Image via Complex Original
Last week, Complex Sports reminded you of the things you think, but won't say. Well, this time around we're telling you what you're not thinking, but should. Did you get that? As fans, our judgement can sometimes be clouded by the tradition of sport, baseless loyalty to teams, and a few too many stadium beers. So to bring some long ignored ideas to light, we've created a slide-by-slide journey deep into the sports culture psyche. From the one-and-done college athlete to the infuriated, drunken fans, these are the 25 Things Sports Fans Don't Think (But Should).
You're not a better referee/umpire/official than the guys on the field.
If there’s one thing that unites sports fans, it’s the paranoid belief that the officials have it out for their favorite team. Before you accost another human being over a questionable roughing the passer flag, think about if someone did that to you at your job. As a grocery store manager, you'd call the cops on a jersey-adorned Spike Lee for spazzing in the cereal aisle over a lack of Apple Jacks, right? Our point is that you need to chill out, bruh.
These guys nail it 98 percent of the time and when they don’t, some one from the nosebleeds lays into them. Spend three hours taking vitriol from a team bench and the stadium full of fans while, simultaneously, keeping up with the incredible speed of top athletes, then you can get bent over a blown charging call.
There's nothing cool about fantasy football.
Not everything we do is cool. If you need a reality check, take a look at some of your more regretful drunk texts and the copious amount of Taylor Swift in your iTunes. So, you're into fantasy football. No big deal. Just understand that's there's nothing boyishly charming about your hobby.
We don't know how many points Calvin Johnson will score for your fake team, but we do know he'd score with your real girlfriend. And judging by the bean dip stain on your ever-tightening Ray Lewis jersey, she'd be right to cheat on you. Relegate your fantasy football banter to the level of your online porn addiction and everyone will be happy. It's a hobby that you should be embarrassed of and keep on the down low.
When you get down to it, football is just as boring as baseball.
Sure, a big touchdown pass is exciting to watch, but so is a home run. And after that celebratory end zone dance, you get an extra point, followed by a commercial, followed by a kickoff, followed by another commercial, followed by a three-and-out, followed by another commercial. The ratio between Bud Light ads and exciting plays watched is, like, 3:1.
A visceral hit is fun to see, until it draws a flag and a two-minute explanation. A fumble is fun to watch, until it’s followed by a four-minute review. We’re not saying baseball's great, it's just odd that the consensus of one is that it’s boring, while the other is seen as the ultimate adrenaline rush.
A well-played women's basketball game is more aesthetically pleasing than a whole lot of major conference men's college hoops.
Calm down, Sparky. We know you think (but won't say) that this year's boys McDonald's All-America team could beat a few WNBA squads. We're not saying the women players are better. But just because you can play, doesn't mean that watching you play is all that fun sometimes.
Have you actually tried to watch one of those 49-48 Big East or Big Ten games? Their scoring droughts are longer than Steve Urkel's. If the choice is between watching South Florida and Rutgers stage an unintentional rebounding drill or watching UConn and Notre Dame in a triple-overtime thriller, we're going with the girls every time (Skylar Diggins is bad in every sense).
The physiological differences between men and women mean that the women's game is by nature more horizontal and less high-flying. A well played women's game resembles a soccer match: the ball doesn't get more than 12 feet in the air, but it's beautiful to watch. Reminds us of the games we play—you know, if we were actually world class athletes.
Your game in high school wasn't as good as you remember it/tell people.
There wasn't a single moment or obstacle that kept you from being a star athlete, you were just never that good. Your co-workers will have a hard time exposing the holes in your "back in the day" diatribe, but no one is impressed anyway. There's no shame in not being Robert Griffin III, but there's a lot of shame in acting like you were a growth spurt or college scholarship away from an NFL contract.
You benefit in no way if your team wins.
The business model of sports is fixed on monopolizing baseless loyalty to market a game where grown men play in the dirt or score goals in an arena. No one loves sports as much as us, but that's really what it boils down to. You exist to pay player salaries and feed the egos of team owners. And for what? So they can work six months a year, sleep with the hottest girls on Earth, and retire at 33 years old, while, tangibly, you get nothing.
Baseball managers shouldn't have to wear the team uniform.
When your job description involves spitting seeds, making pitching changes, and scratching yourself, we hardly see a practical use for form-fitting pants. Does the NBA make Greg Poppovich diagram X's and O's in a sleeveless jersey. No, of course not. Would Rex Ryan look more authoritative in a set of cumbersome shoulder pads and a neck roll? Maybe, actually. But the baseball uniform makes physical specimens like Carl Crawford look a little loose around the midsection, Phillies manager Charlie Manuel just looks like a burlap sack full of watermelons.
College basketball's one-and-done does more harm than good.
While the rule is designed to protect teenagers from their own stupidity, it's ultimately an enormous waste of time. A few gen-eds at the University of Kentucky isn't going to inspire a more scholarly pursuit than basketball. We can stop lying to ourselves. Keeping NBA-ready players in college just takes a year of valuable earning potential away from the athlete. It's especially devastating because most of these guys are out of the league by their 28th birthday. And that's if they don't get injured first. How much money did Nerlens Noel lose by tearing his ACL against Florida? Potentially millions.
Everyone hates your sign.
TV cameras and Jumbotrons nationwide encourage this kind of look-at-me display, but rarely is a homemade sign clever, or funny, or anything other than disrupted view for the people behind it. If you're in college, it's just a giant head because that's not played out or anything. If you're a parent with a young child, it's a proclamation of your seed's first game. Great. Now, instead of using that Sharpie to scribble "The Guy Behind Me Can't See!" just fall on your marker. This cause needs a martyr.
Paying full price for a preseason NFL game is totally desperate.
The NFL charges the same price for preseason and regular season games. Yes, you read that right. Sadly, it costs just as much money for you to watch Matt Simms bounce slant routes in a Jets preseason game as it does to see Victor Cruz salsa dance in the end zone during a playoff push.
Preseason football is insufferable to watch on TV, we can't imagine how brutal it must be to witness that garbage live. Some fans are just so insanely desperate for football that they're willing to shell out $400 to sit in a puddle of their own swamp ass to watch Josh McCown fumble snaps off of the Soldier Field turf in August.
The backlash against expensive basketball shoes is mostly about race.
News flash: shoes are status symbols. We've built an empire on it. And it's ridiculous to shame LeBron James or Michael Jordan for their rising costs. Yes, a $300 plus price tag puts a lot of pressure on hardworking parents to lace their kids in the crispiest of high tops, but most of the backlash against the players themselves is misguided. A pair of Christian Louboutin pumps can run $3,000 and no one cares, a black athlete endorses some Nike's for a couple hundred bucks and it becomes a question of his character. FOH.
Good coaching means a lot more than we give it credit for.
A bad season or a slow start shouldn't automatically put coaches on the hot seat. Yet, every season and in every sport, we see it. If it were as easy to get fired from your job as it is for, say, an NBA coach, you'd spend a lot of time wringing your hands over a trash can fire. Sports section editorials and talk radio lynch mobs across the country exist to give coaches pink slips. Nothing in sports is taken for granted like a good coach and they're not as replaceable as we all assume.
Big markets are supposed to spend more than small ones—this ain't socialism.
Baseball is the only sports out of the big four that hasn't adopted a salary cap. So, big market teams like the Red Sox, Yankees, and Dodgers can (and do) spend money like Scott Storch on vacation in Columbia. Sure, it's unfair to fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates or Kansas City Royals, but this is America's pastime, not communist China's.
Pitchers shouldn't bat.
Over the course of 23 seasons in the National League, Greg Maddux recorded a total of 180 sacrifice bunts. That’s less than eight per year. To put that in perspective, he struck out 419 times and he was actually regarded as a "good hitting pitcher."
Baseball purists swear by the "strategy" but what plan of action is there in striking a guy out with three consecutive fastballs down the pipe? The strategy is in succeeding despite an obvious deficit. Like requiring a football team's placekicker to also play middle linebacker, it adds a schematic wrinkle to the game, but one that nobody wants to see.
Tiger Woods didn't owe anyone an apology (well, maybe Elin).
Athletes are people who devote their lives to scoring goals and grabbing rebounds, so we shouldn't be so surprised when they turn out to be imperfect. Three-quarters of the men reading this story would answer the question: What would you do with $500M and international fame? With: Sleep with as many porn stars and reality show castoffs as possible! Tiger Woods took a nine iron to the face (we kid...kinda), lost his golf game, and had to write a check for $110M, do we really need to shame him with an apology, too?
"Unwritten rules" are always idiotic.
Last weekend, a bunt became an international incident in the World Baseball Classic. Mexico took exception to Canada's bunting for a hit while up six runs and retaliated by dotting some hoser in the back. The benches cleared, some punches were thrown and, as it always does, it made no sense. Run differential is a deciding factor in advancing in the WBC and, rather poetically, this exact tie breaker was responsible for Canada's failure to advance in 2009. It goes to show how crazy players have become over these violations of non-existent guidelines.
Look, getting blown out is no more embarrassing than having a team take it easy on you. If anything, getting shamed publicly should be strong motivation to play well the next game. We have sympathy for a Pee Wee team getting slaughtered by 60 points, but we think that professionals cashing in fat paychecks can handle the occasional blowout disgrace without crying foul.
Some X Games events are really just suicide attempts.
Snowmobiles weigh close to 500 pounds. So why someone would think to give it a 1000cc engine, send it 30 feet in the air, and attempt a back flip is beyond us. In January, X-Games competitor Caleb Moore died after crashing his rig. However tragic, it shouldn't be a shock to anyone. Just because you can light your car on fire and drive it into a lake, doesn't mean there has to be a competitive sport based around how far you can get your vehicle away from the dock.
The conference tournament automatic bid is flawed.
While the BCS takes the brunt of college sports' punches, something should be said about the pitfalls of NCAA basketball tournaments with automatic qualifiers, which is basically all of them. These teams play over 30 games just for seeding and, if they lose in the conference tournament, the whole season is for naught. It's a system that allows teams like Liberty (15-20) to be involved in the same championship tournament as Gonzaga, Indiana, and Duke.
Not every tounament has to matter and, to that point, the winners shouldn't automatically make the NCAA Tournament. Potentially, it rewards teams for having one good weekend over a four month stretch and unjustifiably ends seasons for good teams over a single bad game. Subpar mid-majors take on Goliaths and get slaughtered while more qualified teams from the same conference watch on TV.
Too many NBA teams make the playoffs.
The NBA season requires 82 games per team just to knock 14 teams out of contention. Play like shit (read: Lakers) or play great (read: Heat) and, statistically speaking, have an equal opportunity to win an NBA championship. So, what were the last five-and-a-half months for exactly? To get one more playoff game at home in a seven game series. Wow, what an incentive. When more teams are included in the postseason then not, by definition, some of those teams are below average. #nuffsaid
Super Bowl commercials suck as bad as regular commercials.
Truly smart and funny people don't work at advertising agencies. Sorry. But if you're especially brilliant, you probably think your life has a more worthwhile cause than hocking online investing with a talking baby. Super Bowl commercials aren't especially lame, but they're made by the same people who make regular commercials, which is to say vapid artists and failed filmmakers. Take away the overall hype of football's biggest game and you're left with the same 30-second spots that, unfortunately, you can't fast foward through.
Arguing in baseball is more ratchet than anything on WorldStar.
Umpire vs. baseball manager-style arguing is a kind of human interaction that's unique to sport. We don't care if you're an Iraqi war veteran, Florida IHOP owner, or Chris Brown's tour manager, you've never felt the wrath of a pissed off Lou Piniella. And if you have, Based God help you.
We don't care how much Madden you play, you'd be a horrible GM or coach.
It’s pretty easy for transactions to go through when you’re dealing with theoretical general managers who, rather miraculously, approve every front office initiative you put forward on Twitter. But you’re not scouting or negotiating with agents, you’re just parroting what you’ve read on Grantland or watched on Pardon the Interruption. That information is broken down to be especially digestible, so even a casual fan can follow (we say from our slide-by-slide platform).
If you dominate Madden more power to you, but you’re not an expert play caller. Stop suggesting as much to your annoyed roommate. Real life coordinators aren't going to be fooled when you cheese the same six plays over and over again. Winning your fantasy football league does not a Bill Polian make, either. Maybe your favorite team’s mismanaged, but trust that it would be a hell of a lot worse with you making the calls.
The chances my kid will be a star athlete are incredibly low.
You probably think your kid is really smart and super athletic for their age. But to the rest of the world, it's just a weird nine-year-old who eats its boogers and has an 8 p.m. bed time. We'd like the think that an AAU team, performance training, and a diet of deer antler spray-laced protein shakes will make Junior the next Derrick Rose, but it's totally unrealistic. The pressure you put on your daughter to be Gabby Douglas or son to be Andrew Luck is more likely to make them heroin users than elite athletes, so pull back pops.
Records set before integration shouldn't hold much weight.
We have all the respect in the world for Babe Ruth. He pounded beer and hot dogs like a disgusting pig and even hit up bars during games. That's our kind of ballplayer. But The Babe never had to face a 1920's-era CC Sabathia or Pedro Martinez because baseball wasn't integrated until 1947. We doubt a surly Ruth would have filled up his stat line the same way against a Roaring Twenties Johan Santana while, simultaneously, shotgunning a Mickeys in the on-deck circle.
When sports go global or become inclusive, an enormous number of people start aggressively competing for very few open slots. We've seen it with the Europe's influence in the NBA and Latin America's dominance of Major League Baseball. It's also why statistics and record before integration shouldn't be taken so seriously.
Your favorite team is screwing you.
Even if you don't care for the local team, or the sport, as a taxpayer you're saddled with financing a (supposedly) private empire. Most stadiums are constructed and renovated with public funds and, if your city government won't whore itself out for a retractable roof stadium, your favorite team will skip town. Why? So the owners aren't hassled with the upkeep of their own personal money printing factories.
Bottom line, you pay $30 to park in a stadium lot you helped finance, $250 for an officially licensed jersey, and, like, $7.50 for nachos. Go team!
