Of all the taboo elements in sports today, you would have to think that bandwagon fans would probably have to rank towards the top of any athletic aficionado’s list of pet peeves.
As per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a bandwagon is ‘a current or fashionable trend,’ a definition that applies to professional and college sports as well as it does anything else.
Any fan can attest to having seen the support for a given team or school grow at an unprecedented rate at some point in their lives. While some bandwagons are deemed acceptable (George Mason University basketball circa 2006, for example), these entities and the people who take part in them are generally viewed with contempt and disgust among passionate fans.
People who have followed a team, school or franchise so closely for so many years develop a strong emotional bond with it, reveling in the triumphs and mourning in wake of the losses. The logic behind being so indecisive that you choose to root for whoever’s winning at the time seems to elude many of us out there who have favorite teams that we stick with thick and thin. Bandwagons downright sicken us to our core.
Taking all of this into consideration, the question of who is a bandwagoner or not is often hotly debated and remains a question that is relevant here in Boston to the point where it has to be asked if Boston is a bandwagon sports city.
This is not something that I raise out of malice or discontent (seeing as I loved Boston enough to come to school here) but because the sentiment and the image of the obnoxious New England sports fan in this new era of widespread success for Boston teams is a commonly presented one.
To truly get to the heart of this debate, it’s important to look at Boston’s pro teams and see how the people that follow these teams came to be so passionate for them.
Anyone who likes to harp on the bandwagon nature of Boston fans will always have a point of contention with one team in particular: the Red Sox. After all, the Sox have so many qualities that attract these vile bandwagon types. They have an interesting back story, a vintage ballpark, smart leadership, a likeable group of players and a hated rival the majority of the country loves to despise.
Between all of those things and two World Series rings this decade, it’s hard to deny that the Sox’s following hasn’t swelled in recent years to the point where you have ‘diehard Sox fans’ in Utah who couldn’t pick Brian Daubach or Rich Garces out of a police line.
Many of these post-2004 Red Sox fans are undoubtedly bandwagoners, but to slap that label on all Sox fans is flat-out disrespectful to the diehards fans in Boston, New England and beyond who had to toil in misery and grief for 86 years before finally witnessing a world championship. The Red Sox have for the longest time been the city’s favorite pro team and the organization has been firmly engrained as part of the city’s tradition and character. Those people who you see walking around town wearing tattered hats with that iconic ‘B’ on them? Bandwagoners? Don’t think so.
What about the Patriots, a team that has experienced a similar level of benchmark success this decade as the Red Sox? Last time that I checked, all of the Patriots’ Super Bowls, complete with the ‘Spygate’ scandal, an abrasive or stoic (however you want to look at it) head coach, and a consummate ‘Golden Boy’ at quarterback have made most of the country hate the Patriots, not love them.
In effect, you can probably gather that this is the opposite of what happens with a bandwagon trend. Cross them off of the list.
This now brings us to the Celtics, another team whose fan base is accused of the same bandwagon vices. Much of this argument stems from the fact that before the arrival of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and that subsequent NBA title, all wasn’t right with the franchise. In the season before the formation of ‘The Big Three,’ attendance figures weren’t too impressive and many of the fans’ brightest hopes came from the possibility of winning the right to draft Greg Oden.
With three perennial All-Stars on a single team and the promise of becoming a championship contender, attendance went through the roof and the Celtics returned to relevancy the following year. Hawks guard Mike Bibby caught a lot of flack when he called Celtics fans ‘bandwagon jumpers,’ and his argument isn’t completely invalid, especially considering the fact that a franchise with 17 championships still plays second fiddle in its own city to the Red Sox.
But locals will tell you that Boston has always been a passionate basketball town and has never turned its back on the Celtics, even in the leanest of years.
Does any of this relate to us here at BU?
Terrier hockey has experienced the kind of success that usually fosters the arrival of flocks of new fans, and men’s basketball attendance is expected to markedly elevate this year with the arrival of a new coach. Yet at a school like BU that has a generally apathetic student body when it comes to sports, I don’t think we’re in a position to complain about people showing up in droves to games, especially for those of us who’re used to games at Case Gym where former head coach Dennis Wolff was louder than the entire crowd.
What can be said about the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots or even BU athletics when it comes to bandwagoning and their fan bases is this: it’s easy to get rejuvenated fans and bandwagon fans confused. The line between the two is thin, but in the case of Boston fans, it isn’t fair to say they’ve all jumped to the latter.
You can call Boston fans obnoxious, detestable and revolting, if you please, but there is certainly one category that they don’t fall under ‘-‘- fair weather.
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