Now that the professional football season has ended and half of America is going through pigskin withdrawal, a recurring question keeps gnawing at my mind: why so do many sports fans hate one or two particular teams? For example, why do Washington Redskin fans hate the Dallas Cowboys, and vice versa? Why do Boston Red Sox fans hate the New York Yankees, and vice versa there, too? Don't tell me it's because the teams are rivals. That's the obvious answer, but it doesn't address the real question I've been pondering. What drives the hatred? What turns regular opponents into bitter rivals, and why does that bitterness fuel mass hatred of certain teams that exist among die-hard sports fans?
My dad hated the Dallas Cowboys. He hated them with a passion, like the Jews hated Hitler, but at least the Jews had good reason for doing so. The same could not be said about my dad. He claimed he hated the Cowboys because they played on the Sunday following President Kennedy's assassination, but that assertion was pure nonsense because the entire National Football League played games that Sunday, including his beloved team, the Baltimore Colts. He could have said he hated the Cowboys because Dallas is where President Kennedy was shot, but that wouldn't have been a rational explanation, because President Lincoln was shot in Washington, D.C., and my dad also rooted for the Washington Redskins, especially when they played Dallas. I guess we'll never know what drove my dad's hatred of the Cowboys, but whatever it was, I'm sure it wasn't something rational.
My daughter, Abby went to college in Boston. I borrowed a van to haul her belongings when she moved into her first dorm room. The van's owner was a die-hard New York Yankee fan, and attached to one of the van windows was a Yankee sticker with half of a foam baseball attached. While I was moving my daughter's belongings into her room in the heart of Red Sox country, a die-hard Yankee hater vandalized the van and ripped the sticker off the window. I know it sounds trite, but some force of ill-will motivated that act of vandalism, and I call that hate.
In November of 1998, I attended a Monday night football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles. The game was held in Philadelphia, but it wasn't what you'd call a pleasant evening for Eagle fans. The Cowboys shellacked the Eagles, 34-0, but what really stands out in my memory of that game is the verbal and physical abuse one particular Dallas Cowboy fan was subjected to by the sea of screaming Eagles fans that surrounded her. As bad as it was to watch the Eagles play that evening, it was ten times worse to have to listen to the constant stream of deleted expletives that fans were screaming in her direction. At one point during the contest, so much popcorn, peanuts and other trash was being thrown at the woman that scores of stadium security personnel had to intercede to prevent a full-blown riot. It was downright ugly! Since that night, I've heard many sportscasters comment that Eagles fans are the most hostile of any fan base in the NFL, but none of those commentators ever offered an explanation as to where that hostility originated. That's what I want to know? Where does the hatred come from?
One inquiring mind wants to know!
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