Holiday Cheer

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Fans Defined

In light of the '06 Seahawks being swept away by the 49ers and subsequent freaking out by NW fans, I thought it important to define some terms to help all the ranting, slobbering-mad bloggers and armchair quarterbacks out there.

1. Fair-weather fan - A person who cheers for a team or athlete when they're doing well but wishes failure or harm on that same team or athlete when performing poorly. These "fans" are really selfish babies who say things like, "I'm done. I hope they lose the rest of their games." Pathetic.

2. Bandwagon fan - A person, previously indifferent toward a team or athlete, who begins cheering for the same team or athlete because it's popular, convenient, or fun to do so. Let's be honest about a couple things. First, we're all bandwagon fans when the Olympics roll around and we find ourselves exclaiming to our co-workers, "we got robbed in the 2-man luge!!" Second, we need bandwagon fans. Imagine how dead the Kingdome would have felt if only 10,000 people showed up to cheer for the '95 M's.

3. Average fan - A person who consistently supports the same team or athlete and follows the team or athlete regardless of performance.

4. Diehard fan - A person who supports a team or athlete regardless of popularity, convenience, or performance, attends games regularly, wears team colors and has other assorted gear (think wigs, giant foam number one fingers, jerseys, license plate covers, etc), and expresses passion about the performance or trajectory of the team or athlete.

5. Sherlock fan -A bandwagon fan (#2) who disguises himself a diehard fan (#4) but is exposed by stating obvious things about the team or athlete, often from hindsight. "We should have signed Hutch" or "Our MVP isn't as good as LaDanian Tomlinson" or "We should have called a different play on 4th down when we got stuffed" are all hidden clues Sherlock lets the rest of us in on. Thanks for putting the pieces together for us, detective.

6. Bonehead fan: These people are typically Sherlock fans with a higher degree of ignorance, adding moronic assetions to their obvious ones. I heard one bonehead fan complaining that Shaun Alexander isn't vocal enough and that if we had Jamal Lewis to fire up our offense, we'd be a better team. Nice insight on Lewis, a slightly better than average running back who had one great season.

I hope this helps. Happy ranting.

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