If and When Can You Wear Contradictory Logos?!

[ProvidenceRI]

(Oh by the way, the city is alive again, now that the Steelers finally whooped up on somebody...Monday morning the Steeler gear was back out in full vogue, folks was calling off work left and right, and the streets were buzzing again, whereas just a week previous all Steeler Nation was about ready to crucify Ben, flame Cowher, and hang the O-line out to dry.)

Man that is pathetic. Steeler fans sound like Yankee fans. They only support them when they win.

Go to Philadelphia in the summer, and you will see the city crawling with Eagles gear;

New Englanders always wear their BoSox caps;

the North Side is always full of Cubs gear

Those are real fans. They cheer for the sport and the laundry, not the record.

[FiddySicks]

"What can I say? I'm a baseball fan. Why are you here?"

Wow. That's not patronizing at all. If you're really there to watch a great game and drop smarmy remarks at superfans, then just don't wear any team stuff at all. As eloquent and usually correct as you are, BallWonk, I gotta respectfully dissent and say no double-dipping with team apparel.

Well, I did find the Phillies/Nats mix offensive, and kidded my friend about it before the game, but not because he was mixing logos. There's just no excuse for anyone to support the Phillies in any case.

My point was that if you show your support for both teams, and somebody in the crowd rags on you, it's because he's a jerk, not because you're a tool. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with being patronizing and smarmy to jerks.

And on a slightly serious, somewhat non-sarcastic note, "superfan" does not describe any person who heckles other spectators at a sporting event. The word you're looking for is "hooligan." Having spent a fair amount of time in European football stadiums this decade, I really believe there is a crucial difference between the way most American fans relate to sports and the way most European fans do. I have never had to talk my way out of being beaten up by a mob on a public street for wearing the wrong color shirt leaving a ballpark in the United States, as I once had to do in Scotland. (Even angry, drunken Glaswegian soccer fans will forgive a lot once they hear your American accent. "Stupid Yank," they say, and start looking for other green things to break.) Why is this? Outside of Philadelphia and the campus of the University of Maryland, why don't Americans generally threaten violence to each other over sporting events? Simple. The folks in Amsterdam don't show up at Ajax games because they're soccer fans and Ajax happens to be the local team. They're members of the Ajax tribe, and it really wouldn't matter if Ajax was playing roller derby or competitive knitting instead of soccer, just so long as the fans could spend two hours together every week experiencing the joys of semiviolent mob behavior.

I generalize wildly, of course, and in fact very many Ajax fans in Amsterdam are great people who love soccer and they're really great neighbors who totally don't judge you for spending two years watching Ajax games with them at their favorite brown cafe without ever really learning to speak Dutch. But, critically, these tend not to be the folks who actually go to the stadium on game day.

Americans, on the other hand, by and large, and with many exceptions, blah blah blah, tend to be fans of sport as a concept. This is easily demonstrated by the prevalence of guys spending all day Sunday watching three football games, at least two of which involve only teams they really don't care about one way or the other. Take me: I don't even like football, as a sport. But if a neighbor invites me over for a cold one to watch a game, do I grab a six-pack from the fridge and head on over for the game? Darn right I do. Now, sure, some of that has to do with my interest in cheering for or against a select few loved/hated teams. But mostly, we Americans just have a culture of loving on the sports. I mean, you can take children reciting letters from the dictionary, throw in an announcer a microphone, stick it on ESPN and call it a "sport," and millions of Americans will tune in.

Or, even more to the point, televised golf: Ridiculous on its face. And by and large, Europeans can't be bothered to watch golf on TV. There are no tribes to join, no hate songs to sing, no flags to wave, no gang colors to wear. But in America we see televised coverage of four guys taking a walk and we say, "It's a sport, it's on TV, save me a spot on the couch."

So I say we have a patriotic duty to defend the rights of our misguided fellow fans to support both teams. Because we have a word for spectators who heckle other fans for what they're wearing, and that word is French.

We are all truely not worthy, Ballwonk.

[spyboy1]

The only time you should wear competing logos to a sporting event is in the case of the visiting team having such a cool, throwback jersey, you can't help but wear it.

Like I said, it cannot be the current jersey, it must be a retired style. If there's a player name and number on it, he can no longer be on the team, and therefore playing that day. This can then be seen as a tribute to a past era or player, not blatant rooting for the opposition.

You are now allowed to wear the home team hat with the throwback jersey only if it will prevent you from being abused and/or pummeled for wearing the visiting team's jersey.

Safety first!

[Gothamite]

Steeler fans sound like Yankee fans. They only support them when they win.

Bite your tongue.

There are bandwagon Yankee fans, to be sure. But Yankee fans as a whole are die-hards.

There are as many midnight blue caps on the streets of NYC today as there were before the Yanks washed out of the playoffs.

[Reaper]

I read this and had visions of Yzerman scoring from the blue line as I was chuckling.

I had forgotten how weak Gretzky was on the backcheck in that play. Talk about no active stick.

[The_Admiral]

If you were a true Green Bay Packers fan, you wouldn't even be having this dilemma.

[TFoA]

Man that is pathetic. Steeler fans sound like Yankee fans. They only support them when they win.

You just owned about 65% of the city of Atlanta's fans. They're either fans of another team from all the way across the country, or fairweather. The rest, the minority, are die-hards.

Therefore, you can come to Atlanta and pull off wearing the home team's jersey with a differen't team's hat, because more than likely, the person sitting to your left or right won't even care.

[IceCap]

If you were a true Green Bay Packers fan, you wouldn't even be having this dilemma.

Well said. I'm not one to buy into the whole "I root for them because I moved there" mentality. If you're from Wisconsin, and grew up rooting for the Packers, then wear Packers gear.

[Ron Mexico]

I can't believe this thread was even made. You don't HAVE more than one team in the same sport.

Nope.

Doesn't happen.

Never.

Grow a pair and pick a side.

[The_Admiral]

Especially with the Packers, of all teams. How can you be a divided Packer fan? That's like being casually Amish.

[Mingjai]

On a somewhat related note, I was walking around the University of Minnesota campus today and noticed there are lots of students wearing Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, or other Big Ten schools' gear. Most of them are probably from those states, though I suspect some of them are bandwagoners. It seems so wierd to me to see people wearing not only gear from in-conference schools, but also from hated rivals (Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan) in particular. I know that Wisconsinites want Minnesotans to know they aren't Minnesotans, but do they have to wear Bucky shirts? I guess some people aren't loyal to their own school. Lame.

At BYU where I did my undergrad, no one ever wore the gear of an in-conference school. And I like to think that no good BYU student would ever dawn the crimson of the Utah Utes. There are many students from Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Las Vegas, and San Diego, but they didn't proclaim their "I'm-not-a-local" by wearing other schools' colors.

Even with all the California and Arizona students at BYU (something like 30% of the student body), there still weren't very many UC-wherever or ASU shirts around on campus. The only exception was the Hawaiians did like to wear UH stuff and support the Warriors whenever they were in town.

[The_Admiral]

Let's see, good Mormon jokes, gotta be one for this...

[bterreson]

if you really really can't decided. maybe just where niether... ? I'd rather see someone with regular street clothes, than the two teams playing eachother..

[rmackman]

So since my dad was wearing Dolphins gear and my Uncle Kent wore all Packers, I decided to just eat it and wear both! I wore my Dolphins polo and a Packers Super Bowl cap. Ironically as you'll see from the photos, there were other fans doing the same thing as me! Nobody yelled at me. Some came and asked me why, but when I said "My family is from Wisconsin, and I live and grew up down here" they felt that was plenty explanation enough. Considering I was sitting between my dad and uncle, I was a perfect blend of the two anyway . Needless to say, watching two teams you like play each other is like punching yourself in the face though. Good game, but just a half happy/half sad melancholy feeling afterwards. We had great seats, everyone had a good time, and in the end that's what matters. Enjoy the pics.

[DEAD!]

OH MY! I don't think leaving cheese in 80 degree weather is such a gouda idea! On the other hand, his head is well shaded

[Guest]

I still maintain that you're either all or nothing when it comes to the Packers.