Hockey Playoffs, Fandoms
It occurs that I should elaborate on yesterday's post. (Suck it, Crosby!)
I was linked to a post in musesfool on sports fans and schadenfruede - itself a comment on the Slate article "Why we root for underdogs."
Germane here, because I'm
celebratingrelishing Pittsburgh's second-round loss to Montreal in the Hockey Playoffs. As a Washington Capitals fan, Montreal's win over Pittsburgh takes some of the sting away from Washington's own earlier loss to Montreal.
Not much - Washington was the #1 Team in the regular season and added to a long history of playoff collapses. And that's awful. It makes the rest of the playoffs stink for me. But this looks a little less bad now that a highly regarded Pittsburgh team has met the same fate. And that Pittsburgh's star, Sidney Crosby, was a bigger dog in his game 7 than Washington's Alexander Ovechkin was. Also, I hate Pittsburgh, mostly because we've fared incredibly poor in playoff series against them.
So that's some fan motivation.
Some things about being a sports fan, are specific to sports. It's hard to translate the spontaneity & immediacy of sports. You don't have the same records and data sets. And fans generally don't watch a TV show and refer to characters as "We". But a lot of it is similar. I'm not a neuroscientist or an anthropologist, but there's something in our brains that responds to great (or even crummy) dramas - whether it's a Baseball Game or a Vampire Show.
Anybody who both listens to sports talk radio and reads a Television Without Pity Message board will note similarities to fan reactions after playoff games and series finales.
"The director / coach ruined it for everyone by overmanaging"
"Team-disrupting ball-hog / scenery chomping ham actor"
Shipper Wars - Yankees vs. Sox
Angel vs. Spike -- Sid vs. Ovie
And the meta. Executive meddling applies to both, shows being canceled because of profit margins & ratings, vs. the Salary Caps in sports. Old-School scouting vs. Sabremetrics, Doylists vs. Wastonians.
So many different outlets for me to get my nerd on...
Too bad I'm too lazy to refine this into a study of actual merit/quality. Somebody could do some quality school work on this theme.
I was linked to a post in musesfool on sports fans and schadenfruede - itself a comment on the Slate article "Why we root for underdogs."
Germane here, because I'm
celebratingrelishing Pittsburgh's second-round loss to Montreal in the Hockey Playoffs. As a Washington Capitals fan, Montreal's win over Pittsburgh takes some of the sting away from Washington's own earlier loss to Montreal.
Not much - Washington was the #1 Team in the regular season and added to a long history of playoff collapses. And that's awful. It makes the rest of the playoffs stink for me. But this looks a little less bad now that a highly regarded Pittsburgh team has met the same fate. And that Pittsburgh's star, Sidney Crosby, was a bigger dog in his game 7 than Washington's Alexander Ovechkin was. Also, I hate Pittsburgh, mostly because we've fared incredibly poor in playoff series against them.
So that's some fan motivation.
Some things about being a sports fan, are specific to sports. It's hard to translate the spontaneity & immediacy of sports. You don't have the same records and data sets. And fans generally don't watch a TV show and refer to characters as "We". But a lot of it is similar. I'm not a neuroscientist or an anthropologist, but there's something in our brains that responds to great (or even crummy) dramas - whether it's a Baseball Game or a Vampire Show.
Anybody who both listens to sports talk radio and reads a Television Without Pity Message board will note similarities to fan reactions after playoff games and series finales.
"The director / coach ruined it for everyone by overmanaging"
"Team-disrupting ball-hog / scenery chomping ham actor"
Shipper Wars - Yankees vs. Sox
Angel vs. Spike -- Sid vs. Ovie
And the meta. Executive meddling applies to both, shows being canceled because of profit margins & ratings, vs. the Salary Caps in sports. Old-School scouting vs. Sabremetrics, Doylists vs. Wastonians.
So many different outlets for me to get my nerd on...
Too bad I'm too lazy to refine this into a study of actual merit/quality. Somebody could do some quality school work on this theme.