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."

Germane here, because I'm

celebrating

relishing 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.

Comments

[carlyinrome.livejournal.com]

My brain hurts now.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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

[stephanierb.livejournal.com]

Shipper Wars - Yankees vs. Sox

So very true.