FANATICISM
Raw Emotion: Sports Style

Story by Chris Crowell

“Sports fan” is such a harmless term on paper. It’s a person who watches games, drinks some beer, wears a shirt with a team name on it and maybe puts a decal on a car. It’s just another person with a hobby, right?

If only it were that simple.

I’m a sports fanatic. I break remotes. I punch walls. I kick trashcans. When the Indians, Browns or Cavs lose, I yell obscenities and then sink into a depression that affects me for days. When sports analysts call Ohio State’s football team slow, I consider it a personal assault. These aren’t routine behaviors for stamp collectors, but for sports fans, especially Cleveland sports fans, these behaviors are like eating lunch at noon or putting on socks before putting on shoes.

When Ohio State lost to Illinois in football last year, in November, I slammed my bedroom door against the wall and nearly kicked over a coffee table. My girlfriend, Hannah, not amused by this display after three years, told me “it’s not that big of a deal.”

I hate that “it’s only a game” stance. It’s just so dismissive. People who say it are wrong. It’s easy for those who aren’t in the club to call it stupid and move on. But I’m in the club. I’m here every day, thinking about minor leaguers and draft picks. That Ohio State loss was a big deal!

Later I reflected on my reaction to the game, how loud, mean and obnoxious I was. This wasn’t the usual, important post-defeat reflection about how Ohio State will recover from the loss. I was reflecting on my life. What is all of this? Why do I get so worked up about sports? Shouldn’t it be just a game?” I often get existential after a big loss, but this was different. I was beginning to think I had mental problems.

I’m normally a very self-aware person. I always know when someone is bored while listening to me. I know when I have something in my teeth. And I know that my sports fanaticism is ridiculous and there is no real defense for it. But I can’t help my intensity. When it’s game time, it’s game time. The question I want to answer now is “why?”

My buddy Dustan Dolata is a diehard like me. I asked him why he keeps rooting for the Browns, Indians and Cavs with such passion, but he didn’t understand why there needed to be an answer. He simply says, “That’s like asking people why they have sex.”

If sex were really like watching Cleveland sports, we’d have a population crisis on our hands. Abstinence clubs would hold meetings in the Rose Bowl. Being a Cleveland sports fan is not fun. New York Yankees fan, for example, wouldn’t need to go on this quest of self-discovery. For one, they are too busy sacrificing virgin lambs to their demon gods. But secondly, they have no baggage! Sports just might be like sex to them because their team wins championships.

Cleveland sports yield few pleasures, and the pleasures they do yield are fleeting. Tim Long documents our troubles in his book Curses! Why Cleveland Sports Fans Deserve to Be Miserable.

He laments in the book’s intro, “Our list of woes is endless, replete with bad trades, front office mistakes, personal tragedies, and various defeats snatched from the jaws of victory.”

He continues to say “We are the city that’s divided by a crooked river that once caught on fire. But one thing that seems to unite us is our sports, especially ‘our’ Browns, ‘our’ Indians, and ‘our’ Cavaliers.” He then lists 140 pages of misery and debacles that pathetically bind us all.

If you haven’t heard about The Drive, The Fumble, The Shot, Red Right 88, Game 7 then consider yourself lucky. Just as a short hand for the novice Cleveland sports fan out there, a major Cleveland team hasn’t won a championship in 44 years. That is the longest drought in professional sports for a city with three major teams. As you can see, I’m not in this for the glory.

Long’s book makes a key point that true fanaticism doesn’t stem from hedonistic gains. In other words, front-runners need not apply. Wins don’t generate true passion. It’s the person who decides to be diehard in the tough times – those who test faith, if you will – who become a fanatic.

While that makes sense, I refuse to believe I only like Cleveland sports because there is some demented unconscious desire in me that craves to be miserable. The tough times harden me to defeat, but that’s not why I stick around. I hate it when my teams lose.

Beyond the misery, and strictly from a more general perspective, most of my sports fanaticism is Northeast Ohio’s fault. In my little town of Ashtabula, either you hunt, join a gang or watch sports. There isn’t a whole lot going on around here. So, at an early age, I chose sports. Sadly, as the years passed, I developed few other interests. Fifth grade Chris and graduate school Chris have a lot in common. All I talk about is sports. I went out to a bar with Hannah and her English major friends the other day and I realized I cannot talk to anyone unless they watch sports. It’s what all my friendships are based on. Even at family gatherings we’re always facing the TV, watching “The Big Game” even if it’s not that big of a game. My grandparents are in good health, my brother is doing well in school, we all enjoy a good meal – but Derek Anderson throws an interception and it’s as if someone drove a car through our living room. There’s got to be a reason for this.

Prominent psychological research does not seem to grasp exactly what’s going on either. Daniel Funk and Jeff James devised the Psychological Continuum Model that attempts to understand sports fan behavior. They break the addiction into four levels: awareness, attraction, attachment and allegiance. A person progresses through each level, it seems, based on his or her own particular predilection toward the sport. Basically, once you watch baseball, you make a decision to like it or not to like it. If you like it, you watch it more. The more you watch one team, the more you can progress through the PCM, with the top level equaling devout loyalty.

Allegiant sports fans, they say, have a persistent attitude, are resistant to change and develop biases in their thinking that favor their team and lifestyle. Check, check and check. But why does this loyalty grow? It can’t just be consistent exposure can it? Inquiring broken remotes want to know.

Jamie Schlabach, another psychological researcher, says most sports fans follow the social identity theory, which states, “people are motivated to behave in ways that maintain and boost their self esteem.”

This may be true for some fans, but people with high self-esteem don’t normally lie on the floor and try to swallow their own tongue. Schlabach continues to say “categorization can also create a basis for ethnocentrism, or the belief that one’s own group is superior to other groups.” She means that sports fans, upon joining their particular group, feel an allegiance to their group and disdain for other groups. Once in our group, we all act in a group mentality, which tends to be the most extreme behavior. At that point the teams we root for are almost of no consequence and the group mentality is what perpetuates it – the US vs THEM. 

I agree with Schlabach to an extent, but I personally don’t care about being a part of a group. I just want the Browns to mercifully destroy the Steelers and win the Super Bowl. The Browns are the important part, not the “group.”

To truly gain perspective on what it’s all about, I need to consult an expert. Not a psychologist or a doctor, but someone with real wisdom – the fan equivalent to a Wiseman with a long beard sitting on top of a mountain. That person for a Cleveland fan is Big Dawg.

John “Big Dawg” Thompson is a Cleveland Browns superfan. He played sports when he was younger and fell in love with our Cleveland teams after going to games with his dad. “I was a pretty hook, line and sinker diehard,” he says. He started dressing up for games during the 1979 season when he constructed a giant papier-mâché Brownie Elf head. This head lasted until Red Right 88. It was promptly destroyed at a bar shortly after, but his allegiance was not. He’s had season tickets ever since. In his younger days he would even travel to every road game.

John is the classic blue-collar Cleveland worker. A real lunch pail kind of guy. He did some of his most important work during the 1995 Browns season. Art Modell announced plans to move the team, and John was motivated to action. Some people are moved to join the army when they feel the country needs defending, and John was that way with the Browns. He fought, not by swearing a lot and burning Modell in effigy, but with politics in the Save Our Browns group headed by the mayor. He wanted to preserve the history of the Browns for Cleveland fans, future fans, and the Hall of Famers who fought year in and out for the orange and brown. He couldn’t let this area’s history get robbed. In Cleveland, we all owe a big debt to John.

“Sports are a big part of this area – always have been,” he says. “In the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s there were great teams in this town. That’s what makes it so big. We were all raised on it. It’s kind of a religion in a way,” he says.

John knows sports fanaticism more than most. He’s seen a lot from his spot in the Dawg Pound – the most rabid fan section in existence. He’s seen beer thrown and numerous fights break out. He’s almost been in several — with opposing fans and with Browns fans. The craziest story Big Dawg recalls was when a drunken Steelers fan was forcibly stripped down to his skivvies by a horde of Browns fans, who then set his clothes on fire. It was near December at the time.

I suppose with every religion comes the extremists – the people who strap bombs to themselves or kidnap abortion doctors. Sports fanatics like myself aren’t right, but there are extremists among us who are dangerous. This behavior, while sometimes funny, does give me pause. Is this what I’m supporting? Drunken fistfights?

I look over my Big Dawg interview notes one last time and notice how he described the 1995 Browns season right before the move. He described going to those games were like “visiting a terminally ill friend who only has so long to live. You go back every weekend to see them, knowing it’s getting closer to the end.”

Those are true emotions, and to me, they transcend the ugly side of sports fanaticism. There are definitely a lot of people that step beyond the arguments and broken remotes and into a different, more warped place. I think the alcohol helps with that. But true, pure, non-violent sports fanaticism evolves from childhood and from there it fills many voids. It is family. It is tradition. It is a release from mundane Midwesternity. You take the Browns from Big Dawg, and you take a part of him. The Browns are Cleveland; we are Cleveland. The wins, losses, players and owners will come and go, but we will always be here with our teams.

The entire time I wanted to find why I’m a sports fanatic, I just needed to look around. My brother is. My dad is. My grandpa is. My uncle is. But I think the person who pushed me from just putting a decal on my car to open-hand smacking personal possessions was my grandma who died last year.

She was a diehard Indians fan and is the original genetic component for my sports craziness. She watched every game with the same intensity I do. She cussed. She slammed her fist on her couch.

I’m not a fanatic because I wanted to “join a group.” I’m a sports fanatic because I’m already in a “group” – I’m a Crowell, and the Crowells are competitive people from Northeast Ohio. When the Steelers beat the Browns; Steelers fans beat us. This is our area, this is our family, these are our teams.

Does any of this help poor Hannah on an otherwise peaceful November night? Not in the least. But in the end, this is my identity. I can’t help it. I care about sports. I care about the Cavs, Browns, Indians and Buckeyes. I get pissed when they lose. I am ecstatic when they win. Maybe I didn’t find (or believe) a more scientific answer to my question, but I don’t want one. I’m a Cleveland fan – I don’t need to be more depressed than I already am.