The Pros And Cons Of American Football

Looking back on previous generations spanning over thousands of years, humans have always rallied over a sport that displayed physical competition. This always brings in an audience, one of the biggest sports in today’s culture is American Football. It’s a sport where players are padded up then told to run into each other over a ball that’s not even round. Sure, it’s a bit dangerous, but that’s what draws in the fans. The National Football League consists of thirty-two teams, with each team having a fan base that varies in number. Some teams that are more popular have more fans, but they are equally committed to their teams. Although very diverse, football fans are unified with the love of their corresponding team; which is sometimes overlooked by critics that would rather stress the negative behavior exhibited by a minority of fans.

This group of people can identify as “we” (Allport) even though they haven’t meet; Gordon Allport would come to the consensus that this is an in-group.

Now some people that don’t understand the “hype”, or the passion that football provides fans, and tend to see the negative possibilities while shading out any of the positive outcomes. A common example of negative views includes the perception that all fans are violent and aggressive. They smash objects which are sometimes important and valuable, scream, yell, and sometimes riot when their favorite team loses. If a football fan destroys items when their team loses it most likely means that they’re bandwagon fans, or might have a problem that’s not caused by

football.
Bandwagon fans are possibly the worst in-group within the whole in-group of football fans. These are the people that don’t stay true to a single team and hop around to the most successful team. Last year the Carolina Panthers displayed an amazing record just to lose in the championship, but along the way many more fans decided to root for the Panthers simply because they had a better streak. This year the same is happening, but with the Dallas Cowboys. True fans stick to their favorite teams, win, or lose.
The Cleveland Browns are currently 0-12, which means they have won zero games this season, and lost nine. If continued it’d be tied for the worst streak in football history. Although they’re flat out losing, and have no chance of making the play offs to continue to the Super Bowl, their fan base hasn’t changed much since the beginning of the season. Once they end the losing streak the fans will jump in excite me and continue to cheer their team on.
When a team wins, especially if it’s a home team people unite. That could be as simple as two people that have no idea of each other’s identity high fiving in excitement, some fans even hug it out. Race, sex, religion all these are just forgotten. One person I interviewed, (A. Dubose, personal communication, November 13, 2016,) a friend of mine that’s attending Presbyterian College told me about their win against Monmouth. It was their first home win of the season which resulted in a 2-4 record. Although they had a losing record, everyone in the crowd was excited and enthusiastic, they cheered and celebrated. People just united and it seemed like nothing else mattered outside the stadium.
The same happens at football games here at NCSU. People get a bit wilder here, but there’s never any negativity expressed towards two fans that support the same team. Now I’m not claiming that conflict does not occur, because if I was, I’d be lying. If two fans of opposing teams run into each other, it usually results in nothing. Much of the instances occur when said fans are intoxicated, and that’s the ultimate reason for the violence. There’s a few people, when intoxicated they cannot behave in an according matter, when matched with someone from an opposing team it occasionally ends in some blood, and possibly a tooth or two knocked out. It should be considered that this is a small portion of the in-group that falsely represents the whole. In shorter terms, it’s simply a stereotype.
As for the yelling, what harm does that do. Fans simply can’t keep in their emotions and tend to express them, weather that’d be yelling because your team is winning, or maybe yelling in an angry tone because of the countless errors a team commits. The argument that a small group shouldn’t represent a whole doesn’t work well when fans decide to riot over what seemed to be a bad call. While that’s a very bad outcome, if it wasn’t for football, fans would find something else to become invested, and it would most likely have greater consequences. Riot’s don’t happen very often; they rarely happen. Fans don’t decide to go out and riot because their team lost. They riot because they feel cheated out of a possible win.