The 20 Douchiest Chicago Sports Fans

Image via Complex Original

Roots For: Cubs, early parole
The imprisoned former Governor of Illinois, in addition to be a world class douche, is also a baseball fan. Politicians have a long history of pandering to Chicagoans by claiming Cubs or Sox, mispronouncing player names, and making corny jokes about the other side of town. It's a showy, disingenuous attempt to humanize sociopaths that makes everyone involved look like a jackass. In a rather poetic example, Blagojevich (who is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence on corruption charges) once said of Wrigleyville pariah Steve Bartman "[he] will never get a pardon from this Governor." #karmasabitch

Roots For: Bears, free t-shirts, the game to be, like, finally over
Kentucky has Ashley Judd, the Patriots have Gisele, and the New York Rangers have Oliva Munn as their signature, really hot team girlfriends. Chicago has Kristin Cavallari which, you know, is like bringing taco dip to the Playboy Mansion. The Laguna Beach star, who is somehow famous for being a vapid mall chick, is engaged to Jay Cutler. As Cavallari's bitchy sidekick on The Hills: Windy City, the Bears quarterback has started accessorizing with an adorable puppy and, apparently, had his breasts done.

Roots For: Cubs
Baseball is a game played by 'roided out twenty-somethings who basically spend three hours scratching themselves and spitting in the dirt. So, the die-hard's need to inject something spiritual into the proceedings. But to rationalize a century of sucking with being "cursed" is really fucking stupid. 

The "Curse of the Billy Goat" comes from a guy being kicked out of Wrigley Field for bringing his pet goat. That, to us at least, seems like a perfectly legit reason to deny entry. The "Curse of the Black Cat" was just a stray cat running around Shea Stadium. That probably happens every night in filthy Queens. If there is some sort of holy, divine power we're pretty sure it doesn't give a flip about Cubs baseball. 

Roots For: White Sox
The M&M's jacket guy—who has somehow secured a front-row seat to every White Sox home game—hovers over AJ Pierzynski's shoulder like a custard-stained Kenny Rogers. His brightly colored, candy-themed garb smears the TV screen like a poisonous beetle smashed against your Samsung and there's nothing you can do to wipe it clean.

Roots For: Bulls
The United Center is stuck in the '90s (perhaps for good reason). The stadium speakers bump Jock Jams almost exclusively, the lineup is read to a corny light show, and fat dudes dancing like cheerleaders still qualifies as amusing. 

The Matador dance crew "performs" during TV timeouts for the handful of disinterested Bulls fans not staring at their smart phones. For three painful minutes, they'll grovel about to poorly mixed pop songs, hip shake and booty pop to the enjoyment of no one, and then, rather predictably, rip their shirts off to LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It." It's actually more disgusting than it sounds.

Roots For: Bears
Things in your life are probably pretty fucked up if you're fixated on the mid-'80s. Let's start there. The Windy City made legends out of "Da Bears" after Super Bowl XX and, regrettably, they've played like a Foreigner song on repeat ever since. Dan Hampton has the balls to charge $10K for a speaking engagement, Steve McMichael has somehow managed to endorse every local car dealership from Skokie to La Grange, and Mike Ditka has slapped his name on bloody mary mix, wine, and jalapeno sauce that all taste, perhaps intentionally, like bear piss.

Roots For: White Sox
White Sox fans tend to thumb their noses at Cubs fans for "not knowing anything about baseball." But they're not much better, and at least Wrigley Field sells out once in awhile. "The Cell" has been a vast grassland of empty seats since 2007, and the handful of fans that actually do attend aren't doing Sox supporters any favors.

In 2010, a physician ushered his six-year-old son to a public restroom and walked in on two people having sex in a stadium stall. Public indecency and scarring youth is pretty much a take-me-out-to-the-ballgame experience on the South Side. Sox fans have embraced the Wrigley tradition of throwing home run balls back which, beyond being fucking stupid, borders on sacrilege. And winning or not, the stadium is energized most during the scoreboard staple "Connie's Pizza Race."

Roots For: Cubs
We all know the story of Steve Bartman, and while many of y'all expect him to be on this list, he's not. All the guy did was reach for a ball that would have just slipped through Moises Alou's piss-soaked hands anyway. If you want someone to blame for the Cubs collapse in Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS, consider Alex Gonzalez for booting a double play, or Mark Prior and Kyle Farnsworth for piping fastballs and slamming backstops to the tune of eight runs in one inning.

In a stadium full of surly, beer-throwing maniacs the douchebag that stood out the most was Jim Cuthbert. An otherwise run-of-the-mill drunken jack-off, Cuthbert took it upon himself to fight Bartman for the city of Chicago. On ESPN's Catching Hell, Cuthbert actually seemed proud of his behavior, claiming that when he was thrown out of the game by security, he waited around outside the stadium to "whip his ass." Ah, Wrigleyville.

Roots For: Illinois
Every entitled youth from the Chicago suburbs who can't get in to a good school goes to the University of Illinois. They're really proud of it, too. After graduation, they flock to three-flats in Lakeview and continue their "orange crush" on a basketball team that sucks and a football team that really sucks. Any discussion of Big Ten basketball turns into a proclamation of what a "beast" Meyers Leonard is. Meanwhile, the team's down 14 to Minnesota and Bruce Weber's sweating through his tangerine blazer. OK dude, we get it. Please go back to Kam's.

Roots For: Bears, Underdog Stories
Bears quarterback Caleb Hanie is the only quarterback that could (and did) lose to the Chiefs' Tyler Palko. He's the perfectly horrible combination of reckless gunslinger and deer-in-the-headlights spaz (think Jeff Garcia without the mobility and on meth). Last season he took the reins for an injured Jay Cutler and, four weeks later, cratered the franchise. But before he dashed any hope for the postseason, there was a swell of Hanie supporters who thought he'd lead the team to the Super Bowl. 

Those people are douchebags. Hanie fans would continually site his preseason success (against practice squad corners), shower him with praise for a NFC Championship Game (in which he threw as many touchdowns to Packers as he did Bears), and harp on about Jay Cutler's inability to discern jersey color in the red zone (which, actually, was a legit point).

Roots For: Cubs
Wrigley Field is not historic. For something to be historic, by definition, something historically relevant has to have happened there. Unless you count the filming of Rookie of the Year or Jimmy Buffet's Live from Wrigley encore of "Glory Days" as particularly momentous, then Wrigley's just a decayed shithole. Sorry. It's full of disrupted views, falling concrete, and you gotta have some serious chutzpah to use the men's bathroom. Those troughs are traumatic and using them is a rite of passage for many young Cubs fans. Vile.

Roots For: Bears
This is obviously a harsh generalization, but anyone who's had the misfortune of watching a Bears game with a room full of Bears fans knows they're the most insufferable in all of football. They explode in expletive-laden outbursts towards Lovie Smith for not showing the same exaggerated rage on the field as they do in their living rooms. They go on the same excruciating tirade about the "shitty" offensive line after every false start. And they will rip Packers fans for being "fat, cheese-head country bumpkins," while, simultaneously, scarfing Giordano's deep dish, paying out the ass for a seat license at Soldier Field, and getting torched by Aaron Rodgers in the snow. 

Roots For: Blackhawks
Remember when you didn't know any 'Hawks fans? You know—three years ago? Since winning the Stanley Cup in 2010, the Blackhawks have gone from fringe-sport novelty to Chicago's team. Natural enough. But the problem with the new-breed of Hawks fan is—like all insecure people—a need to overcompensate.

This means showing love with lots of supportive Facebook status updates, sort of watching the third period of playoff games, and fist-pumping the hardest to "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis. Oh, they'll also work the phrase "Kaner" into every conversations, wear the hell out of a black Winter Classic jersey, and exhaust a totally made up, but believable story about "raging with the team" at Underground.

Roots For: Cubs
Actors are notoriously egotistical. So John Cusack's need to be recognized in the dugout box seats of Wrigley Field—while totally self-absorbed—doesn't make him anymore of a jackass than Bill Murray or Vince Vaughn. The Say Anything star is a douchebag for cherry-picking his allegiance and claiming South Side whenever the Sox are on the national stage. 

While he's said that he “grew up loving the Cubs and the Sox” by our account he's shown his mug on 35th Street twice: once in the 2000 playoffs when all he could talk about was Eight Men Out (his film about the 1919 Black Sox scandal), and again during the 2005 World Series when, well, he hadn't been in anything watchable since High Fidelity.

Roots For: Sox
The only thing more depressing than reading YouTube comments is listening to people who call in to radio shows. Ugh, those guys. They’re a plague on humanity and none are worse than Sox fans on 670 The Score.

Hosts struggle to answer vague, not-really-questions by pipefitters from Bridgeport who will say simply, “So this Gordon Beckham, am I right?” That's not an exaggeration. White Sox post game shows are a clumsy back-and-forth between Chris Rongey and incredibly stupid callers who are too loaded on High Life to articulate a single coherent sentence. And if one more high school parent calls in to honestly suggest the Bears, "try the same five-wide spread offense as the Libertyville Wildcats” Boers and Bernstein will carry out their suicide pact and kill themselves on-air, during rush hour.

Roots For: White Sox
Hawk once broke Jay Mariotti's nose in a pregame scuffle. That's awesome. But when he's not cold-cocking sportswriters, he's announcing games, and that's when things come totally undone. He's devolved into a soundboard of "he gone," "that ball hit deeps," and "don't stop now boys" to the eye-rolling frustration of a submissive Steve Stone who can't get a word in edgewise. He's gotten a little careless on his "Stretch!" calls, like he's trying to shout lazy Alexei Ramirez flyouts over the fence. And he'll hit you with the same rant about "turnin' 'em loose" on every 3-0 count.

But what's made Hawk unbearable is his need to over-exaggerate the prowess of Sox opponents. Like Dayan Viciedo missing a curve ball by four feet is because some slow-throwing lefty has "the best stuff we've seen all season." Earlier this season he described Royals afterthought outfielder Jeff Francouer as, "one of the most exciting players I've had the privilege of watching in my 50-plus years in the game." That's all you need to know, really. Listening to Hawk used to be like watching a game with your grandpa but now it's, well, like watching a game with your grandpa—only he's on muscle relaxers and every three innings you're pained with the task of emptying his catheter bag.

Roots For: Cubs, cinnamon lozenges 
Every staple tourist attraction has its collection of psychopaths leveraging their insanity for tips. Chicago's less recognizable but equally irritating answer to Times Square's Naked Cowboy is Ronnie Woo Woo.

Woo Woo (possibly a phony last name) basically chokes on his own hiccups until you take a picture with him. He echoes the phrase "Go, woo! Cubs, woo!" for literally hours, or until you pay him to stop. It's a business model the borders on extortion. If you've ever had the misfortune of sharing a Red Line car with him, you know what it feels like to have a chemical fire inside of your brain.

Roots For: White Sox, state fairs, settlement checks
Few franchises have had as woeful a history as the White Sox. Between "Disco Demolition Night," going 88 years between champions, and the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, it's a wonder the team hasn't been contracted yet. 

The single most embarrassing event in the 112 year history of the organization occurred on September 19, 2002 when William Ligue Jr. and his vomitus teenage son rushed U.S. Cellular Field and pummeled Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa for no reason. Ligue's part-time accomplice, full-time dipshit son has grown up to realize his douche bag potential, recently posting pictures of the beating to his MySpace page with the caption, "ME AND DAD FUCKIN UP THA COACH FA THA KANSAS CITY ROYALS." 

Roots For: Bears, Blackhawks, Cubs
Most major market teams have signature, high-profile fans they can be proud of. The Yankees have Jay-Z and LeBron James, the Lakers have Jack Nicholson and Justin Timberlake, the Mets have Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld, but Chicago's been forcibly saddled with Jim Belushi—which is utterly humiliating.

If ABC's renewed a third-rate sitcom, you can bet Jim Belushi will be at Soldier Field to promote it and, while he's yapping, spit some generic football banter. John's less funny, much douchier younger brother wouldn't know Curtis Conway from Ron Karkovice, but has no problem shamelessly groveling about the Chicago sports like a disinterested prostitute on a comedown.

Roots For: Cubs, jean skirts, 24-Hour Taco Bell
The transformation from a twenty-something female Cubs fans into a full-blown bleacher creatures is like Bruce Banner's becoming "The Hulk." Only instead of being triggered by rage it's through pints of Old Style, and a frenzied, giant green monster is a lot easier to handle. When the last pitch is thrown, the party starts, and it's anarchy on the streets of Wrigleyville.

Armed with a bag of McDonald's fries for fuel, the creature thrashes about Clark Street, stopping only to take a leak behind an alley dumpster or to readjust a blown out flip-flop. Along the way, she'll do a lot of regrettable texting, swing on a doorman, and find herself in a disordered makeout session on the second (exponentially sketchier) floor of Barleycorn. The night usually ends with wolfing down a slice of Ian's pizza on the street and later vomiting it out the window of a moving cab. The next day, all she'll have to show for her time at "the old ballgame" is a shattered iPhone screen and the sad realization that she's an enormous d-bag.