Which professional sports team has more insufferable fans?

[Јas]

The fans of whatever Russian team it was that wrote a letter to their owner demanding that the club not hire any black or gay players are also pretty high up there.

That would be...

Zenit Saint Petersburg

[afleitch]

Glasgow Rangers fans

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

It's a tie between bandwagoners of all sorts and Philadelphia fans. 

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Heat, by nature of LeBron.

Then again, I have a vested interest since I'm a Cowboys fan.

[bore]

Glasgow Rangers fans

For those who don't know, this is a typical Rangers fan.

[Cincinnatus]

Glad to know NYE and hockeydude hate Philly fans.  Badge of honor really..

[traininthedistance]

New York Giants

I'll just point out that our team's owners fought for revenue sharing and a salary cap (i.e. the things that make the NFL a great league), rather than act as a frickin' campaign chair for Mitt Romney and sign Tim Tebow.

[Paul Kemp]

A conflicted choice between embracing on-going mediocrity while the "sports world" continues to focus on you or simply being front-runners who were nowhere to be found four years ago. Tough one, for sure.

[Хahar 🤔]

Miami Heat fans don't actually exist and there's no chance that they have personally affected you.

New York Giants

I'll just point out that our team's owners fought for revenue sharing and a salary cap (i.e. the things that make the NFL a great league), rather than act as a frickin' campaign chair for Mitt Romney and sign Tim Tebow.

Artificially depressing worker compensation is what makes the NFL a great league? That seems like an awfully distasteful way to look at it.

[DemPGH]

Probably the Cowboys fans, but that team has been mediocre for years and years, so I don't think their fans are much of a factor.

Philly fans have been utterly notorious for awful behavior, drunken rages, etc., although I suspect in the last few years the team has tried to clean up the fans' act around there. Ditto on Oakland in the old days.

Here and now, fans who have a penchant for saying "Well we won more titles than you" and "Well back in 1970 we did this or that" tends to irk me a bit.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

As a South Florida prisoner resident, I'd say Miami.

[traininthedistance]

Miami Heat fans don't actually exist and there's no chance that they have personally affected you.

New York Giants

I'll just point out that our team's owners fought for revenue sharing and a salary cap (i.e. the things that make the NFL a great league), rather than act as a frickin' campaign chair for Mitt Romney and sign Tim Tebow.

Artificially depressing worker compensation is what makes the NFL a great league? That seems like an awfully distasteful way to look at it.

Those things allow for small-market teams to have a chance, increase parity, prevent the creation of permanent aristocracies, etc.

Imagine a world in which the Green Bay Packers folded in the 1970s and the Cowboys had almost as many rings as the Yankees, and you'll see what I mean.

[Хahar 🤔]

If you can mentally justify feeling positively about management preventing labor from receiving wages at free market levels, more power to you, I guess.

[bedstuy]

If you can mentally justify feeling positively about management preventing labor from receiving wages at free market levels, more power to you, I guess.

That's a good point and one that people don't always think about.  The amateur draft is another anti-competitive measure that prevents players from receiving their fair share. 

The obvious counter would be that a league with no draft or salary cap would be less popular with fans and thus less profitable.  By agreeing to anti-competitive measures, the players get to participate in a sport that is competitive, interesting to more people and has numerous healthy franchises. 

[traininthedistance]

If you can mentally justify feeling positively about management preventing labor from receiving wages at free market levels, more power to you, I guess.

I have to admit I found your line of thinking here quite bizarre at first blush, given that the things I was referring to- especially the revenue sharing, which was really the primary thing in my mind rather than the salary cap- is generally and correctly thought of as a rather socialist thing to do.

Do you think that sharing of TV revenues "prevents labor from receiving wages at free market levels"?

Also, worth noting re: the salary cap (though what I'm referring to is somewhat orthogonal to such): there are certainly some players who are receiving higher salaries than they would under a completely "free-market" system: unsigned free agents, veterans making the minimum, etc.  Sure it depresses things for the very top, but really just for the very top.

I guess I'd also try to make the argument that the parity and competitiveness that this system allows for does in fact increase the total health of the sport and probably indirectly allows for higher wages.  I'll admit this argument is far from airtight, but it's worth mentioning.

[Хahar 🤔]

I came off as more abrasive than I wanted to earlier. This topic is just something I feel strongly about.

Revenue sharing is fine from a competitive balance standpoint, I guess, but what it is is unfathomably rich men pooling their money with other unfathomably rich men. (Green Bay exists, yes, but there's a reason that other NFL teams are legally prohibited from assuming that ownership structure; it's sui generis.) The system can't actually be referred to as "socialism" except in jest. I don't think sharing TV revenues has any significant impact on the relationship between capital and labor; it really doesn't matter in that sense. It's not what I'm referring to.

The salary cap might help a few players, but it hurts workers as a whole. It's not a cap on individual player salaries (although the NBA does have that); it's a cap on what labor is allowed to receive as a body. The fact that every team is very close to the salary cap indicates that they would pay more if not for the salary cap, and team behavior corroborates that; just look at the Deion Sanders sweepstakes in 1994, a season without a salary cap. If it weren't for the cap, players (the people who actually give us football) would be making more money, and less of it would be pocketed by owners (people who do not give us football and do not in any way contribute to my enjoyment of the game).

Consider the example of baseball, which has no salary cap. Baseball is very profitable, but it is not profitable on the same level as football. Baseball teams are not worth nearly as much as football teams. On the whole, baseball is a very clear second place to football. However, baseball salaries are determined by the free market (or something relatively close to it), and so even thoroughly average baseball players regularly receive salaries that would make almost any non-quarterback in the league blush. It's not that baseball players work harder (they don't) or because what they do is in higher demand (it's not); it's just that they aren't exploited by capital in the same way as football players.

[traininthedistance]

I came off as more abrasive than I wanted to earlier. This topic is just something I feel strongly about.

Revenue sharing is fine from a competitive balance standpoint, I guess, but what it is is unfathomably rich men pooling their money with other unfathomably rich men. (Green Bay exists, yes, but there's a reason that other NFL teams are legally prohibited from assuming that ownership structure; it's sui generis.) The system can't actually be referred to as "socialism" except in jest. I don't think sharing TV revenues has any significant impact on the relationship between capital and labor; it really doesn't matter in that sense. It's not what I'm referring to.

The salary cap might help a few players, but it hurts workers as a whole. It's not a cap on individual player salaries (although the NBA does have that); it's a cap on what labor is allowed to receive as a body. The fact that every team is very close to the salary cap indicates that they would pay more if not for the salary cap, and team behavior corroborates that; just look at the Deion Sanders sweepstakes in 1994, a season without a salary cap. If it weren't for the cap, players (the people who actually give us football) would be making more money, and less of it would be pocketed by owners (people who do not give us football and do not in any way contribute to my enjoyment of the game).

Consider the example of baseball, which has no salary cap. Baseball is very profitable, but it is not profitable on the same level as football. Baseball teams are not worth nearly as much as football teams. On the whole, baseball is a very clear second place to football. However, baseball salaries are determined by the free market (or something relatively close to it), and so even thoroughly average baseball players regularly receive salaries that would make almost any non-quarterback in the league blush. It's not that baseball players work harder (they don't) or because what they do is in higher demand (it's not); it's just that they aren't exploited by ca pital in the same way as football players.

That's fair; looking back I probably should have just mentioned revenue sharing and not even brought up the salary cap at all in my OP, for several reasons.  

Two quibbles: First, "or because what they do is in higher demand (it's not)" isn't exactly right, not because there's more of an audience for baseball per se but because gameday/starting rosters are smaller, so there are fewer slices the pie has to be cut into- you're splitting among 25 players rather than 56.  

Ssecond, all the NFL teams spend nearly up to the limit because there's not just a salary cap, but a salary floor (set at 89 percent of the cap figure).  So, yeah, the top handful of MLB teams  spend more than any NFL team, but a lot of them spend less than the cheapest NFL team.  It's not just straightforwardly "all the NFL teams would spend more if they could"- some probably would lowball if they were allowed.

(EDIT: The fact the NFL has a salary floor at all, and that all the teams are able to afford it, seems likely to be only possible because of revenue sharing.)

[Badger]

Glad to know NYE and hockeydude hate Philly fans.  Badge of honor really..

Accept my Badge(r) of honor also.

[publicunofficial]

Both are bad for the same reasons, as they are the default teams for people who know nothing about the respective sports.


But Miami Heat "fans" are somewhat aware of how good their team is, while Cowboy "fans" have no idea they support a godawful team.



Worst fanbase will always be either St. Louis Cardinals or Oakland Raiders though.

[Napoleon]

New York Giants

I'll just point out that our team's owners fought for revenue sharing and a salary cap (i.e. the things that make the NFL a great league), rather than act as a frickin' campaign chair for Mitt Romney and sign Tim Tebow.

Like I said, most insufferable.

[morgieb]

The fanbases who I hate would be known by like 1% of the forum.

[politicallefty]

New York Giants

I was going to say the Yankees, but due to my indescribable hatred of the Giants, I'll agree with your post.

[traininthedistance]

New York Giants

I'll just point out that our team's owners fought for revenue sharing and a salary cap (i.e. the things that make the NFL a great league), rather than act as a frickin' campaign chair for Mitt Romney and sign Tim Tebow.

Like I said, most insufferable.

(Seriously, though, I get why you'd dislike the Giants and their fans- I have no great love for HockeyDud's plumping of the Rangers, so the feeling is not alien to me.  But, c'mon dude, get some perspective.  There's no comparing anybody to the Cowboys.)

[Napoleon]

New York Giants

I'll just point out that our team's owners fought for revenue sharing and a salary cap (i.e. the things that make the NFL a great league), rather than act as a frickin' campaign chair for Mitt Romney and sign Tim Tebow.

Like I said, most insufferable.

(Seriously, though, I get why you'd dislike the Giants and their fans- I have no great love for HockeyDud's plumping of the Rangers, so the feeling is not alien to me.  But, c'mon dude, get some perspective.  There's no comparing anybody to the Cowboys.)

I don't have to interact with cowboys fans every week during the season like I do the Giants. I hate the Patriots (Jets main rival) and the Giants (cross town rival) yet growing up in CT I dealt with more Pats and Giants fans than Jets fans. Eli may have two lucky rings but I've seen him lead the league in interceptions multiple times and go 9/27 last time he played my Jets. Tom Coughlin doesnt even have an Eli tattoo. Definitely the two most overrated teams and obnoxious fan bases I have had to deal with.

[Napoleon]

My favorite NFL fans besides the Jets are the Bills (funny as sh**t about their teams long period of suckitude), Seahawks (these guys deserved to see their team win, especially after sitting through a Super Bowl ring being robbed from them and long years of mediocrity), and the Steelers (plentiful but mostly down to earth crowd).