Do Front-Runners Piss You Off?

[Mitch Henessey]

A front-runner is the type of sports fan that only likes to root for the winning teams. They probably wouldn't go to a game or have no idea about that team's history. One year they might be a New York Giants fan and the next year they'll be a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

I'm making this thread because I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he says he's a Yankees fan, but when I mentioned Babe Ruth, he had no clue as to who I was talking about. I told him, "how can you be a Yankees fan, and not know who Babe Ruth is!" It's absurd. There's plenty of people out there who will stick with there team through all the bad times, but some people can't handle it or become ashamed, and will jump ship quickly.

So do front-runners piss you off? Or do you just not care? Thoughts?

 

[One Punch Doug Crashin]

front-runners piss me off to the max my friend. TO THE MAX. seriously if you can't name at least 5 or 10 members of the team you pretend to follow, DON"T FOLLOW THEM! don't come to me saying your a Yankee fan and can't even name 5 people OTHER than Jeter or Rodriguez!

 

[CH David]

I'm making this thread because I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he says he's a Yankees fan, but when I mentioned Babe Ruth, he had no clue as to who I was talking about. I told him, "how can you be a Yankees fan, and not know who Babe Ruth is!"

No offense, but your friend does not deserve to even acknowledge baseball if you have no idea who Babe Ruth is. Next time, for shits and giggles, ask him who Jackie Robinson is, and if he doesn't know, smack him upside the head as a disgrace to real baseball fans.

Now around my area, we use a different name for the Front-Runner fans, actually two. One, which to me would be more known, is bandwagon fans. To me it is the same thing. You see one team doing well, you jump over to them, if they suck and another team is doing good, you jump to them. It is usually done in intercity rivalries, such as Cubs-Sox, I'm guessing Mets-Yankees, and so on. The other name we use is fair-weather fan. Same thing as bandwagon fan, just another name.

Personally I hate them, because they claim they have been fans forever, but only started paying attention and whatnot. Bullshit. If you have been a fan for a long time, tell me players on the team. You only choose to root for them because they were successful, trust me, I saw it at school when the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, and it was fucking pathetic. Grow some balls, say you don't pay attention to the team, but you are rooting for them because they are having a good season, and be done with it.

 

[Toroc102]

I can tolerate certain types of bandwagon fans, for instance they get a lot of shit, but if your team whichever it may be sucks, I think its okay to have a back-up. I mean rooting for just one team when that team sucks ruins the whole sport for people. Also imagine living in say Detroit and being a football fan, or Oakland and being a Warriors fan, I'd say its acceptable to just drop your team all together and pick another at random.

However I do hate frontrunners as you have defined them. I never miss an opportunity to call em out, luckily I get a chance to conversate with too many true front runners.

 

[Felderino]

Here in the UK we call them glory seekers. The best example of these people are Manchester United fans. Never in my life have I met one that actually comes from Manchester!

These glory seekers are a scourge on these teams and just degrade the reputation of the proper fans.

And to the above poster who say's it's acceptable to just drop your team and support a new one just because they're playing badly, well maybe you can do that where you are from, but over here we have fan loyalty and that would NEVER happen! You pick you're team when you're a kid and stick with them for life. To change teams everytime they do shit is disgraceful in my opinion.

 

[48.7 is Approximately 49 Times Better Than You]

Yes, they do, mainly because they people like me (a loyal fan to a team that's on the opposite coast I live on) a bad name. Anytime someone hears I'm a Yankee fan, they say that I'm a fair-weather fan, that I only like them because they're good. Nothing is more infuriating than someone questioning my fan-hood. I'd rather they say I had a vagina. Red Sox fans also bug me. Fricken bandwagon jumpers. (I'm talking about the pseudo-fans, you know, the millions you got in 2004.)

 

[Rhonda Rousey's Sports Bra]

I'm just going to use baseball as the sport for my post.

I dislike bandwagon, fairweather, and front-runner fans, which ever you like to call them. Now I don't find it wrong to cheer for a team that is not your home town team, but I think that you need to know a little bit of history of that team to call them your team. I also don't find it wrong to cheer for a team that is having a good season, as long as you still cheer for your home team and don't just claim allegiance to the best team in the league jsut to say "your" team is the best. An example of this is I love the St. Louis Cardinals, they are my team, but I do enjoy watching the Yankees because they play baseball at a high level and it is always fun to watch a good game.

 

[INDYjon22]

I don't really care. Considering all of my favorite teams outside of the Colts suck I could care less about people being bandwagon fans or not. You can't condemn a person making a bet for these kinds of actions. All they are trying to do is make some money and that might entail them cheering for a team they do not like or know anything about. However, they will cheer them on in hopes of making some money and I see no problem with that at all.

Also, I make my girlfriend fill out a bracket come NCAA tournament time every year and she knows nothing about the teams. She cheers on the teams she chose but that doesn't mean she has any real vested interest in that team outside of bragging rights. There is nothing with her doing that at all and there should be no problem with other people doing it either.

 

[PsychoBlack]

I call them dick riders
and being a cubs bulls notre dame and bears fan it does piss me off at 17 years old ive seen so much shit within the sport world with MY teams that when people switch their fav team every season i want to punch them in the face because its like their disrespecting the sport and the team
i admit naming vancouver my fav hockey tteam along with the blackhawks because i liked their collors but ive learned alot about them and became a true fan dick riders get no love from me

 

[Mr. TM]

I am sort of a bandwagoner for the Detroit Red Wings. Not completely, and I disagree than I am at all. I started watching the Canucks, even when they were shit, then went to be great, still watched when they were shit. The problem with being a fan of a shit team is they don;t make the playoffs, and no one likes to watch the playoffs with no team to cheer for. So I started cheering Detroit when they won the cup in 97, and followed them every year since, cheering hard in 98, was very heated when they won again in 2001 and still love to cheer the team. For a long time, I also loved Federov and Shanahan, so it made sense to cheer the team when they were on Detroit.

 

[Dave]

It doesn't piss me off it just makes me think that that person needs to re-evaluate themselves and their sports enjoyment.

Their is a prevalent problem in the UK right now, or probably more so in Scotland, that little girls are starting to wear football tops. Now, that would be great if they actually supported the team that they claim to. However, it turns out that most of them are just wearing them to impress the boys that they like. It is as if they think boys will say

"Oooh! They have a Celtic top on, I must have them"

It's simply ludicrous to think that people buy and wear the merchandise of something that they know nothing about. It is so pretentious and aggravating. It is like people who wear Che Guevara tops. No one takes them seriously and if you asked them a single question about the item of clothing and what it represents, they would be completely stumped. I don't hate on these people because they are following a winning team but I hate the way that they have no relation to what they pretend to "support". Supporting a winning team is nothing new and I have just happened to build up a resistance to it. It is the pretentious fans that bug the shit out of me.