For some time now, it has been the fashion to do throwback uniform days for various professional sports teams. Yes, it's a gimmick, but I kind of like it. It makes me nostalgic for a time when the electric bill was more of an abstract concept than anything with real-world implications. Not to mention that it strengthens fans' ties to their favorite team, reminding them of the length of their devotion and providing everyone with a good laugh. (Incidentally, the best throwback uniform of all time is easily the old San Diego Chargers look with the powder blue and gold. Seriously, they ought to just go back to that one permanently. I also have a soft spot for the old Patriots helmet with the minuteman about to hike a football--it has a great literal cheesiness to it. It's like no one can be whimsical or fun in the modern NFL.)
Anyway, I was just thinking that we should expand the throwback day beyond sports and into regular life. Think about the benefits of introducing a throwback day at the office. How much would it improve office morale and teamwork if all the women had to come in wearing those skinny little bows around their necks and giant shoulderpads? And the men could wear their hair slicked back a la Gordon Gecko and sport those too skinny/too shiny ties. Or we could go all the way back to the '50s and dress like extras in Mad Men. And why not totally embrace the stereotype and get wasted at lunch and grope the receptionist in the supply closet? Stupid, no fun sexual harrassment law.
I'm still hoping to put a similar idea into effect for a party AnneArchy once suggested--where everyone has to attend as their former self. I think it would be a lot of fun to see all of my responsible, job-having friends in their knee-high Doc Martens or marijuana leaf hats.
So I really enjoy just about any competent spoof of Warcraft and its players. I suppose I might have a bit of grudge against it for the way it sucks people in and uses up hours and hours of time. Not to mention that in my various (if brief) stints at MMORPG playing, I continue to be a bit freaked by the players who seem to identify a little too much with their character. No, Dude, you're not an ass-kicking warlock. You're just a douche with a computer.
Today's Superbowl pick in the Uninformed NFL Picks focuses heavily on fandom. That's because I totally judge people by their football allegiances. Not if they don't enjoy football, of course. This only applies to people who claim to watch and follow a team--and mostly only guys at that. Sure, I judge some girls/women who pick their favorite team by relative quarterback attractiveness, but not too harshly because a.) I understand; and b.) I'm not sure that you really count as a fan if that's your major point of interest in the game. (And kudos to Tom Brady, who somehow managed to raise his stock with women by dumping his baby mama--who had recently given birth--for Gisele Bundchen. That's some upper-level attractiveness ju-jitsu there. I don't know how many guys could get away with it.)
Anyway, I'm going to generalize wildly here, but in my judgment, there are three teams where if the guy is a fan, it completely lowers his stock with me. Though I should stress that this is less of an issue for someone legitimately from the team's home city. But then again, these are the teams most likely to have bunches of fans who have never even flown over their region. And since I've never lived anwhere near any of them, 90% of their fans that I meet are not homegrown fans. Anyway, they are:
1.) The Dallas Cowboys. Totally cliche, not to mention a ridiculously overrated team. A guy who likes the Cowboys is unquestionably more concerned with image and flash then substance. And if he says it has nothing to do with cheerleaders, that's because his pants are on fire. Not particularly imaginative either, as when it came to picking a favorite football team, he went with the obvious choice. Guys whose favorite football team is the Cowboys and yet also choose the Yankees as their favorite baseball team should have been drowned at birth.
2.) The Pittsburgh Steelers. I don't want to spend too much time repeating what I wrote in the Uninformed Superbowl Pick, but Steelers guys are like the weird mirror-image twin of the Cowboys guy. They would never admit that the Steelers are just as much about image as the Cowboys, only their image is about faux blue-collar toughness. Guys who aren't from Pittsburgh but are Steelers fans anyway are inherently untrustworthy and probably blow a kiss to their Ben Roethlisberger fathead every night.
3.) The New England Patriots. One of the few situations where the legit hometown fans bug me almost as much as the bandwagon fans. I will admit that ESPN's Bill Simmons is partly responsible for this. The Cowboys and Steelers may be the classic bandwagon teams, but the Patriots are the new black when it comes to trying to glom on to a team's success. The Boston/New England area has had insane sports success in the last few years, and still those greedy bastards will bitch and moan about every little setback their teams have. I can't wait until the sports gods curse them with decades of last place finishes as payback for their current success.
So there we go. My 3 least favorite fanbases. Though I could continue, of course. (The Philadelphia Eagles were only narrowly edged out. And if the list was a bit longer, I'd probably also have to touch on the Washington K Street Lawyers.) Any additions? Objections?
Even writing that title was strange to me. I suppose that's because here in the US, cycling isn't in any danger of overtaking soccer as the #1 European sport that people care about professionally only when an American is doing well. (I'm sure there are a bunch of fans of progessional soccer who are going to want to jump in and let me know how awesome and sophisticated soccer is. Save your breath. There is no way that I'm going to get excited about a sport where a score of 3-0 is a massive blowout.)
Anyway, getting back to the point, it seems that Lance Armstrong is concerned about the possibility of being attacked by crazed cycling fans during the 2009 Tour de France. Since one of the things that we like best about Armstrong is the fact that he annoys the French, I suppose it's no surprise that the French, in turn, are ready to act on that annoyance. And people have been attacked during the Tour before. A Belgian cyclist, Eddie Merckx, would have won 6 Tours, but was punched by a fan during the race and ended up having to drop out. I remember reading a book about the Tour a few years ago, and the author spoke about the rabid fans, the groupies, and (of course) the rampant cheating. Yes, there are cycling groupies.
Really, I think for the sake of everyone's dignity, this whole nutty cycling fan thing should have been addressed by the Marshall Plan. Maybe it's not too late to set up some kind of exchange program. We could send them our Steelers fans (hey, they're arrogant and tend to have unfortunate moustaches--I think they'd fit in fine in France), and the French cycling fans can spend some time being Buffalo Bills fans (the French are fatalistic--it's a great match).
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