Even though I love sports, I oftentimes get annoyed by sports fans. To me, most just seem too emotional and irrational - if not hypocritical - for my liking. The mental gymnastics that sports fans go through in order to defend their own guys, but then either turn their back on guys when they leave the team, or justify the actions of players on one's favorite team while criticizing another player's similar actions on a different teams makes me go crazy. Recently, I realized this all boils down to how sports fans disseminate between two words: reasons and excuses.
See, when someone's favorite team wins, the fan base looks for reasons their team won, or excuses why they lost. We're largely dealing with the exact same thing, only arguing over the semantics of it. I guess that's just the way the world works these days, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. What makes sports different, however, is that we keep score. In other instances, people could argue over whether the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri are a symbol for the progress we still need to make toward racial equality, or if they're "rioting" for riot's sake. These arguments can go for hours, days, weeks, years. In sports, the side who's ahead on the scoreboard when triple zeros appear on the clock ultimately will win the argument with the guy in the bar stool next to them who's rooting for the losing side. This might occasionally unfair; perhaps it might be unfair more often than occasionally. Either way, it is the argument-ender.
Moreover, reasons and excuses can sort of have alternate meanings. People who are in the "Baseball players who used PEDs should be banned from the Hall of Fame" camp use PED use as the reason why those players achieved such a high level of success, and use that reasoning to diminish their accomplishment. Defenders of those players see those "reasons" as excuses not to vote for the best players of their generation. Again, it's the same subject matter, same players, but interpreted subjectively on each side of the sports-viewing pendulum. The most common area where something like this happens are in movies and television. People can watch the same movie but come away with very different interpretations. These interpretations, however, are probably more objective views than in other areas. As with the Ferguson protesters, they way they're viewed most likely aligns with one's political views. This is similar to sports, where one's favorite team clouds their objectivity and we end up with a great deal of confirmation bias - where people's mind's are made up beforehand, then fit their rationale around the position they were going to have all along. But again, in sports we keep score, there are no open-ended endings.
I suppose sports wouldn't be as much fun if everyone was fair-minded, but I guess I'm just not wired like most sports fans. If nothing else, I strive to be consistent in my views, and that often comes at the cost of being the best fan I could be. I don't mean to take a holier-than-thou tone, in fact I'm often jealous of friends who take sports so seriously. I'd love to be throw-the-remote-at-the-TV guy, but I just can't; I can't because to me it seems inconsistent with broader views. Or at least that's my reason why I don't get as worked up about sports as I used to ... or maybe that's just my excuse.
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