Many business people like sports metaphors, so here we go:
Ah, sports fandom. You gotta love it. It’s amusing how invested people get into rooting for their favorite teams. When your team loses, your weekend may be ruined. And if your team’s had a bad season, you just put your head down, put your tail between your legs, bite your tongue as all of your friends make fun of you for your “championship guarantee”, and you wait for the draft. But hey, as long as you embarrassed your rivals, all is not lost.
The great thing about being a sports fan is the wave, the ups and downs. Sometimes your team gets into a bit of a rut (if you’re a Raiders fan, “rut” is how you refer to every season after 2003). You get made fun of for refusing to give up on your team, and it bites when you get made fun of by bandwagon fans of franchises to whom the concept of winning is very, very new. (Disclaimer: I am in no way referring to fans of the New Orleans Saints. Honestly, I’m not. No, really, you can believe me.)
But you take it in stride with a smile and the satisfaction of knowing that one day your team will be back on top.
But there is an easy way out…
There is another path you can take: you can root for your other favorite team. Yeah, you know, your Plan B, your emergency team, the one you keep in your back pocket just in case things don’t go right for your primary team. In all honesty, this is a great strategy. If one team wins and the other loses, you have only a mediocre weekend, as opposed to a completely crappy weekend. If they both win, you hit the jackpot! And if they both lose, you just say, “Oh, I really only care about Team A,” so the fact that your other team lost doesn’t really sting all that bad.
And then, when one of your favorite teams makes it to the championship, you say, “Oh, I know I’ve rooted for Team B for a long time, but I’ve always been a fan of Team A! No lie! Like, really!”
But can such a person be trusted?
In the world of sports fandom, I have no respect for these no good flip-floppers. This is not what being a sports fan is all about. It’s about putting all of your eggs in one basket, devoting all of the energy left over from work and family and friends into this one entity, into this one community. When your one team loses, you suffer really hard. But when they win, it’s oh so sweet.
And if a person can’t dedicate himself to only one team in one professional league, I have to wonder if he can dedicate himself to more serious matters. There are only 32 teams in the National Football League. There are only 120 teams in the FBS. Divison I college basketball includes 347 teams. That may sound like a lot to you. But there are nearly 7 billion people living in the world today. How can you be trusted to find one soulmate if you can’t even dedicate yourself to only one sports team in the same league? How can you be trusted to stick to one business decision when there may be an infinite number of choices?
Colin Cowherd, host of The Herd on ESPN Radio has said that when he’s hiring new staff, he asks the potential employee if he plays fantasy football. If the answer is yes, the guy isn’t hired, because many fantasy football players waste time at work by tinkering with their fantasy leagues. But, I think that the next time I’m in a position to hire someone, I’m going to ask him how many teams he roots for. I think you can already see what implication his answer will have. And if I ever have a daughter, you can be damned sure that whenever she gets old enough to start dating, every boy who comes around to woo her will be asked the same question.
If you root for multiple teams in different sports leagues, that is completely acceptable. After all, if you’re a fan of the NFL and the NBA, you gotta have a team you represent from both factions. But if you root for multiple teams in the same league, you are not to be trusted. You, my friend, have commitment issues.
P.S. For the most part, this post was written in good fun. But I’d be lying if I said that there wasn’t a bit of honesty in it, at least in the way that I see things.
Image Credit: Hard Knox Sports
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