What really makes a fan a fan?
Is it the passing down of an allegiance to a team from generation to generation? Is it the location in which you live that inclines someone to liking a certain team? Or is it just what team happens to be good at the time that one begins to enjoy keeping up with sports?
To be honest, your guess is as good as mine, but I’d like to take a stab at what the formula really is for making a fan a fan. Now when I say a fan, there are multiple kinds of fans. So in order to classify what kind of fan you are, we must take a few things into account. To do this, I will be breaking fandom down into levels.
First of all, we must address the culture and environment an individual has been brought up in, or Level 1. Is it one that fosters an allegiance to a certain team or is it not?
In my case, I had a pretty heavy influence in my family to be a University of Tennessee Vols fan. I was born and raised (’til I was five) in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, or as us East Tennessee natives like to call it, “Rocky Top.” I lived in Bristol, which was a mere two-hour drive from the best college football experience in the Western Hemisphere, and I say that confidently.
See what I did there? I put in a little jab towards other college football teams with the last sentence in that paragraph. That’s what can differentiate a casual fan from a serious fan: pride in their team. So we have addressed the familial and geographical ties to being a fan of a team, or as we will call it, Level 1; now we must address the experiential side (the side that can produce that pride), or Level 2.
My first experience at Neyland Stadium, the best college football arena in the country, was when I was in high school and went to see my Vols play against the University of Alabama-Birmingham. The Vols were down 29-26 in overtime when Matt Sims (our quarterback at the time) tossed a back-of-the-endzone dime to my guy Denarius Moore to win the game. Games like that are why I have pride because we may have been losing to an awful team (like when we lost to Georgia State this year, oof) but never gave up.
Since then, I have had numerous experiences back on Rocky Top. I was at the “Battle at Bristol,” which was the most attended football game ever with almost 157,000 people. I was at a UT game where we broke the record for the loudest college football game ever recorded, and most recently, I attended a game where UT upset #12 Kentucky 24-7. Now that is just football; don’t get me started about basketball (we got gypped by bad refs in the Purdue game—if you know, you know).
When someone takes pride in something, they often only talk about the good parts or the victories. Notice how all the memories I have are good memories, ones that induce pride in my spirit for being a Tennessee fan. This is where it can get tricky, because I believe Level 2 is where most fans need to camp out. Level 2 is a healthy pride, whereas Level 3 gets into a whole other kind of fan: the dreaded superfan.
The superfan is that person who cannot take any sort of jab at their team lightly. They have to immediately fire back and start verbally attacking someone’s mother. This is a no-go, and this is where fandom transitions from a healthy excitement to a controlling obsession. Thankfully, I do not know of many of these people, and those I do know, I am on good terms with.
There are, of course, anomalies. This is where Level 0 and Level ½ fans come in. Level 0 fans are those people who think you score touchdowns in baseball and hit dingers in football. Then there is Level ½, where one has not had any previous ties to a team but becomes a fan for a self-developed reason. This example can be seen in me being a fan of the Boston Celtics. One of the first NBA Finals I remember watching was when the “Big 4” of Rajan Rondo, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett ran the table and beat the Lakers in the 2008 Finals. The effort, grit and finesse with which the Celtics played made me want to play like them and inspired my love for basketball even more.
Then there comes the question of, if I am a Level 2 fan of one team, does that mean I am a Level 2 all the way around? Not at all! So for instance, I may be a Level 2 fan of Tennessee, but I can also be a Level ½ fan of Union because I go to this university and want to be a fan of it. Now, these levels can change. So I may have been a Level ½ fan of Union my freshman year, but now after being here for some time, I have morphed into a Level 2 fan.
Let’s review:
Level 0: No allegiance to Level 1 ties, either has no knowledge of or care for sports.
Level ½ : Has developed fandom out of self-developed reasons (love of play or player) and no Level 1 ties, although Level 1 ties CAN develop from this level.
Level 1: This is the most basic level of fandom, usually inherited from parents or other relatives.
Level 2: A healthy fandom developed from either a Level 1 or Level 2, goes out of way to watch games and be a loyal fan.
Level 3: The unhealthy extreme of fandom, leads to severed relationships and just straight-up awkwardness.
Phew, (*cue wiping sweat from brow*) and that is the “Levels of Fandom” as defined by yours truly, Isaac Elliott.