But you’ve been presented with lots of good reasons why one might choose to be a fan, and have just said you “don’t understand” them. If you could explain what you mean by “rational”, then we could get somewhere. If you’re after some objective criteria that would lead everyone to support a particular team, then you’re not going to find it. If you’re expecting someone to present irrefutable logic for why you, Priceguy, should support Barnsley FC, then that’s not going to happen either. But people have presented lots of reasons why their choices make perfect sense to them; you just seem to be having trouble with the fact that you wouldn’t make the same choice. But that’s not rationality.
As RaftPeople says, the question is really “are our emotions rational”? I would say probably not, but there are rational responses to them, and these have been explained to you in this context. Yes, being a fan is rational if you like football and social situations. If you don’t, it’s not.
If you’re in love with someone, is it rational to want to be with them over and above all the rest of the people in the world? I would say yes. Is that love rational? Probably not. But do you express disbelief at the apparently arbitrary choices of the rest of the world, just because you don’t share their feelings?
Entirely on reason? Mostly on reason? You’ve been given a lot of reasons here, most of which you’ve completely ignored. As I said, there’s no logical argument derivable from axioms everyone would accept that leads one inescapably to the conclusion that one must support Barnsley, but that doesn’t mean that such a choice is irrational in the rather pejorative sense that it gets used. There’s no such argument for why anyone would want to become an architect either, but I don’t go around shaking my head and saying “jeez, I just don’t get why anyone would want to stack bricks on top of each other!” Do you?
Who said you had to pick?
When did this turn into “justify your fandom so Priceguy can dismiss it with his sense of personal preference”?
I mean, sheesh; the answer you seek is that by choosing a team, quite a lot of people experience more satisfaction from the game of football than they would otherwise, and for some people, certain teams offer more satisfaction than others for a multitude of reasons. There you go; that’s all there is to it. It is a rational response to irrational stimuli, just as seeking to be with the ones you love is, just as pursuing a career you enjoy is. You may not experience those stimuli, but you seem intent on belittling sports fandom from the perspective of some transcendental Zen being. What was that bit about murders in the paper about, for crying out loud? D’y think the football fans are trying to say football is more affecting than murder, or something? Aren’t we capable of reading the whole paper and being saddened by the front page, and cheered by the back? Does our appreciation of the world have to be so reductively joyless that we can’t even like sport without seemingly being accused of trivial-mindedness?
Not a rational reason. You knew that rapes and murders happened, and the risk to you hasn’t altered by an iota simply because you happen to hear about one.
The entire premise of the debate was entered into without comment or justification of a position regarding religion, sports and rational thought. There is no foregone conclusion to the statement.
People follow religious convictions because they understand the difference between animate and inanimate. We think, therefore we are. Given the complexity and size of the universe and a linear observation of accumulated knowledge, it becomes easier over time to believe we are not the pinnacle of evolved thought but rather the product of evolved thought. In other words, for the universe to exist, it must be understood on a higher level. While it is easy to dismiss religious tenets, it is harder to dismiss the design behind all of creation.
To explain sports requires an understanding of friendship. As we meet new people we become part of their lives and empathize with their successes and failures. Picking a sports team is a less detached version of this process. Sports fans become intimate with the achievements of individual members of a team and root for the efforts of the player. This is heightened by knowledge of the sport and an appreciation of the skills needed. I played soccer from grade school into college. It was a huge part of my life and I derived great pleasure from it. I watched a number of the World Cup finals and enjoyed it for the skill involved. While I was not able to “root” for a particular team at this time I would certainly develop a preference for one as I begin to recognize individual achievement.
Thinking on that . . . A Brazilian coworker of mine mentioned that went the Brazilian team went home after losing to France, people were booing them and throwing things at them. Nobody ever did that to the Red Sox! (Did they?) And I don’t think there’s any other sport so famous for rioting and hooliganism among the fans.
My limited personal experience with soccer players from Brazil was that they were rather hot-headed. It was easy to get them spooled up by just snickering at a bad move.
But that aside, I recall a fair number of US cities getting trashed over sports victories.
Rather different. Soccer fans throw fights in the stands during the games. In fact, from what I’ve heard, some of them travel all over Europe with the express intention of doing that. I rather wonder whether they pay much attention to the game at all.
While I agree Euro football has more fan participation than in the US there are probably more fans involved from visiting teams. In the US I would expect a higher density of home-town fans because of how spread out the franchises are. In countries like England you have more fan overlap in a particular region. Think of how many clubs there are in the UK vs baseball teams in the US and then look at the size of the country. Texas is roughly 3 times the size of the UK and has 2 teams. A denser state such as Ohio is slightly smaller than England and also has 2 major league baseball teams.
Most UK football violence happens well away from the stadiums.
It’s arranged in advance and usually takes place away from any heavy police presence. It used to be in the grounds, but with all-seater stadiums and enhanced security, it’s more likely to be in a nearby underpass or similar.
Men will always fight - football just provides the background… remove the footie and they’ll just find something else as an excuse.
Jeez, what exactly have I done to piss people off here? The question is “Is football fandom any more rational than religion?”. I claim that the answer is “no”. Have I said that football fans are idiots? Have I said that football fandom is any less rational than any other sports fandom? Have I somehow tried to deny anyone the right to be a football fan? Exactly when did I “belittle” sports fandom? Have I, in fact, said anything negative whatsoever about sports, sports fandom, football, football fandom or anything related?
Seriously, I want to know. What did I say that was so offensive?
Ummm, did you bypass the past two decades, or something?
Within the stadium, probably not a much greater proportion. 10% of the (segregated) seating being given to away fans is a rough estimate of a generous allocation. In English cup competitions, away teams can take 15% of the seating, which is enough to necessitate season ticket holders being moved etc.
With local derbies within a town or city, then yes, there’s a huge potential for clashes between fans. Elsewhere, there’s only those with tickets, and a small travelling contingent who want to find trouble and know where to find it. As e-logic says, if you go to a football match with the intention of watching football, you’re unlikely to see any trouble at all.
Of course, this is completely different in countries with old-school problems still to be tackled, such as Poland.
Over here, we only hear about that sort of thing when the police fail to stop it happening in the stands, as sometimes they still do. If two fan-clubs meet under an overpass after the game to have it out, that doesn’t make the news here – maybe there.
Well, to be honest, the way you ignore pretty much any reason given why someone might actually enjoy and choose to maximise their enjoyment of something is pretty annoying. You may not mean it intentionally, but you assuredly are coming across as very dismissive. You’ve accepted why people might rationally choose to support a team, and you’ve been presented with a whole bunch of reasons why, subjectively speaking, a given team might be better for a particular person to support. And yet you start going on about emotional reaction to murders, as if this was some sort of competition of emotional validity. It just seems like the equivalent of a child asking, “but why? But why? But why? But why?” You’ve gotten all the answer you’re going to get, all the answer we can possibly give, and you’re still going, “but why?”
That’s why people are starting to make comparisons with love and music and career choice and hairstyle and wotnot; because when you get right down to it, absolutely bugger all about human experience is entirely rational, and we just don’t get what you want from us. Do you think we support our teams to the exclusion of all else or something? Do you think they’re the most important things in our lives? What are you asking here? We just don’t know!
So that’s why we’re irritable.
To lighten the tone (and I’m not trying to make any point at all here), I just reminded myself of a Jack Dee skit about dealing with one’s children, and in particular their habit of pursuing conversations like:
“What are you doing, Dad?”
“I’m washing the car.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s dirty.”
“Why?”
“Because I drove it through a puddle.”
“Why?”
“Because I had to get to work and it was raining.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I get paid for.”
“Why?”
“ARGH!”
In an attempt to turn this situation round on his 5-year-old daughter, he ambushed her one day while painting, asking:
“What are you doing?”
“Painting,” she replied.
“Why?” Jack asked, whereupon his daughter looked at him with withering pity and replied:
“Because this [gestures to paintbrush] … is not a crayon.”
Well, that, to be honest. Sports fandom is no more rational than religion. That’s the question posited in this thread, and that’s the question I’ve attempted to answer. e-logic seemed to claim that sports fandom is more rational than religion, and I disagree with that claim.
As long as we all agree that sports fandom is no more rational than religion, this debate is over. But apparently I somehow came across as “belittling” sports fandom to quote your earlier statement, and I still wonder how. e-logic came across as not agreeing, so there was something to debate.
But yes, I do dispute that rooting for a particular team (and I mean rooting with your heart and soul and partying when they win and getting depressed when they lose and screaming your lungs out during matches) because your brother likes their rivals is rational, to use one of e-logic’s examples.
I’ll happily admit that sports fandom is something I do not understand. That doesn’t mean I can’t have opinions on whether it’s rational.
