Hockey Playoffs, Fandoms

[dlgood]

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."

Comments

[carlyinrome]

My brain hurts now.

[midnightsjane]

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.
As a not rabid, but sometimes enthusiastic Vancouver Canucks fan, I feel your pain.
we're at that stage of the playoffs that seem to always end in the jeer...Canucks suck!
;P

[cactuswatcher]

I'm not much of an NBA fan, but after many years of garbage from San Antonio winning playoff series after playoff series against Phoenix, including with crooked refs, deliberate attempts to injure etc., it was nice to wipe them out in four games for once. If LA stomps Phoenix, it will still be a satisfying year for Phoenix Suns fans.

[dlgood]

That makes some sense in an "excorcising the demons" sense, but the Lakers are so hateable. I'd think you'd need that series to be at least competetive or it'll sting.

[ralkana]

This is why it always amuses me when someone who can tell me the fantasy hockey/baseball/football stats of eleventymillion players smirks at me for being involved in fandom.

There are so many similarities, y'know?

[jheaton]

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.

Or in any other given circumstance. There was a sports memoribilia store located around the corner from the camera store at which I used to work. I remember one weekend a couple of years ago during which they held a Redskins Super Bowl XXII reunion, for which they brought in a dozen or so players from the team for signings and a private party where people willing to pay for the privilege could mix-and-mingle with the players. I met one guy, who came into the store to have his pictures printed, who had driven down from somewhere on Long Island to attend. I couldn't help thinking of my friend Mandy, who drove from San Francisco to San Diego a few years ago to meet Amber Benson, and how a lot of people I know would consider her nuts for doing that but not say the same of that Redskins fan from New York, even though the behavior is pretty much exactly the same.

[dlgood]

Perhaps. My friends - we'd mock somebody for driving 300+ miles to a signing, whether it's an actress or an athlete.