Downsides of following a successful team

[G✇JI☈A]

Following a sports team is like riding a roller coaster. You feel down when they lose.

But then they win... a lot. You're happy but there is something else. Something that feels off.

This might not count towards European League Soccer where the teams with the most money constantly stay around the top, because they don't have a salary cap. But hey sometimes money can't buy you championships.


That off feeling you get comes from following a team in a league that has got a salary cap and a draft system based on form (meaning the worst the team performs during a season the better draft picks they get) must be the sense of dread that the run at the top can't last forever. Coaches and players may retire, or jump to another team. Other teams in the league will develop to be better than the team you follow. With this example I have learned 'Eh, just accept it' enjoy it while they are at the top and remember the good times when they are not. Think it's just the dread of favourite players no longer playing for the team or the coach you respect no longer being there mostly. Missing them when they are gone.


Another downside.. Unless you live in a one team town.. You can't really celebrate it without looking like a gloating idiot.



What are other downsides for going for the team at the top of the tree?

[Toilet Paper Roll]

I started watchin Boston sports in 1988, all our teams sucked more often than not, id much rather be where we are now as a fanbase.

[Lupin the Third]

As a fan of the Sioux Falls Storm, I can say that being on top has a lot of people hating you. It's like the Celtics of the 50's and 60's. Everybody hated them because they won all the time.

Sioux Falls has won 9 league championships in the past 11 years. They won 4 straight UIF Championships from 2005-2008, which included a 40-game winning streak. It took a workmen's comp violation to finally keep them out of the playoffs in 2009, which then led to a new owner of the team being found. After that, they made it back to the title in 2010, but lost in the championship. Since then, they've won 5 straight IFL Championships, with a 21-game winning streak and an 18-game winning streak in those 5 titles.

But it comes with a lot of hatred. Teams hate us because they think we cheat all the time, that we pay our players more than we should (which has been unfounded), but the team keeps doing what it's doing. And that's winning.

At first, I was a little miffed, taken back by the hatred. Now?








I relish in it.

[Vice honcho room temperature]

f*** it I want constant highs.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

The "you're only supporting them because they're successful" criticisms you get it you don't happen to live locally to your team.

[Urethra Franklin]

You get spoiled.

From the time I was 3 to the time I was 11, the Jays had won five division titles and two World Series. They were always good. That's just how it was. Now it's been 21 years since they've made the playoffs.

I'm a United supporter. We finished seventh two years ago. For most teams, that's a fine result, but for United it's beyond embarrassing.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Sept 4, 2015 23:15:06 GMT -5 Urethra Franklin said:

I'm a United supporter. We finished seventh two years ago. For most teams, that's a fine result, but for United it's beyond embarrassing.

I've been a United supporter since the 1985-1986 season, so endured the tail-end of our 'barren years' at a time when all the kids at school were Liverpool supporters, so our current situation brings back a lot of those old memories.

[Urethra Franklin]

Sept 4, 2015 23:24:05 GMT -5 Mighty Attack Tribble said:

Sept 4, 2015 23:15:06 GMT -5 Urethra Franklin said:

I'm a United supporter. We finished seventh two years ago. For most teams, that's a fine result, but for United it's beyond embarrassing.

I've been a United supporter since the 1985-1986 season, so endured the tail-end of our 'barren years' at a time when all the kids at school were Liverpool supporters, so our current situation brings back a lot of those old memories.

I think what infuriates me the most right now is to look at how City does its transfer business. They identify their targets early and get them signed. They don't mess around.

We had a good start to the window, but the last month has been a horror show with the de Gea situation a complete joke.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Sept 4, 2015 23:32:29 GMT -5 Urethra Franklin said:

Sept 4, 2015 23:24:05 GMT -5 Mighty Attack Tribble said:

I've been a United supporter since the 1985-1986 season, so endured the tail-end of our 'barren years' at a time when all the kids at school were Liverpool supporters, so our current situation brings back a lot of those old memories.

I think what infuriates me the most right now is to look at how City does its transfer business. They identify their targets early and get them signed. They don't mess around.

We had a good start to the window, but the last month has been a horror show with the de Gea situation a complete joke.

Agreed. City, and to a lesser extent Chelsea, are machines when it comes to signing players regardless of what I think about the prices they are willing to pay. Ed Woodward's taken a lot of (justified) flack for how our transfer business has been done post-Ferguson, and it's hard to offer up much of a defence - deals and potential deals for Fabregas, Thiago Alcântara, Pedro, Fellaini, Herrera, Fábio Coentrão, and now de Gea have all been botched one way or another, and an initial outlay of £36m on an untried teenager smacks of a club that don't really know what they're doing.

LVG's handling of Chicharito and Valdes hasn't helped either. At least when Fergie exiled the likes of Stam, Keane, Ince, and Beckham he was able to replace them with players of similar quality.

[4real]

I definitely feel as if I was spoiled by Arsenal's success in the late 90's early 00's even though Man United were still more successful.

It was kind of weird how we went a whole league season unbeaten, won the F.A. Cup the next season and then won nothing for 9 years. Which for most teams is nothing.

Obviously right now I'm very very happy were winning things again. Especially since I had a season ticket for 7 of those barren years.

[HMARK Center]

Think of it like sex with your significant other.

The first time you get it on, there's this adrenaline rush and excitement that makes it so even if one of you doesn't perform all that well, you still feel an emotional high that could last you an entire week.

By the time you've been together for awhile, there's still love, still passion, but that rush? It's pretty long gone.

I've seen both ends of this: I'm a Mets and a Devils fan. The Mets have left me screaming to an uncaring universe over the injustices the Wilpons have inflicted on the fans, while the Devils spent nearly a quarter century trolling people all the way to annual playoff trips, five Conference titles, and three Stanley Cups.

During that time, when the Devils did well, it was expected. That didn't mean we didn't get excited over the playoffs or what have you, but it got to a point much like in Atlanta with the Braves, where stories started creeping out that a few first round playoff tickets just might still be available the day before the game. Things began to be taken for granted, and it took a series of 1st round heartbreaks from 2007-2010, and missing entirely in 2011, before some fans woke up and supported the team like mad during the run to the Finals in 2012. Now the club is rebuilding, but we'll have to see what the end result is.

The Mets, meanwhile? Baseball neurosis. Yet the minute the team is any good, there's a sort of foaming, rabid passion that isn't really replicated by Yankees fans, because, again, taking things for granted will do that to you. I've been to Shea Stadium during rare playoff games; that old dump was a madhouse that felt like the might of 56,000 jumping sets of feet were going to bring it down at any minute, and it was largely because Mets fans have been dying for that return to glory for 29 years now, despite a few playoff trips and a NL pennant happening in the meantime.

I remember Ben Affleck producing a documentary about the Red Sox "curse years" for HBO back in the mid-00s (he had to update it to include the 2004 World Series), where one of the people in it tried to imagine what would happen once the Sox finally won it all again, and the best he could figure was "There'll be this feeling of...'so what now?'"

[MrElijah]

As a Yankees fan, I'm spoiled. But I would be happy if they won every year.

Funny thing is? The dynasty of my youth?(late 90s\early 00s) Tame to those 40s and 50s teams.

[ICBM]

When you are loyal all the while they are down, then they get good and the salt gets flung at you and you get called a bandwagon fan. This happened to me with my beloved Texas A&M Aggies. A foreword, in 1998 I applied to Texas A&M and was referred to my local junior college for completing a 100 and a 200 level math and suggested I apply as a transfer after a couple semesters. Anyhoo, I have been an Aggies mark since I first saw the campus. So when they were down from about 02-10 I still sported my gear, still called for em to win every week. When they went to the SEC and I took a ton of schitt from mostly Bama fans that said we couldn't win in the big XII so they'd suck in the SEC, I told em to wait, watch and they'd win 8 games and beat either LSU or Bama (I thought LSU I just wanted to get under bammer's skin). When they won 10, beat Bama and Manziel won the Hiesman those same asshats said I was just on the bandwagon, Manziel would leave and they'd lose and nobody would care etc etc. well, Manziel left and they still win eight games a year and look pretty damn stout. They are now one of the elite programs in the country and their brand is stronger than it has ever been. I suffered watching those eight crappy seasons and stayed loyal while so many fellow Texans changed their colors while Texas won. It sucks watching them fall and climb back only to get hated on for doing exactly that.