They Never Let You Down
Being a fan is hard. Don't let anyone tell you different. Thankfully, the team is always there for you--even if you don't realize it.
Off-seasons can be tough. It is hard to know what to do.
This is all the worse since for most teams the season had at least one type of disappointment or another.
Our happiness as a fan in particular is clouded since we cannot fully enjoy the experience for what it was. We experience positive externalities, to use the economics jargon, but as is the nature of externalities, we do not experience the full benefit or cost. In fact in a lot of ways we often suffer more cost than we can receive gain. As it turns out, sports have negative externalities as well.1
In the end the expectations gap, the difference between what you achieved and what you expected to achieve, is all that really matters. And the task of satisfying much less outperforming expectations is more and more difficult the higher your expectations are set.
It is tough to be a fan. It is tough to be a fan of a team that perennially is mediocre, or losing, but it is also very difficult to be the fan of a team pursuing championships, because they will likely and usually do fall short of that goal. Every time it is very painful.
There are basically two types of pain for fans, players, and coaches of these types of teams: One which I as a fan have experienced often is to come up short, to stumble just at the wrong time, and have your goals come to a complete end. The other is to be embarrassed in quite a different way--to fall back among the pack and have no chance of achieving anything close to what those who have come before you have achieved.
Such is the nature of being a fan of an expected winner—you almost always are losing.
Yet I think Ben in Fever Pitch is correct--they never let you down.
Those who make it through the season, continuing to cheer, continuing to hope, continuing to support, continuing to be a fan will be rewarded with victory when championships do return.
Those who have never suffered defeat have never truly tasted victory.
Chin up. There is always next season.
A possible subject for a future post would be the argument that instead of subsidizing sports perhaps we should tax them so as to get less of them. This is an argument with two facets (negative externalities and inefficient use of resources due to wasteful, excessive, competition) that serious economists consider.