Assume a Premier League style competition, where after the last game of the season, the team/player who is at the top of the league is the winner straight away, no postseason playoffs or anything like that. If your preferred spot has a playoff system, for this thread pretend it doesn’t. The rest of this will assume a team sport in the phrasing, but can equally apply to individuals.
Your most favourite team, Team A, ends the season in the middle of the pack. Whatever happens on the last game will not affect their position in any meaningful way.
The 2 teams that can win it are Team B and Team C. Team B is your teams most hated rival, team C is neutral.
The last game of the season matchups are Team B v Team Z and Team A v Team C.
It’s virtually guaranteed that Team B will beat team Z, who are the punching bag of the league. If they do, and team C beat team A, team C win the championship. If B beat Z and C don’t beat A, B wins the championship. Which side do you root for in the A v C match?
Okay, this OP was rather hard to parse and read, but I think I understand what you mean: It’s a choice between seeing my favorite team win a game, but at the cost of seeing my most hated rival win the championship. In that situation, it’s easy - I root against my favorite team. Since they’re in the middle of the pack, a win means nothing.
Cheering for team C is too much like encouraging throwing a game. Yeah I know the outcome doesn’t actually depend on my support, but you don’t strategically hope your team will lose, no matter what.
Which is why I don’t have a team, I just have a ranked list of which teams I hate the more. Makes things easier, morally.
A similar, but not exact, situation happens in American football often. As a NY Giants fan, I hate the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles, pretty much equally (and the Washington Redskins a little less so). The Cowboys and Eagles play twice a season, so I always pull for whichever team’s win will help the Giants more. Given the Giants state lately, it usually doesn’t matter, so I root for a meteor strike on whatever stadium the Cowboys and Eagles are playing. So in your hypothetical, I root for a meteor strike on B vs. Z, just so I don’t have to root against A. That said, I would never actively and likely not even passively root against A, my team, but I might have moved onto the next sport on the calendar by this point. At the very least, while still supporting A, I wouldn’t take my team losing very hard.
Speak for yourself. I’ve known many fans, especially of the NFL with its 16 regular season game schedule, who have actively wished for “their” team to lose more games in an already lost season, “to get the best draft pick”.
I don’t think I could bring myself to actively root against my favorite team while watching that final game, and especially not if I were physically present at the live game - but I would likely be avoiding following the game at all while hoping for a “C over A” outcome as the least unpleasant, and would not think any less of a fellow fan of A being less squeamish and rooting for a “C>A” result at the game.
I look at it differently, maybe because I’m an optimist, but I see it as a game where I’m happy either way. My team won? Yay! My team won! My team lost? Yay! They’re a spoiler for the rival I hate. Either result is good!
Of course you can look at it the opposite way, either result is bad. Your team loses, or your rival prospers. But why go into it with that mindset? I love watching a sporting event where I don’t have to stress out over the result. (You can do that the entire rest of the season.)
This kind of thing is fairly common. I think in most cases you stay uncertain about what you want and might even prefer losing… without being too vocal about it. The team does its sportly duty and the fans accept whatever the outcome is.
Man utd was in almost exactly this situation a couple of weeks ago. Playing man city, where a win could give the title to Liverpool. They did their best, but lost…I’m not sure their fans minded that much.
It’s going to depend on how I feel about the people I know (friends, family, co-workers, etc.) who are fans of Team B: As fans, are they poor suckers who could use a break, or are they arrogant bastards who could stand to be taken down a peg?
Yeah, but if you go “Second place. I guess there’s always next year.” to taunt them, they can easily counter with “Only reason we didn’t win is that your team is so crappy.”
If my favorite team doesn’t win the championship, I will be only somewhat more disappointed if my most hated rival wins. I would be even less disappointed if my favorite team had beaten the rival in head-to-head competition, even if the rival went on to the championship.
It depends a bit on the rivalry - if team B is hated, but is genuinely the best, and wins a lot of championships, then it sort of softens the blow. You still hate the cunts, but it’s business as usual.
For me, though, team B is Liverpool FC and they are not genuinely the best, haven’t won the title for getting on 30 years, and are in the process of solidifying themselves as one of the textbook chokers in world sport. Bottlers, as we say in the UK. So you might say I am emotionally invested in seeing their failure come to pass, embedding itself deeper still in the club’s DNA. Team C all day - there would honestly be people running onto the pitch or similar in this scenario if we were beating team C late in the game.
I know the question isn’t about playoffs but I think certain scenarios are similar. I’m a Cowboys fan so let’s say the week 17 situation looks like this. The Cowboys and Seahawks are both 9-6 and competing for the second wildcard spot. The Giants are already out of it. The Cowboys played an early game and won, and now the Giants are playing the Seahawks. If the Seahawks win they get the second wildcard because the would win the tiebreaker. If the Giants win then Dallas goes to the playoffs. Who do you root for?
I root on individual games. If one of the teams in a game is on the list of Teams I Like, then I root for that team (or the one higher on the list, if they’re both on the list). If one of the teams is on the list of Teams I Dislike, then I root for the other one. If neither of the teams is on either of my lists (a common occurrence, since my lists are short), only then do I look for other criteria, which might include geography (which part of the country do I like better?) or who I’m watching the game with (all else equal, I’ll root for the same team as my friends). I suppose that in a game where I didn’t care about either team, I might also choose a side based on giving my own team a more favorable position, but that’d probably only be if my decision were still tied after the friends and geography factors. And rooting based on giving a disliked team an unfavorable position would rank even lower yet.
One nice thing about college football (the US version) is that you often play your rival in the last week of the season. I’ll never have this problem with Vanderbilt unless they move the Tennessee game.
I’d still cheer for my team regardless, but I can understand those who wouldn’t in the privacy of their own home.