Unaffiliated Fans

This girl in my sorority was really into the Pittsburgh Penguins. Her whole room was done in a Pittsburg Penguins motif. The comforter, the pillows, the dust ruffle, her trash can—all yellow and black. And that would be somewhat tolerable if she had grown up in Pittsburgh, going to all their…hockey (had to look it up to see what sport we were talking about) games. But she didn’t grow up there. She didn’t even have family there. Her dancing* coach (*changed the sport to protect her identity) was from there apparently.

She is what I call an unaffiliated fan. People who are crazy obsessed with a team without really any right to it.

It’s even worse with colleges. My neighbor told me about a guy who had a personalized license plate that said something like #1Wildcat (but with fewer letters and no numeral sign and a different school). The point is that my neighbor said, “Oh, he must have been the Valedictorian of his class at Kentucky.” Come to find out he didn’t even go there. He went somewhere like Louisville Community College.

Now if you didn’t go to a school with a good football team or aren’t from a town with a decent pro sports team, then feel free to root for another. It’s your right. But when you get all obsessed with the team and start going fan-tacky (i.e. room in your house dedicated to the team, personalized license plates, painting your face), then you start to look a bit silly.

People will say, “Oh, I see you painted your house orange and blue and have a Florida mail box cover as well as several bumper stickers referring to the Gators. When did you graduate?”

“Oh, I didn’t go there. I just went to Disney World once.”

Hey, get a gators t-shirt, root for them to win, maybe even put some money down on the game but do you really need to pay tribute to the school in such an obnoxious, permanent way? A way that’s gonna beg some questions that you’re not ready to answer?

And if you went to a school that’s associated with a big school and you want to be an über fan, I’m afraid you’re still out of luck. Like if you went to UT Arlington, for example. You’re welcome to get a #1 Mavericks Fan license plate (although people will probably think you’re rooting for the Dallas basketball team). But you really can’t justify a #1 Longhorns fan license plate.

To me, the point of fanmanship is because you have a tie to the team, the school or the city. That’s why they say “root root root for the home team” not “root root root for the team in the city where your dancing coach lives.”