Reigning Oneself In:
I guess we all have particular interests and particular favorites in sports, politics, entertainment, etc. For varied reasons we all find heroes or people to root for here and there throughout our life. Some, like myself, get so wrapped up in the process that we get overbearing---sometimes to the point of obnoxiousness. How obnoxious depends to a large degree on how popular or universally liked our admired one is. If someone likes Payton Manning things go smoothly, not a lot of spirited opposition to be found. But if someone likes a more controversial public figure, say a Terrell Owens, then a defensive mode sets in. Of course time usually resolves most of the controversial points in question but the act of rooting strongly for or strongly against a sport figure leaves objectivity in the dust. It seems if we are strongly for or strongly against someone, rarely is there any change in our emotions about the person, regardless of any objective enlightenment about the issues with time.
Sometimes the object of our support gets beaten or fades or fails our expectations and sometimes the object of our support becomes a winner or blossoms or exceeds our expectations. The whole process becomes some sort of vicarious experience in our own lives. Like so many things in life, in the end we are saddened, angered, or happily energized. These objects of our affection or disaffection impact on our own sense of values, priorities, ethics, and attitudes. We are what we are not just because of genetics or our own environment, but also because of our own 'heroes'.
We often call our heroes role models. Like so many other terms role model is not some kind of neatly defined term. Different people are in need of different role models. To make everyone on a team dress alike, think alike, talk alike, behave alike, etc. is to meet the needs of some fans or culture, but ignore the needs of others. The emphasis is often on the need of role models for kids. Sure kids need role models, but the effect of heroes on adults should not be discounted. Good role models, it becomes apparent, can be quite out of the main stream. I still remember Steve Kerr, a member of the Michael Jordan team years, stating in an article that when the team had family get-to-gethers, all the kids spent the entire time with Dennis Rodman. Dennis, who rarely spoke to his teammates and behaved bizarrely in his private life, was a gentle funny giant with kids, and---according to Phil Jackson----was the player who related best to all the peripheral 'little' people who worked around the training facilities. All the nobodies and kids were Rodman's friends. It does make you wonder, which would be better for your kid, to spend some time around Dennis Rodman or some corporate CEO. Life abounds with mysteries.
Active interest in sports may or may not be therapeutic or rational. Emotions dominate in sports, for both players and fans. Watching Barry Bonds fans cheer robustly for him is a good illustration of blind allegiance to a team or particular player. The media can often create a good image or a bad image for a player, often for varied reasons. Depending on who you listen to, a guy like Terrell Owens is the Devil himself or a stellar example of a good citizen, interesting personality, and a product of self improvement. Often, for a fan to achieve maximum happiness, it is not enough for his/her favorite athlete or team to succeed, but someone else must fail.
The reasons why a person roots for a particular team or player piques my interest. In many instances I guess it is simply the home town team or a player on the home town team. Of course home town is deceptive. The city does not own the team and most of the team members are not local products. In some sports most of the team may not even be native born Americans. Some sports are dominated by particular ethnic groups. Thus, in reality the home town team is essentially a bunch of non home region players from other areas hired to play in a home town arena which is not owned by the city in question. In that sense the word 'home' is kind of meaningless. Still, at least the name of the team is home town and a fan can have access on TV to see most of the games. Defense of home town players is a lot like a defense of your own kids. Objectivity goes out the window. Try convincing someone their own genetic kid is not much of 'winner'. It is like trying to convince home town fans that Barry Bonds is a 'loser'.
For the above reasons I tend to seek out players or coaches who stand out in some remarkable way and root for them plus the team for whom they play or coach. The home town team is usually included in the mix unless I find the coach or several players unlikable. This kind of selectivity hardly is objective. The traits anyone admires most will differ from person to person. Some just use athletic talent as the basis for whom they choose to be a big fan. In general, a player with a lot of talent is often given a lot of slack on any other personal attributes. For some people, personality or ethnicity or dress or verbal skills, or attitude play a large role on who their 'heroes' are. In general we want our sport 'heroes' to reflect the same values and priorities we ourselves think we possess. But this is hardly simple. Most professional athletes have been coached and advised ad nausea what to say---and when necessary, public scripts are written for them. Consequently, what kind of person one is rooting for might not be so obvious.
At any rate sport fans root for someone for particular reasons and find others rooting against the same person for different reasons. The intensity of rooting for or against particular players varies considerably. The problem arises in the consequences. Overbearing supporters of a particular player can be offensive to others. A simple case of enough is enough. Enough is the key word on both sides. For the supporter it is usually not enough for his/her 'hero' to win, but others need to lose, especially their public detractors. It's the old "I win you lose". In most cases the 'losers' are as likely to admit 'losing or being wrong' about as often as parents admit one of their kids is a 'loser'. In the process of rooting against someone, especially if they are a bit different in some way, there is no way, in the mind of the detractor, that they can ever be a winner, regardless, period.
Now that I am growing slightly ancient it seems best to accept the success of a rooted for figure in sports without hammering over the head those who just don't like the player. For the player in question to succeed ought to be satisfaction enough. There has to be some age at which a person finally has no need to prove a damn thing to others, or any need to flaunt at anyone who wins what in the arena of sports. Those parents who try to cram the 'wonderfulness' of their kids or grandchildren down the throats of others will find themselves endlessly upset about the thinly veiled disrespect, or at best disinterest, of others toward their cherished offspring. It is not much different with sport heroes. The difference in the two cases is that two people will argue over sport heroes, and just stifle themselves about anyone's kid. It takes a lot of years to find stifling a form of peaceful liberation. These kind of bad habits are hard to break. If someone you root for is able to clear the hurdles and run the table en route to success, that in itself ought to be ample reward. Those who rooted against the player will be upset enough. Let them live with their own feelings of disgust/anger/whatever. Attack a wounded dog and you are likely to get bit. It is as old as human history. If you can't win, you can at least get the winner angry..So who is the fool here---clearly the one who attacked the wounded dog.
