Frontrunners are the Jar Jar Binks of the sports world: insanely annoying and incredibly stupid. Ask a frontrunner any historical question about “their team” and they will either make something up on the spot (and be completely wrong) or stand there dumbfounded before blurting “we got five rings
– beat that.“ As a sports fanatic, I love to debate my friends about everything. We can waste hours sitting on the porch arguing who has the stronger starting five, who’s got a better shot at making a run for the playoffs, etc. Then the frontrunner shows up and all semblances of intelligence and decorum go out the window.
But how does The Frontrunner come to be? Usually you can spot these heathens early in life, because their favorite team in a given sport is the soup du jour. Did anyone else notice a rise in Saints gear in their neck of the woods after they won the Super Bowl? How many kids do you see sporting Miami Heat jerseys nowadays? They start very young, and they have no problem bouncing from team to team each season, simply following the all-important trend of who’s winning.
At a very young age this is almost acceptable. My brother’s favorite NFL team changed four times in three years. He liked the Chiefs, then the Jets, then the Bengals, until he finally landed on the Giants conveniently as they polished off Denver for their first Super Bowl. My brother was 7 or 8 at the time, and young kids are impressionable and like to fit in. To his credit he has stuck with the Giants ever since, and as karma would have it, he’s an Astros fan as well. Remember, the Astros in 1986 lost that great series to the Mets, the same year the Giants ran roughshod through the NFC on their way to the 1987 Super Bowl. So he hit what I call the point of no return for frontrunners: the age at which all your friends catch on that you are frontrunning.
My brother hit this point and was left with the following teams: New York Giants, Houston Astros, Notre Dame football, Kansas basketball, and the Chicago Bulls. If you consider his cutoff year 1988, there’s a whole lot of frontrunning going on here on the surface. The Giants won the ’87 Super Bowl, the Astros lost the ’86 Divisional Series, Notre Dame won the ’88 national championship in football, Kansas won it all in basketball, and the Michael Jordan era was in full swing.
Twenty-five years later my brother still claims allegiance to all five of those teams. Because of this I don’t believe you can label him a frontrunner. Yes, he bounced around a little bit and landed on some really good teams at the time, but he was extremely young and stuck with his chosen teams once he was old enough to understand what the word loyalty meant. Anyone who wears an Astros jersey in public, on purpose, has to be excused from being a frontrunner.
There are different levels of being a frontrunner and some of those levels are worse than others. Let’s discuss these in order from least egregious to most repulsive:
THE BANDWAGON FAN
Everyone knows a Bandwagon fan. The guy who touts a particular team and while their team is winning they can’t shut up about it, but as soon as fortunes turn south they completely disassociate themselves from that team. Bandwagon fans are great at displaying overreaching joy in victory, and complete disregard for the franchise during a loss. You know, like most Cowboys fans from New York and Philadelphia. A Cowboys fan has to keep their sports gear in mothballs they are dormant for so long.
Remember the growth in the Red Sox fan base after the 2004 World Series? The country was practically overtaken by Red Sox Nation. Until they got swept in ’05 and sprained their ankle jumping off the wagon. Then they trampled their mothers to get back on for 2007. Then broke their hip when they jumped off last minute in surprising defeat in 2008. Those that climbed on for the 2011 season practically broke their neck leaping off during the disastrous collapse in September of that year. And last I checked the wagon was getting pretty full again in 2013.
You get the point I’m sure. These clowns aren’t loyal fans, they are fans of convenience. They want to ride the waves of success and then hide inland when times are tough. They are scum for sure, but they are the least egregious form of frontrunner. They disappear for long periods of time, therefore you don’t have to deal with these ingrates on a regular basis. And just think how much fun you’ll have the next time you can help give them a shove off the bandwagon when their team unexpectedly fails.
THE TURNSTILE
This is the guy that you could swear rooted for one particular team in one particular sport, and then all-of-a-sudden they are rocking another team’s jersey while spouting the transparent “I’ve always been a fan” lie. These situations can arise so fast that I have seen wives have to return Christmas gifts before they were even opened. This is usually a combination of someone who is easily manipulated and who has a deep desire to feel like part of the group having fun. Basically they are a bandwagon fan with no scruples.
I have a friend that basically invented this category. However many years ago it was, this guy we’ll call Brian was a Mets fan. He had Mets paraphernalia sprinkled throughout his house. All of our friends knew him to be a Mets fan, or at least so we thought. Suddenly out of the blue he was a Red Sox fan. I’m sure it was just coincidence that this happened around 2003-2004 and it also is just a coincidence that one of our other friends is the biggest Red Sox fan I know. I’m sure neither one of those factors had anything to do with the change of allegiance.
The Turnstile is easily influenced and sees all the fun their friend is having watching a winner. They want to be a part of it, so they allow this friend to dictate their future sports (and sometimes life) decisions. All of a sudden they are taking trips to the home city together as the friend explains to the Turnstile about the history of his new team. You know, so they won’t crack under interrogation for going AWOL on their previous team. The friend basically owns the Turnstile, sort of a modern day lord/serf feudal system.
The Turnstile originally rooted for one team, didn’t like the way things were going, saw no chance of a bright future anytime soon, and jumped ship. Sure they embrace their new team with vigor and passion, which must be so difficult since they are usually jumping to a team that is winning it all. You don’t see a Patriots fan becoming a Browns fan, it’s the other way around. The Turnstile qualifies as worse than the traditional Bandwagon fan because the Turnstile is a disloyal asshat and no longer thinks for himself.
THE DOOKIE
As far as fans of a single team go, nothing is worse than a Dook, errr Duke fan. Anyone who roots for this team that did not attend the school is a bona-fide frontrunner. And since Duke University is one of the hardest schools in the country to get into (they accept only 13% of applicants each year), that means that most of their fan base roots for them for no other reason than because they win a lot.
Here are some fun facts about Duke that you might not have realized:
The school was founded by a tobacco kingpin from New Jersey.
The founder stole the design of the school directly from Princeton, even deliberately making the buildings look older to better emulate the Ivy League school that was almost 100 years older.
It costs roughly $45K a year to attend Duke.
The average median salary of a Duke student’s family is $250K.
Roughly 95% of North Carolina residents despise Duke University.
It is common practice for Duke students to go to Chapel Hill to party on weekends.
Over half of the faculty and staff at Duke are actually UNC fans.
Yeah, that sounds like a school I can get behind. It’s usually a bad sign when your own state hates you. The truth is there are more Duke fans from New Jersey than there are in North Carolina. This probably explains why Duke plays “road” games in Newark, East Rutherford, and New York every year.
If you root for a team that never plays a true road game, always has the officials in their back pocket, and has the governing body (NCAA) manipulate your tournament seeding to boost ratings, than my friend you are a frontrunner. The fact is these people can’t hide it. Where are you from? Trenton, New Jersey. Where did you go to school? Rutgers. So how do you think they’ll do in the new basketball conference this year? I don’t care, I’m a Duke fan.
Just to hammer the point home, have you ever met a Duke FOOTBALL fan? Me neither.
THE MAGELLAN
This guy, much like the explorer, is all over the map. He’s got teams in all four corners of the contiguous United States, and would you look at that, they all have multiple championships. Even more interesting is that all these teams were winning around the same time, but the Magellan will swear to you that is just coincidence. Sure it is skippy.
I have this friend, we’ll call him Cyrus. Our buddy Cyrus roots for the following teams: San Francisco 49ers, Duke Blue Devils (basketball only), Chicago Bulls, St. Louis Cardinals. Let’s break these teams down during Cy’s teen years to see how they fared.
San Francisco went to 6 NFC Championships and won 3 Super Bowls from 1988-1994. From 1988-1992 Duke went to 5 straight NCAA Final Fours, winning twice. And the Chicago Bulls from 1989-1993 went to 5 straight NBA Conference Finals, winning the title 3 times from ’91-’93. So this guy happens to be a fan of three teams who all had their best run of success in franchise history at the same time? If that doesn’t scream frontrunner I don’t know what does.
And we can’t gloss over the fact that these teams are all over the place. There isn’t even a semblance of some kind of local flavor to the proceedings here. We have covered the South, the West Coast, the Midwest, and if Cy watched hockey and there was a team playing in Maine who won 4 Stanley Cups he’d like them too.
Those of you paying attention will point out that I didn’t mention the St. Louis Cardinals in my argument. After the loss in the 1987 World Series, the Cardinals were fairly pedestrian over the next decade which is not in line with the other teams Cyrus roots for. Except we never knew who his favorite baseball team was. Until 2006. After they won the World Series. Case dismissed.
THE UNHOLY TRINITY
These “fans” are the scourge of the earth. They are the worst of the worst. No other type of fan screams frontrunner more than someone who belongs to this faction of the sports world. They are arrogant, incorrigible human beings who root for the Unholy Trinity: Cowboys, Yankees, Lakers. All together. By themselves these teams have true fans and frontrunners, but no one on this planet can justify rooting for all three. Just the thought of talking to one of these heathens makes me want to vomit. I have more respect for the bird that crapped on my car an hour after I washed it than I do for these jokers.
In the world of sports there is nothing more despicable than a member of the Unholy Trinity. We all can spot these people a mile away. It’s the jerk that wears the Aikman jersey with the Yankees hat during the NBA Finals and won’t shut up about his beloved Kobe Bryant. These are the lapdogs of the sports world, basically opening up the Sports Almanac, reading the section “Most Championships Won,” and then claiming to have been die-hards since the day the doctor spanked him on the ass.
Members of the Unholy Trinity club demonstrate all of the characteristics that true sports fans hate about frontrunners. They have no local affiliation (Magellan), more often than not they rooted for other teams earlier in life (Turnstile), and they display hardcore Bandwagon traits. Which do you think is harder, finding Waldo or finding a Cowboys fan during a 6-10 season?
Of course their argument is always about how many championships they have. In fact, that is their only argument because they aren’t true fans and probably have no clue what they are talking about otherwise. Anytime their team fails in the clutch, any time they get clobbered by a rival, these fools bring up the rings. Because the 1927 Yankees championship sure means a lot in 2013 when they failed to make the playoffs.
Maybe one of the most enraging things these fans do is change the argument constantly. The Yankees fail to make the playoffs and all they yammer about is the Cowboys and how they are going to win the NFC. Once it becomes apparent that won’t be the case (usually around Week 3), they switch the argument to basketball and how great the Lakers are and how Kobe is the greatest player that ever lived (he’s not by the way). By the time the Lakers’ season is over the Yankees are in full swing and the vicious cycle continues. I’d kick him in the nuts to stop the nonsense, but fans of the Unholy Trinity don’t have nuts.
Make no mistake about it, these fans have no spine either. They are cowards of the worst kind, afraid to dip their toe in the ocean because the water might be cold. They are apparently so insecure about themselves they couldn’t possibly handle being a true fan of a team. They need the security blanket of historical franchises like my 3-year old needs his Mickey Mouse before he goes to bed.
I can’t be alone in this fight to call out these fraudulent fans. I know most of you feel the same way I do. So the next time you see that guy with the Aikman jersey and the Yankees hat on watching a Lakers game, tell him how you really feel. And right after that kick him in the shins so that he never forgets.
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