Just wondering because I’ve experienced both scenarios. This season the Lions were already pretty much out of it all but mathematically by week 6 or so, when it became clear they were going to have to fight not to go 0-17. But my friend, who just enjoys the experience of going to a game, asked around the halfway point.of the season if I wanted to get tickets and see a game. I said uh no, can’t see that happening, sorry.
Free tickets are a little different. My father-in-law used to get a set of 4 Lions tickets every season for years from an organization he was part of. They were randomly assigned by raffle, so the tickets could be at any point of the season, including pre-season. FIL wasn’t crazy about going to the games, so usually I’d get two tickets and my brother-in-law would get two.
Pre-season games, though fairly meaningless, at least were full of promise and hope for the upcoming season. Early season tickets were of course the best, especially where the Lions are concerned, because they’re always lucky to still be in contention by Thanksgiving. I and a friend, and my brother-in-law and his friend, had a lot of good times tailgating and then watching games.
One year we got last game of the season tickets. As luck would have it, if the Lions had just won the penultimate regular season game the week before, they would have still been in wild card contention, but they lost, so the last game was meaningless. I went with my friend, but my BIL and his friend bailed, giving his tickets to a couple nephews. Would have been ok to see the Lions win anyway, buuut…they lost. It was a pretty sad, dispiriting experience in general. Don’t think I’d go to a meaningless late-season game again, even with free tickets. Life and Sunday afternoons are too short.
My ex brother in law and his father attended every Patriots game during the late 1980s and the early 1990s and at least during that stretch they were pretty awful. But it never dampened their enthusiasm, nor did the ever consider selling their tickets.
They outsmarted themselves by owning the tickets in their family business’ name do they could deduct the cost as a business expense (totally unjustified). Their company went bankrupt and the trustee clawed back the tickets which they tried to transfer to another family member.
Ironically the Patriots have been in a golden age since then.
I’ve been to many sporting events where my team had no chance of reaching the playoffs. I don’t go to a game just because this could be my chance to see a team clinch a post season berth, I go for the whole experience - seeing the on-field play directly, being part of a crowed, hanging out with family and friends, etc.
I’d even go to a late season Lions game, especially if the tix were free.
I went to a lot of Packer games in the 1970s and 1980s, when they were pretty pathetic. It was still fun, though not as fun as it became from the '90s on, when they have won more than they’ve lost.
Similarly, I went to most of the University of Wisconsin’s home games when I was in college in the '80s, and they were terrible then, too.
Sometimes a lost cause game can be even more fun, because you know the players are playing for their jobs. Even if the team can’t make it to the playoffs, every player knows that the stats will still matter when the new contracts are offered.
And sometimes the last place team can play a spoiler role for other teams. This recently happened with the Ottawa RedBlacks in the Canadian Football League. They were well out of contention for a play-off spot, but their last game against Montreal really mattered to Montreal. The question of where the first playoff game between Montreal and Hamilton would be played was still up in the air, but losing to Ottawa the last regular game sealed the deal, and the first playoff game was in Hamilton. Home field advantage has at least some effect, and now Hamilton in in the Grey Cup game this coming Sunday, and Montreal isn’t.
Uh oh, looks like from the responses so far that I’ve revealed myself as a fair-weather fan…
I do understand that it’s all about emotional investment. People who aren’t sports fans will say to a hardcore fan “why do you go so crazy when your team wins a championship? It’s just a game, and you had exactly zero to do with their success”. But the hardcore fans who stay through the low lows during a team’s losing seasons will experience highs that are that much higher when their team finally wins. Hardcore Lions fans will lose their shit if and when the Lions ever win the SB. There may be an epic epidemic of heads exploding.
But since I did not subject myself fully to the terrifying lows, I won’t experience the dizzying highs, just the creamy middles…
A couple of other things to note, about attending “meaningless” games:
One of my all-time favorite memories about attending a football game was attending the “Snow Bowl,” between the Packers and the Buccaneers, in the middle of a blizzard in 1985. The roads were terrible, and the only reason that my dad and I were able to get there is that we only lived a few miles from Lambeau. And, despite the fact that the Packers were a bad team (as was the Bucs), it was fun to see the Pack take advantage of the bad weather.
I got to see a lot of great players in-person, even though it was while they were trouncing the Packers. I can say that I saw Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Fran Tarkenton, and more play.
I do enjoy a good snow game (or an ice game, where the temps are single digits) when an open-field cold-weather climate team plays a dome or warm-weather team. Talk about home field advantage.
I’ve gone to see the 2-7 Cowboys in the 2010 season when I was given a free ticket. For me, it was more about curiosity about seeing the massive and relatively-new AT&T Stadium than the team.
Yeah, the Bucs just wanted to play the game and get the hell out of there, and it showed. It likely didn’t help that, while they were trying to warm up before the game (and standing there shivering), a couple of the Packers’ running backs jogged onto the field, wearing t-shirts and shorts, and laughing.
Exactly. I’m not a pro football fan, but some of my very most entertaining college football experiences have been at late-season non conference beat downs. It’s like all the pressure’s off- no ranking expectations, no real worries about winning, and everyone just enjoys the event, rather than being laser-focused on the gameplay. Conversely, if you’re playing a tough opponent and there’s a conference championship on the line, that game can be nerve-wracking to the point of not really being as enjoyable.
There’s even something perversely fun about being a supporter of a lost cause team. It mostly centers around the camraderie and celebrating the small victories, and then when they eventually turn around, you get to see it and experience the contrast.
Yeah for the past (checking…).jeez, opened 2002, almost 20 years now(!) part of the fun of going to a Lions game has been seeing them in Ford Field, which is a really nice venue. Much nicer than the old (now demolished) Pontiac Silverdome. The Silverdome was too big, so enormous that home-game TV blackouts used to be frustratingly common when the games didn’t sell out.
One of the things that I dislike about going to see a sports game in person is that it makes the whole thing suddenly seem…philosophically weird.
On TV, when the camera is focused solely on the field, you feel like you’re watching an intense battle (which it is,) and the stakes feel high and it all seems important.
But when attending a game in person, suddenly it just hits you as bizarre…here are 80,000 people watching 22 people play on a grass field…and suddenly it hits you that it’s “just a game.” It doesn’t feel like a battle anymore. It feels like a rather strange human activity, so many people watching just a few throw a ball…it’s like the fourth wall was broken. Like instead of watching a movie, now you’re watching actors act a movie, with cameras and movie personnel running around behind the scenes.
Yeah, well I was at arrowhead when the chiefs played the colts when the temperatures were in the single digits at kickoff and below zero at the end of the day. There was lots of talk about the home field advantage being magnified by the weather.
I go to at least one Cubs game every year, whether they’re good or bad. This past September I went to one after they had already traded away all their star players and were well out of contention. I picked a random weeknight to go and bought a cheap ticket in the bleachers. This was the first time I’d ever been in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. It was nice because there weren’t many other fans who bothered to show up for a game against the equally bad Twins. All throughout the game, I wandered from section to section and watched the game from multiple viewpoints in the bleachers.
Had the ticket been more expensive or the anticipated crowd larger, I definitely wouldn’t have bothered.
The Colts, though they do play in a dome, are a team in a cold climate at least, so it’s easy for them to practice at an outdoor facility to prep for games like that. The Bucs or the Dolphins playing outdoors in the dead of winter on the other hand, not much they can do to prep for the cold unless they practice in a warehouse freezer or something
During the last game of the NLCS in 2016, I was hoping to see a Dodgers batter hit a fly ball right to where Steve Bartman previously sat…and see the mad panic of Cubs fans laying as flat as they possibly could to avoid fan interference.
Week 17 - well, now Week 18 - games usually aren’t as important as they used to be; a team that doesn’t have anything to play for usually will bench its starters quickly, either because they’ve locked in their playoff position and want to rest them or they are out and they want a spot at a better draft choice by losing-ER, UH, they “want to protect their starters from injury in a meaningless game.” There’s a reason most fantasy football leagues have their championship games in the next-to-last week of the regular season.
The Raiders, when they were perennial doormats in Oakland, could only pretty much guarantee two sellouts; the once every eight years (since the latest expansion) home game against the 49ers, and the once every eight years home game against the Cowboys. Well, there was a third one - when there was a rumor that it would be Jerry Rice’s last home game as a Raider (which turned out to be true; as I recall, he was in a Seahawks uniform the following week).
For me, the experience of enjoying the game live is fairly disconnected from the issue of how the team is doing overall that season. I might be more likely to make an effort to get to games if they are doing well, and would certainly be more likely to watch on TV. But in general, I go to few enough games that it’s an event in itself, and it’s fairly rare for free tickets to fall into my lap. So if I had an opportunity to go to a game for free and didn’t have anything else planned, I’d likely take it no matter how bad the home team happened to be at the time. In terms of paying for tickets, in a five-year stretch where the team is winning, I’ll probably go to more games than during a losing five-year stretch, but I wouldn’t stop going entirely just because the team sucks.
