Sports psychologist and Murray State University professor Dan Wann discusses the mindset of fans.

What makes sports fans so passionate about their teams?
It’s mostly about identity. The more an individual identifies as a fan of a team, the more intense their thoughts and behaviors are about it. Their team’s actions are not separate from their own—how it performs has consequences for how they feel about themselves. When the team wins, the fan wins and has high self-esteem. When it loses, they lose, so they’re depressed. That’s why people often say “we” when referencing their teams.

Think about it. Where else are you going to pay $12 for a warm, flat beer and be happy? Only at a sporting event. It can cost over $100 to park at a football game—not to see the game, just to have the privilege of parking! When the Cubs finally made the World Series, tickets were going for tens of thousands of dollars and people were in bidding wars to get them.

Some fans also root for individual players. How does that impact their loyalties?
Where one’s loyalty lies is a fascinating psychological phenomenon. It’s somewhat of a gamble rooting for the name on the back of the uniform rather than the one on the front because you’re bound to be conflicted when a player switches teams. This wasn’t the case when you and I were growing up, but free agency changed everything.

Also consider geographical rivalry, which lends to the mystique of Red Sox-Yankees, Bears-Packers, and Michigan-Ohio State games. In college sports now, though, that’s recently been blown up: teams from the West Coast are playing interconference games in Maryland and New Jersey. Those fans’ longtime point of attachment—associating with their regional conference—has been disrupted, which runs the risk of alienating them.

Why do fans put athletes on pedestals?
Athletes have long been role models to emulate because they’re exceptional at their craft; they epitomize what’s possible. But decades ago, if athletes had indiscretions, they were largely hidden from fans to maintain the hero worship. That’s not possible now.

As a result, today’s sports fans have an incredible ability to look the other way, explain away, and find excuses for their favorite players. When a player gets a DUI, their fans will say, “They’re only human,” yet if a rival player faces the same charge, they’ll dub that player a criminal.

And it’s not just the athletes they’ll make excuses for. They will also do so for a coach, the owner, and even other fans—basically, anybody associated with their team—because the other person’s actions feel like a reflection of their own morals. I always say that sports fans didn’t invent these psychological processes; they just perfected them. The same is true in politics, for example.

Would you talk about the bonding experience of rooting for a team?
Sports fandom can provide a sense of well-being and unite people as a community, regardless of factors like age, race, or socioeconomic status. For example, my mom’s family is from Nebraska. In fall, life would just stop on Saturday afternoons because Nebraska football was such a phenomenon there—it was the whole state’s team, and residents had such pride about it. Going to a Cornhuskers game was an event in itself.
Sports psychologists also theorize that identifying with sports teams is on the rise because other traditional sources of identification are on the way down. For example, more people are switching jobs frequently, not going to church, and not living as close to their relatives as they used to. Those holes must be filled somewhere, and a lot are doing so through sports.

Why does fandom go too far at times?
Simply put, for many sports fans, it’s not just a game—it’s their life. Think of famous examples of fans overdoing it. Umpire Don Denkinger received death threats after missing a call in the 1985 World Series. Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner had to move out of Boston after he misplayed a ground ball in the 1986 World Series. Steve Bartman, a Cubs fan, practically had to go into hiding for months after he interfered with a ball in play during a playoff game at Wrigley Field.

The deflection is virtually endless. It’s Bartman’s fault, Deckinger’s fault, bad weather’s fault, karma’s fault, etc. Coping mechanisms are needed because, for any given game, half of the fan base watching is not going to be happy with the outcome. That’s the nature of competition. With those odds, you’re not going to keep going back unless you figure out a way to deal with the losses. How could there otherwise be Cubs fans like me? The team was bad for a century! [Laughs]

Fans today seem to root against other teams as much as they root for theirs. Why?
Cody Havard, a colleague of mine at the University of Memphis, is the guru of research on rivalries, not only in sports but also in things like Coke versus Pepsi and Democrat versus Republican. He’d tell you that when it comes to sports, we want people to know the teams we love—but immediately after that, we want people to know the teams we hate.

In fact, people are often happier when their rival team loses than when their favorite team wins. My wife, Michelle, is an example. She’s an Ohio State grad, and I swear she gets more joy out of watching Michigan lose than she does out of Ohio State winning. That’s because a fan’s identity is a function of both who they are and who they are not.

Is sports fandom simply inherent to the human experience?
To be human is to be an observer, and sports are no different. Researchers will next be looking at sports fandom from an evolutionary perspective, which is exciting. You’ve got billions of people on this planet from all walks of life and cultures that regularly, if not fervently, follow sports. There must be a reason—statistically, you can’t have something that universal by chance.

We’re also finding that in addition to providing camaraderie, entertainment, and escapism, being a sports fan helps people meet basic psychological needs of belonging, structure, and meaning. Everybody looks for purpose in their life, and sports can provide it.