Man Bites Blog

I understand that people in the sports business have to pay lip service to how great their fans are, and Lord knows we heard enough of that after the Phillies’ World Series title, but in a post apologizing for the Mavs’ poor start, I think Mark Cuban lays it on a bit too thick:

What seperates the Mavs from other teams is that we have great fans who have stuck with us through our entire history.  My committement as always, is that Im going to make sure we do everything we possibly can to set things in the right direction.

Emphasis added.

Now, I’m sure that the Mavericks have great fans, but they don’t have a reputation as particularly loyal.  A glance at their attendance figures shows that, like most teams, their attendance fluctuates with the team’s winning percentage. 

But even if they were blindingly loyal, so what?

It’s obviously in the interest of owners like Cuban to nurture this notion that there is some virtue of being a “good fan” and supporting a team even when it’s losing.  Any team is going to have bad cycles, but the arenas still have the same number of seats, and it’s better if they’re filled.

I don’t mean to pick on Cuban because there aren’t any other owners who put as much effort into ensuring they present a quality product, and the spirit of his comments is that the support of the fans leads him to feel he has a duty to reciprocate by putting a winning team on the court.  He just happens to be the only team owner with a blog in my RSS reader.

But supporting a sports team is not a duty.  This isn’t a marriage or friendship.  This is a recreational activity that’s supposed to be fun.  I don’t think there’s any honor in continuing to hand the Rams’ ownership money and time to “support” a terrible product.  Being a “good fan” has about the same moral import as being a “good customer” at your local supermarket.

And I don’t think it’s an accident that companies use morally loaded words like “loyalty” for their rewards programs, as if shopping at a different grocery store or using a different credit card is akin to cheating on one’s spouse.

If you enjoy the martrydom of being a “long-suffering” fan, then by all means continue.  If it makes the championships sweeter if you sat through dozens of losing seasons, then have at it. 

But if you tell yourself that by doing so, you are morally superior to those whose relationship with their teams is more, er, tranactional, you are essentially being suckered into a huge manipulation to ensure the continued income of billionaire owners and millionaire athletes.

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