Who’s the True Fan?

We are in the midst of football season, which is the only sport I really follow.  As a Dolphins fan I’ve seen a lot of bad seasons- including going 1 and 15 in 2007.    Only true fans stuck with them through that.  Or so I thought.

For those of you who don’t follow football, the Dolphins are having their best season in a LONG time.  Like in decades.  They are currently leading their division by 2 games and it’s looking really good for them to make the playoffs.  You would think Dolfans (yes, that’s really what we call ourselves) would be shooting from the rooftops!

To be fair, most of us are.  I’m tickled pink.  I talk about them more than most people want me to.  Even people who could care less about the NFL have been stuck listening to me singing their praises.  And I know that I’m far from alone.

But then there are the rest of our fanbase.  I have SiriusXM radio, and this time of year it’s almost exclusively set to channel 88- the NFL channel.  The number of people who call in to complain about a team that’s 7 and 3 is mind-boggling.   Some common themes: Our QB stinks.  Our defense stinks.  Our coach is a moron.  You would think we were losing every game by 40 points!

And because I never learn, I am in a Dolphins group on Facebook and that’s even worse.  People complain about the uniforms.  They complain about the players we didn’t draft 5 years ago.  They complain about every member of the team and every member of the coaching staff.  They complain about  the stadium (yes really).

One thing all of these nut jobs have in common is that they are a self-declared “true fan”.   In their minds, people who are happy with a winning season are lame because we should be expecting a team that goes to the Super Bowl every year.  We shouldn’t be happy unless our entire team makes the All Pro roster every year and our coaching staff is considered the best in the world.   That sounds exhausting, and quite frankly, awful.   What’s the point of following a team at all if you can never be happy for anything they do?   That doesn’t sounds like a fan at all!

My license place on my car reads FINZFAN.  I bought NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV so I can watch the games (Miami teams are rarely on TV in Iowa).  I went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year specifically because my favorite Dolphin of all time, Zach Thomas, was inducted into the Hall earlier this year.  6 years ago I spent an absurd amount of money to sit in the 7th row at the Vikings/ Dolphins game at US Bank Stadium.   So yeah, I consider myself a pretty good fan.

But who am I – or anyone else- to decide how much of a fan anyone else is?  And even more importantly, why does it even matter?  I’m going to be a fan the way I want to be a fan.  You be a fan in the way you want to be a fan.

Sports are supposed to bring people together.  The excitement when our team is good.  Commiserating with each other when our team is bad.  It can be a beautiful thing.  It SHOULD be a beautiful thing.  Let’s keep it that way.