In light of the harsh comments I’ve posted both publicly and in reply to other’s posts on social media the past week, I feel I should take some time to both clarify and soften my main contention with the (so-called) “sport” of soccer.
There are a few people I’m friends with—four, I believe, although there could be one or two more—that are actual soccer fans. They watch the games year round, and do so religiously. They cheer for their favorite team with the fervor most around here display towards the Crimson Tide, and I cannot fault them for this; they are true soccer fans.
I do, however, have a quarrel with fair-weather fans—those “band-wagoners” who only jump aboard because something is currently enjoying popularity in the social conscious. We see it in March for the NCAA basketball tournament where people who have done nothing but yell "Roll Tide" or "War Eagle" for the past 11 months are suddenly cheering for Wildcats, Blue Devils, or whatever the hell Villanova’s mascot is. We see it following BCS bowl season when the same people are suddenly rooting for some professional football team or another heading through the Playoffs and into the Super Bowl. We even see it, albeit on a smaller scale (since everyone around here seems to love the Atlanta Braves, even though they’re subversively supporting Auburn athletics in doing so), during the baseball playoffs and World Series—especially if Alabama makes the college playoffs in baseball or softball (because that’s when we see everyone come out of the woodwork dropping team members’ names as if they’re all old pals). Most heinously, we even witness it when Alabama catapults back to national prominence after a down decade, or when Auburn happens to win one or two important games (but never the most important, it seems).
Band-wagon fans feel the urge to make up for their previous disinterest in any such sport by suddenly bombarding their social media accounts with paraphernalia from the sport or their appointed favorite team in a display meant to affirm their unwavering commitment, newfound though it may be. These are the people with which I have such a problem. If it were the same few people that are always talking about soccer and their favorite teams posting World Cup news it wouldn’t matter to me. That’s who they are, and I acknowledged that when I chose to be friends with them. Hell, they can even give me a perspective on things and why something matters or what’s really important in the sport. The band-wagoners just regurgitate whatever they’ve gleaned from their ESPN app or from watching the news. To those people: I’ve heard it all before, and from a better source than you. To the true fans: please continue your fervor for whichever sport you wish.
Except for NASCAR. Fuck NASCAR
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