but he seems to have more in common with a rabid Yankees fan.
A full-blooded Italian, Mannino roots for Juventus in the Italian premier league. Juventus was plagued by a match-fixing scandal last winter and had a bad season.
"My real team is Juventus over in Italy," he said. "They got relegated to the second league this year and I felt like somebody killed my sister."
Mannino says there's no point at which being a fan is unhealthy. Hirt disagrees.
"The funny thing about it is, you are drawing your self-esteem from others," Hirt said. "It's nice to feel like a member of a group, but, when nothing comes from within, that seems pretty dangerous. If your whole life is derived from this identity as a fan, you've got to relate more to life than that. Like, maybe they need to spend some time with their family."

Many Sports, Many Fans
Percentage of adults in the United States who identified themselves in 2004 as fans of various sports:
Sport Pct. Change
NFL 67.5 (2.0)
MLB 60.1 (2.4)
College football 56.1 (0.5)
NBA 48.5 (none)
Figure skating 46.8 (-2.5)
College basketball 46.3 (1.5)
Extreme sports 43.6 (-1.6)
NASCAR 43.4 (0.5)
Sport Pct. Change
Horse racing 37.4 (5.1)
Fishing 36.6 (1.9)
PGA 36.4 (-2.4)
Boxing 38.2 (0.6)
NHL 32.7 (-4.1)
WNBA 32.0 (-2.1)
WTA 31.5 (-5.4)
- TNS Sports Poll

Attendance
Total 2004 attendance in millions:
Baseball 120.3
Football 72.0
Basketball 67.2
Hockey 60.7
Auto racing 35.9
Horse racing 30.6
Rodeo 23.6
Golf 12.5
Soccer 7.2
Greyhound racing 6.4