New York and Sports

New York is arguably the biggest market in sports. To be honest, it's not really much of an argument. The only other city that holds a candle to New York in terms of revenue opportunities, media coverage, and whatever the hell else goes into classifying a city as "big market", is Los Angeles, and they don't even have a professional football team (of which New York has two), and seeing as how football draws in more revenue than any other sport, I think that gives the edge pretty handily to New York. And besides, its New freakin' York. No, I haven't checked the facts or done the research, but it seems pretty logical, doesn't it? (Update: I still haven't checked the facts or done the research, but New York is definitely the biggest market in sports. I was too lazy/tentative to make that claim previously, but it seems pretty silly in retrospect. Feel free to disregard the previous paragraph.)

Either way, I'm not writing this to prove New York's merit as the biggest market in America, this post is about the sports themselves in New York, so any dissenting opinions or facts you might have (you, oh contentious imaginary reader) can twiddle their thumbs while I get on with this.

In New York sports, most things come in twos. There are the Giants and the Jets, the Yankees and the Mets, and the Rangers and the Islanders. The exception to this dichotomy exists only in basketball, and only for the time being, with the Knicks being the only New York pro basketball squad until the New Jersey Nets move to Brooklyn. With different sports teams sharing the same town, the expected result is that the different fan bases must also share the same town, leading to all sorts of cross-town rivalries and bad blood. This is true to an extent in New York, but is generally hamstrung by the varying degrees of success experienced by each team. The Yankees have been vastly more successful than the Mets, making it understandable that young sports fans will tend to become Yankees fans. The same can be said, to varying degrees, with the Rangers vs the Islanders, and the Giants vs the Jets. Usually, even when one team is clearly better than the other (ha, Jets fans), there exists bickering and trash talking between squads, as unfounded as one side's claims may be.

The Knicks should be immune to this though, right? (Lets discount the Nets, 1. for the sake of this argument, and 2. because they're the Nets) Wrong. Knicks fans take the high road and find ways to argue amongst themselves. New York has always had a reputation for having generally sports-savvy fans, and it resonates as a source of pride within the city, but comes with its set of repercussions. Everybody's a critic. Everybody's a pundit. Everybody knows we should have done X instead of Z, that we should have zigged instead of zagged, and, most importantly, everybody knew this was going to happen. "Called it". This isn't particularly new or exclusive to New Yorkers and the Knicks, but at some times the arguments can escalate to the point where it may seem that there are two different teams in question.

 I know it sounds as if I'm just complaining about other people complaining, and I am, to a degree, but I'm actually largely unaffected by all this. What's the point of watching sports if you can't make an opinion and voice it? Everybody loves imagining themselves as the owner, general manager, coach, or player in question, and why not? It's half of the fun. Nobody wants to pay to sit around and watch a bunch of millionaires play a sport that the rest of us play for free if we're not allowed to be upset about a team's shortcomings. By that same logic, there would be no reason to be happy about a team's success. Everything's bigger in New York (screw off, Texas), why wouldn't the critics be?

So I'm fine with all that, go ahead and voice you're opinion. You're entitled to it. It's like having your cake and eating it too. But seriously, who the hell would have cake and not eat it? That might be my least favorite popular analogy of all time.

What I find particularly interesting, and rather confusing, is the concept of the "true fan" versus the "bandwagon fan". Everyone knows bandwagon fans are annoying. They jump on to your team's success like a remora onto a shark and then fall right back off at the first sign of distress. Sickening. They weren't there when you were in tears over your teams ineptitude, so why should they get to bask in the glory of your teams undeniable might, right? It doesn't matter if they were preparing for an interview, on a date, or in the hospital with a loved one, or just generally weren't into basketball at the time, if they weren't devastated by the way the '99 NBA Finals turned out, they are officially no longer allowed to be Knicks fans. Ever. Period.

 It doesn't matter if they just recently started playing basketball and decided to root for the local team, if they have a relative on the team, or if they just got out of jail and decided to follow sports instead of burn down forests. If you don't fit the strict qualifications of a "true fan", then you're not allowed to claim stake in our team's success. You don't know the name of the twelfth man on our bench? Get out of here. Can't name our leading charge taker from last year? Pathetic. You were too busy volunteering at a hospital to catch last night's game against the worst team in the league? You sicken me.

I think you can see the point I'm trying to get at here (well maybe not you, Sheldon). A fan is a fan. Some are die hard, some are casual, and like everything else in life, the extent to which someone derives happiness from a team's success varies from person to person. Sure, bandwagon fans can get annoying and in extreme cases, infuriating, but so can "true fans" in the same context. Think about it, are you really so invested in your team's fortunes that you'll get upset at someone else for being happy along with you? Aren't they taking your side? Does it really diminish the moment that much for you, that you have to go out of your way to admonish someone else for whatever marginal amount of pleasure they're getting from the situation?

Maybe yes and maybe no, but this is starting to get a little to preachy and ranty for me, so I'm going to cut it at that. It's entirely possible that none of this is exclusive to New York, and happens in every town, but I'm from and live in New York, so I can only speak to what I know.


C