EXAMINING SPORTS HATE!
By: Stephen Lylyk, RP Show Intern
While watching Game 4 of the American League Championship Series between the Houston Astros and New York Yankees over the weekend, Rod Pedersen came to this realization.
“I can’t believe how many people hate the Yankees,” said Pedersen on his live show Monday. “There’s some serious hate out there!”
There are multiple reasons why sports fans hate certain teams.
The first of which being a rivalry. A rivalry is a history of shared fierce competition between two opposing teams/individuals.
Darren Dupont on the Rod Pedersen show Monday described his hatred for a former rival of his hometown sports team.
“I hated the Theodore Buffaloes,” said Dupont. “Big rivalry with [my] [hometown] Wynyard.”
Former BYU Quarterback Max Hall accurately described how most fans feel about their hated rivals, during a postgame interview after a 2009 victory against rival Utah university.
“I don’t like Utah,” said Hall. “In fact I hate them. I hate everything bout them.. I hate their program. I hate their fans. I hate everything.”
In a 2010 article for bleacher report, author Todd Boldizsar gives reasoning behind why people hate 20 different sports franchises.
The following are some examples from Boldizsar’s piece and the reason why these fanbases are so despised.
- Notre Dame Football: Their “holier than though attitiude. The notion that good grades and endless tradition equals success makes the rest of the country snarl.”
- New York Knicks: 90s era Knicks were renowned for dirty play “Players like Charles Oakley and John Starks gave the team a reputation for Dirty play and tomfoolery.”
- New York Yankees: generations of success: “Still winning World Series championships, and still adding to the legion of haters the Yankees have a laundry list of championship seasons.”
A sports fan is a passionate person. They pour out their heart and soul watching a group of strangers playing a game.
As Buzzfeed reporter Logan Rhoades explains in a 2013 article, the emotional state of a sports fan is not always viewed positively.
“Everyone has had the unpleasant experience of going to a game and sitting in front of some total ass who becomes disgusted by players for letting him down and losing the game.”
SB Nation Writer Mike Payton sat down with Murray state research analyst Daniel L. Wann for a 2021 article. In the artilcle Payton described the reasoning behind why sports fans act in the emotional ways that they do.
“Sports give fans purpose,” wrote Payton. “If you talk to Lions fans and try to unpack what it means to be Lions fans they’re going to start talking about how it gives them a purpose and a sense of fulfilment to wake up in the morning.”
Professor Edward Hirt of Indiana adds this to the discussion in a 2006 piece written by Shirley Wang for the Association of Psychological science on the reasoning behind sports fans behavior.
“People tie up alot of who they are in their identity as a fan of X team,” said Hirt. “A huge part of where they are, where they derive alot of their positive and negative affect is from what their team is doing.”
Sports are a way to bring people together. Fans that normally never connect get to interact through a shared passion of their sports team, and their shared hatred of another team. And that is part of the beauty of sports.
