The Lousy Taste of a Losing Team

by J. Brown

The Washington Redskins are a terrible team. Most people who follow football know this, and it's been this way for a while. After winning the Super Bowl in 1991, they've made the playoffs only five times in the past 23 years. They spend each off-season hyping their fans with buzz phrases like "potential", "improvement" and "high expectations" before inevitably trotting out another sub-par roster, year after year. The owner of the Redskins, Dan Snyder, seems more concerned with accruing revenue than with actual winning, and he hasn't shown any signs of changing his ways in the near future.

How can this be? How can this perpetually unwatchable team possibly be making Snyder money? Well, the main reason is because the NFL is a revenue-sharing league, which basically means that every team gets a share of the money the league makes as a whole. Still, Washington was the 3rd-most valuable team in the league a year ago, meaning they were somehow making more money than 29 other NFL teams. Although the specific sources of this money are unclear, it can be assumed that most of it comes from TV deals and merchandising. That means people are watching this terrible team on Sundays and wearing athletic gear with their racist name emblazoned across the front (that's a whole different story). Having lived in DC for the past five years, I can attest to the fact that the Redskins have a large contingent of faithful, die-hard fans. Why?


One reason is that local Washingtonians feel a sense of city pride in cheering for a team that represents the capital (although, they actually play in Maryland. Also, this sense of pride doesn't seem to be shared by DC natives who cheer for the rival Cowboys, for some strange reason). If I represent a city, they believe, then I should root for the team that plays here. Another reason is simply because that's the team they grew up watching. If my grandparents were Redskins fans, my parents were Redskins fans, and I grew up as a Redskins fan, naturally, I'd stay with the team. Third, and perhaps most absurdly, Redskins fans have a delusional belief that, somehow, "This year is our year." Despite the fact that there is no evidence that would lead them to believe that significant improvement has been made, they convince themselves each September that the team will magically become good. 

Now, none of these are bad reasons (except for maybe the last one). The thing that really doesn't make sense to me, though, is continuing to support a team that has proven time and time again that it doesn't care about you as a fan. Year after year, this team's management has done a poor job with drafting and free agency, their coaches perform underwhelmingly, and the overall emotion of the team is one of complete depression, usually as early as Week 7. The Redskins have maintained a complacency that may very well be rooted in the fact that they know their fans aren't going anywhere, anyway. I sometimes wonder if the fans' loyalty has actually worked directly against their best interest.

I have to admit, this is an issue that hits very close to home for me. For most of my life, I've been a Knicks fan. Patrick Ewing is a god, Walt Frazier is a saint. Names like Sprewell and Starks put a smile on my face. I've got the t-shirts, the hats and the banner hanging in my room. But if you ask me if I've been rooting for the Knicks lately, my answer would be no. I stopped watching their games, and I've refused to buy any Knicks-related merchandise. This isn't because I gave up on the Knicks, or because I started cheering for another team. I'm still a New York loyalist, and I'll probably be a Knicks fan for the rest of my life. But when they perform as poorly as they have lately with no actual plan for improvement, this is something that I cannot support. For perspective, the Knicks currently hold a record of 12-48. In the past 15 seasons, they've made it to the playoffs four times, making it out of the first round only once. 

Do I want the Knicks to win? Of course. I'd love it. But if we as fans are more invested than the actual management, whose jobs are to put together a great product, something's off. We shouldn't be supporting their complacency by buying merchandise, going to games, or watching their games on TV. This season got so bad, I even turned the game notifications off on my smart phone. By supporting these bad franchises, all we're doing is helping the owners to feel like it's no big deal. 

I compare cheering for a perpetually bad team to eating at a restaurant with bad food. You look at the menu, and you don't really see anything that you like, but you convince yourself that maybe the food will be good. It's not, but you keep going back anyway, each time creating reasons why this time will be better than the last. Yet and still, the service remains poor and the food is still undercooked, but the place is always packed. At some point, you have to make a decision to just stop eating there until they change the menu, change the cooks, or come under new management. 

Rooting for sports teams is no different. There is no motivation for a sports franchise to improve if they can simply be terrible and still be supported, just like a crappy restaurant wouldn't feel the need to get better if they maintained a packed house every night. Some sports fans feel the need to suffer through miserable seasons, as if it's some sick rite of passage that qualifies our loyalty. But we don't really owe our sports teams; if anything, they owe us. Sports, like movies or music, are supposed to be a form of entertainment. If the product they provide doesn't entertain us, we should demand something better. 

Now, this is not an invitation to become a bandwagoner who only roots for the most dominant team from year to year. That's actually really corny. But this is an invitation to stop putting money into the pockets of owners and managers who repeatedly ignore us. Much like the restaurant example, we need to start eating good, or start walking out. Loyal fans deserve better meals.