Chapter 3. Cat's in the Cradle

by Bob Andelman

"I'm going to keep an open mind. I'm not going to force my sons to be Gators or Dolphins fans. But I expect they'll pick it up. I'm not going to pick their schools for them at 5 and 3 years old. I want them to go to Yale and Harvard. Unless they can play. Then I definitely want them to go to Florida."

Harold Hyman
Property manager
Tamarac, Florida

Football became an American family tradition the morning after the first quarterback tossed the first touchdown pass and a sportswriter published the play-by-play.

Few games move as aggressively from father to son and brother to brother. Seeing his son score a touchdown for the first time in a Pop Warner League game is a much more satisfying rite of passage to most fathers than potty training. (And football uniforms are entirely more manly to clean than diapers.)

Some men live their own football dreams vicariously through strangers on their favorite college or pro team. And some dads are pretty overt about proselytizing to their sons about their own football careers, usually to the point of exaggeration (and leaving out the downside such as injuries), pushing them biceps-first into football. Not a one wouldn't wish their own flesh and blood to have the agility of Jerry Rice, the strength of Reggie White or the precision of Warren Moon.

If that fails, dads will settle for a knowledgeable companion to share the game watching experience.

"My dad, when he was 10, was at the first Packers game ever played," Green Bay banker Jerry Pigeon says proudly. "You look up to your parents. He would go to the games and we wanted to go, too. My brother and I, growing up in the '60s, the Lombardi era, were brainwashed. We grew up supporting the team. Now my brother has one room in his house that's all dedicated to the Packers. He's got files or videos of every game, newspapers from every city the Packers played in. He's into it."

Unlike the Pigeon brothers, a lot of men might not know why they like football. They may reason that Dad played or older brothers played or they saw it on TV. But that is not a one-to-one relationship; not everybody's father or older brother played football. It is not an automatic thing. Therefore, football must resonate good feelings.

Sometimes it's inexplicable because it's on an unconscious level. That starts because kids are very sensitive to their parents' wishes. Dad's subtle interest in things like that, they always pick up. You might call it "psychological genetics." It sets the stage for later on, when men continue to both play the game or vicariously enjoy it. It continues to be an avenue of discharge for the aggressive drive.

There is a fairly strong body of literature in the sport sociology field that indicates that parents are incredibly significant in socializing children into particular sports. Most kids play Pee Wee football because their dads bring them down and sign them up. It's not often that a 6-year-old kid says, "Dad, I want to go to fencing school," or, "Dad, I would like to play lacrosse" -- unless dear old dad fenced or played lacrosse. Parents expose their children to different activities that they either participated in or they have an interest in. Experts says it's usually not until late adolescence when a person starts to make these selections for himself.

"This is a funny example," says Dr. Mark Unterberg, a psychiatrist and executive medical director for Green Oaks Medical City in Dallas. Unterberg is also a consultant to several NFL and NBA teams. "I played football in high school and I played one year in college. Linebacker. I got injured and after that I quit. I wanted to go to medical school and I wasn't getting bigger like the pros. As much as I can tell, I'm not one of these people who talk a lot about their football careers. Partly because I played varsity and I started and all that but I wasn't an all-conference or one of these outstanding players. There was nothing really to talk about, if you want to know the truth. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a fan. I've never been a fan. If I went to one football game a season it would be because somebody had tickets and wanted me to go. I'm not a TV watcher. If a game came on I would watch it for a little bit. My father used to watch it but I would be bored.

"Well," Unterberg says, "I have two sons and they both decided they wanted to play football. But the interesting thing is they both ended up playing linebacker -- the position I played. They actually did much better. Both made all-conference. What really caught my attention was that I talked even less about baseball because I stopped playing baseball when I was in the ninth grade. I switched to tennis. Varsity tennis and football were my two sports. Low and behold, both of my sons play catcher. Coincidence? I'm not sure on what level. Many times it just seems that kind of thing goes on."

• Ralph Weisbeck used to take his kids to Bills game when Jack Kemp was quarterback and Lou Saban was coach. He remembers those days fondly, screaming and yelling side-by-side, pulling for the Bills with his offspring. Time proved the best investment he ever made.

"My kids are all gone now but they call me up after a game," the retired tool company executive says. "They know I'm watching."

• Dr. Rick Weinberg, a clinical psychologist at the Florida Mental Health Institute at the University of South Florida in Tampa, went to Chicago Bears games with his father. "He taught me the ins and outs of why you pass on third down," Weinberg recalls. "He really enhanced my appreciation of the game. We would sit all day, Saturdays and Sundays, and get popcorn and Cokes and we'd watch together, the way that a father and son can do things and relate to one another in a very loving, father/son kind of way around sports. That was very special to me and it is the sort of thing that I want to try to duplicate with my own son. It is important to me."

Weinberg took his own son to a game for the first time in 1991, when the boy turned 6. He was more interested in the cotton candy man and the Coke vendors than he was in the game. The next year he paid more attention to the game, responding when the crowds cheered and when a player spiked the ball. The color and pageantry lent itself even to a 7-year-old's vantage point. Dad contributed to his son's seduction by buying him a University of Michigan (Weinberg's alma mater) sweatshirt, Tampa Bay Bucs hat and shirt.

An educated, intelligent man, Weinberg tries to balance the love of sports he seeks to share with his boy against the rampant aggression and violence found in games like football.

"But I have to be honest," he says. "The hitting and the hurting -- I don't pay much attention to that until there is an injury. There is such enjoyment watching the successes of your team and cheering them on that you kind of forget about that other element. The thing that helps you overlook it is they are so well protected and well padded. For the amount of physical contact they have, there doesn't seem to be as many physical injuries as you would expect."

• Harold Hyman picked up the game from a brother 14 years his senior. Hyman was 6 when his brother took him to a University of Miami Hurricanes-University of Florida Gators game in 1963 at the Orange Bowl. "Since that time," Hyman says, "I've been crazy.

"My brother was in school, always telling me about the games," he says. "It was the colors, the excitement. I always played football in the house, throwing balls. I became a Gator fan because of my brother and anti-Hurricanes. As I grew up it was more than a passion. Like a war."

• Another South Florida football fan, Coral Gables banker Shawn Cahill, also was influenced by a brother's involvement in football. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, under the sway of the Ohio State University Buckeyes and Cleveland Browns.

"My older brother played football," Cahill says. "I enjoyed watching football every Sunday with my brother and my father. Every Thanksgiving, we went to my uncle's and we made sure dinner was served between games or at halftime."

Now a father himself, Cahill isn't losing any time with his infant son's indoctrination. Kyle was given a Florida State Seminoles football shirt before his first birthday in honor of his dad's alma mater. "He's on his way," Cahill says. "I'm looking forward to it."

• Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum's son is fully grown today, but as a child, he naturally gravitated to his father's love of football. "When Larry was 2 years old," Teitelbaum says, "he saw me shaving and he wanted to shave so we got him a toy plastic razor. I'd put shaving cream on his face and he would shave along with me. When he was 8 years old and he saw me watching playoff games, he joined me in the living room, watching. That was the beginning of his interest in football."

As with many kids it became important to the younger Teitelbaum to identify not only with his local teams, the Giants and Jets, but with a winner. He delivered his youthful passion to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the super team of the 1970s. Larry got yellow and black Steelers hats, shirts and scarves.

One of the biggest touchdowns Dad Teitelbaum ever made in his son's life was when he gave a paper at a conference in New Orleans. "I was in a restaurant and at the next table was Terry Bradshaw. This was a month after a Steelers' Super Bowl victory. We talked a little in the restaurant and I brought his autograph home to my son. That was bliss. That was the best gift anyone could have gotten for him because Terry Bradshaw was his hero. That won me a lot of points at that stage in his life. As he got older and I acquired seasons tickets to the Giants and Jets games, he couldn't get enough of that. He was very hot to go to all those games and he still does."

Sharing a delight in football gave Teitelbaum and his son a unique bond the boy would not have with his mother. Whatever problems or conflict they might have in life, football will always be special between them.

"Larry doesn't live at home anymore," Teitelbaum says, "but when we talk on the phone we always talk about sports. He will say, 'Did you hear about the latest trade?' I don't have that communication with my daughter and I don't have that with my wife so it's great that I have it with my son."

• One more story about football fathers and their sons:

Banker Dave Schwarzmueller married in 1966. He and his wife loyally attended Buffalo Bills home games. Over time the couple had two children, both girls. When their third child, a boy, was born, the doctor came out to the fathers' waiting room and informed Schwarzmueller.

"I went in to see my wife," he recalls. "The first thing she said was, 'Well, it's a boy. There goes my season ticket.'"

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 5. A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich

by Bob Andelman

"During the late 1940s and early '50s, I peddled my bicycle 20 miles in each direction two or three times a week to watch the Los Angeles Rams practice in training camp. I was able to meet a lot of players. I wasn't an autograph seeker, though. I just liked to watch them practice, hear the grunts and groans, the hits. I'd try to do what they did. I grew up without a father around (his father died in World War II) so I had to pick that up alone and be successful at it."

Jim Runels
Retired management executive
Yorba Linda, California

As boys, we're drawn to athletes who embody all we strive to be: cunning, fast, aggressive, agile, handsome, witty, attractive to women. Guys like Johnny Unitas, Mean Joe Greene, Joe Namath, O.J. Simpson and Dan Marino never age in the eyes of idolizing youngsters. The image of the stars as hearty, full-of-life players cements in the eyes of young men, no matter how many hairs on Namath's head turn grey.

It's a different experience for grown men. Our boyhood heroes retire and fade from the game before we reach our assigned cubicles in the work place and we don't become as attached to their replacements.

Even worse, one day we wake up and they're all younger than us.

And thanks to free agency, the guy we rooted for last year joins our arch-rival for the coming season. Or our quarterback becomes more interested in chasing big bucks in greener pastures and endorsing roll-on, non-stick deodorant than leading us to victory. We blanche at his annual demand to be paid 10 times what we'll earn in a lifetime rather than just double. Or the team's general manager sours on our favorite wide receiver and trades him without warning.

Chicago sports radio personality Mike North grew up in the aura of Bears legends Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus, an era when star players mated with a team for life. He worries about the ties between a new generation of players and fans.

"It's hard to be a fan of individuals with free agency," he says. "Players used to be 'your guys.' They're no longer your guys."

Adults learn to pick their heroes more carefully than children and grudgingly realize most heroes will be short-lived. But we still indulge that boyish need to worship the gods.

Contemporary men are desperately searching for heroes in their lives. We're wanting for role models at a time when the ranks of positive male role models are fairly thin. So many athletes undeserving of our loyalty have been glorified by the press and glorified by Madison Avenue. Every little kid wants to be like Mike. Everybody wants to have their face on the Wheaties box and go to Disneyland after the big game.

Men search for an identification with a winner, a male figure who is effective, virile, potent and capable and knows how to get things done. All of the hype that goes into sports serves some need where men come up empty.

"Everybody has somebody that they look up to as a model. That personal attachment says, 'I would like to be like them,' " says Dr. Thomas A. Tutko, a clinical psychologist at San Jose State University and a director of the Institute of Athletic Motivation. "I went to a real estate office and hanging behind this guy's desk -- a very, very successful guy -- was a huge print of Joe Montana. Heroes provide hope. They provide identity. They provide an opportunity to be a step above and beyond where you are right now. It is people like Montana that give us that hope. Personally, I grew up worshipping Lou Gehrig. The 'Iron Man.' He was, to me, the greatest single athlete that existed. I loved baseball. Lou Gehrig was part Hungarian and I was part Hungarian. There were all those bizarre reasons. I identified not just with him but the traits that he represented."

Isolating a hero on a team is also good for what ails fans of lousy teams. You want to stick by your guys through thick and thin, but it sure helps if one of them stands tall even in darkest night.

* * *

Some of us eschew individuals for teams.

Palmiro "Paul" Mazzoleni came by his devotion to the Green Bay Packers when his family moved to the west side of Green Bay. Five or six players lived in the neighborhood, often inviting Mazzoleni to watch them practice. That's how, years later, he met and became acquainted with Vince Lombardi in 1959. And it helped his service station became a favorite place for Packers players and staff to fuel up.

"In those days, the Packers weren't paid until the first game of the season," Mazzoleni, now in his 80s, recalls. "I carried a lot of those guys on the books. They all remembered those days -- Bart Starr, Paul Hornung -- when old Paul carried them."

Mazzoleni's service station ("Get your gasolini from Paul Mazzoleni, who sells the best gasolini" was his radio jingle for years) stands as much a part of local football legend in Green Bay as any Bart Starr pass. That came to pass for three reasons: No. 1, Mazzoleni didn't allow anyone to say a discouraging word at his place about the Packers; No. 2, Mazz always knew where a fella could get a ticket to the game (he once redistributed 87 to a single game); and No. 3, Martha's Coffee Club.

"I always said I never wanted to hear anything negative," Mazzoleni says. "To this day, I always say, 'Rome wasn't built in a day.' I never let anybody run down the Packers. Even when Tony Mandarich was here and all the sportswriters wrote that he was a bust, I said, 'Give him a chance.'"

Martha's Coffee Club began early in the Lombardi regime and continues to this day. It took its name from Martha's, the restaurant at 515 S. Broadway, a few steps down from Paul's Standard Service (now Tom's Marathon) at 505 S. Broadway. The club meets every Monday morning at 9 a.m. for half an hour to dish dirt on the team. Everyone must be ready with a new Packer rumor. There are other strictly enforced rules as well: any member who talks business has to put 10 cents in a cup; if you take a call during a meeting, it's 50 cents.

"They're the finest Monday Morning Quarterbacks in town," Mazzoleni brags. "When the Packers don't do well, they don't run them down.

* * *

Most NFL and college towns sport at least one person everyone knows as the team's biggest fan. In Green Bay, it's Paul Mazzoleni. In Gainesville, the University of Florida Gators have "Mr. Two-Bits" ("Two-bits, four-bits, six-bits a dollar! All for the Gators, stand up and holler!"). And in Detroit, the Lions, Tigers, Redwings, Pistons and Drive all share "The Brow."

When 30 years as a mathematics teacher didn't utterly exhaust Joe Diroff, he traded in his chalk and erasers to be Detroit's best-known sports fan.

"When I retired in 1980, I thought I'd hit the rocking chair, maybe play golf, go fishing," he says. "I tried it all; I wasn't good at any of 'em. I said to myself, two years after retiring, there's only one individual in the universe who has all the answers. I said, 'God, tell me what talent I have.'

"The next night, I was at Cobo Hall in Detroit. The Pistons were playing the Boston Celtics. The one talent God gave me was a big mouth. I can really yell. I was asked to come out on the main court and give a cheer. At the end of it, I jumped up in the air. Well, I always have a lot of stuff in my shirt pockets and it flew out. Two security guys grabbed me and tried to throw me out. They didn't know I had permission to be there. Well, I resisted. The crowd booed. They did usher me out, but that's how I got started."

It didn't take long for the former teacher and retired Navy man -- who was a cheerleader at his all-boys high school and college -- to become one of the most recognized men in Detroit sports. Because in addition to his vocal enthusiasm, Joe Diroff is endowed with memorable eyebrows. One eyebrow, actually, that goes all the way across his forehead. That's why they call Joe "The Brow."

Being a cheerleader is not always fun and games. Like when the Lions go to Chicago to challenge the Bears at Soldier Field.

"All I did was have a big sign that said, 'LIONS,' " Diroff says. Three guys came down and threw me over the top row of seats. Well, I landed in the laps these young girls, which wasn't bad."

As a result of that incident, Diroff no longer goes to Lions games in Chicago. But he does still drive 300 miles to Chicago (and as far as 700 miles to Green Bay) to see the team off from the hotel to the stadium. "It's sort of a routine. I do it for the Redwings, too," he says. "I go to the hotel with half a dozen signs and put them up until the management asks me to take them down. When it comes time for the players to leave the stadium, I hold up signs as they head for the bus and give them a bon voyage. Then I hop in my car and head back to Detroit. I always get there in time to meet them afterward, at the airport.

"Oh, sure, I miss the game," The Brow says. "But I figure there's no way I, as an individual, am going to put a dent in that Chicago crowd noise. I figure, I'll go back to the airport in Detroit and meet them there."

There are pitfalls to being The Brow, but there are bonuses, too. He gets free admission and parking to Detroit sports events, although only the Lions actual provide him with a seat and meal ticket. Not that he needs it: Joe Diroff doesn't sit down.

* * *

Doctors told Barry Bradley to lie down but he wasn't ready.

The St. Petersburg business writer and editor hasn't missed watching or taping a Miami Dolphins game since the mid-1970s "even during those lean years." That includes the first week in October 1979, when he learned he had cancer.

"It was on the previous Wednesday that I found out I had to have cancer surgery," he says. "It was a fist-sized malignant tumor of my left kidney. They'd have to take out the kidney, the spleen and the adrenal gland. The doctor said I had to have it out as quickly as possible.

"They scheduled surgery for Monday morning, which meant I had to check into the hospital on Sunday morning. I said no, I can't do that, because the Dolphins are playing at 4 o'clock. I had them postpone the surgery from Monday to Tuesday. I stayed home that afternoon, watched the game and packed. I checked in after the game.

"It really happened," Bradley says. "They were amazed. I don't remember who the Dolphins were playing. But they won the game."

Was it worth it?

"Absolutely."

* * *

Each of us selects a hero or heroes based on different criteria. Strength, intelligence, sexual prowess, natural gifts and other characteristics draw us in; charisma or envy seals the pact.

There's no predicting whom a man might choose to immortalize. Y.A. Tittle and Albert Einstein could be as logical for me as Dick Butkus and Al Capone would be for you.

Some grown men even buy posters, autographed 8x10s and trading cards of their favorites. They build tchotchke shrines to athletes they'll never meet. And maybe they don't want to, wouldn't chance it to burst their bubbles. They follow athletes with a dedication that is almost mystical, although others may consider such devotion more appropriate for young boys.

Why do some men leave these things behind and others hang on forever?

"I think they still hold a very close emotional attachment with the sport," says Dr. George H. Sage, a retired professor of kinesiology and sociology at the University of Northern Colorado. Sage is the author of Power and Ideology in American Sport (Human Kinetics) and co-author (with Dr. D. Stanley Eitzen) of Sociology of North American Sport (William C. Brown). "There is this somebody who can perform the skills at such an incredibly high level that there is an attachment and fascination."

A lot of it, unfortunately, is programmed and packaged, a direct result of the way Madison Avenue markets today's athletes. Few sports heroes develop naturally; they're prepped, styled and propagandized. Athletic superstars are sold just like any other commodity, through advertising. Sportscasters speak in well-modulated, admiring tones about how wonderful, how great, how incredible, how terrific an athlete is.

"I think all of that feeds into what is already there in the mind of somebody who admires a particular athlete," Sage says.

Dr. Gregory B. Collins advises men to pick their heroes wisely. "One of the best comments I ever heard about this," he says, "was from an athlete who cautioned young people about worshipping athletes. He said,'Your heroes really should be your parents and you shouldn't look to athletes to fill that need for you.' I think that is good advice."

Phoenix Suns basketball star Charles Barkley said it bluntly in a 1993 commercial for Nike: "I am not a role model. I don't get paid to be a role model."

There are personalities that attract attention by virtue of being good at their jobs, remaining humble about their talents and generally likeable. You can build loyalty to players who stick around like Walter Payton, who was with the Bears for 13 seasons.

"The Bears were always the team for me," Larry Mayer says. "I looked up to Payton. He joined the team when I was nine years old. You grow up to follow the players and know the team. I liked Larry Csonka -- maybe it was because he had the same first name as I did."

Nobody said this hero thing was scientific.

Sticking with Chicago icons, former Bears coach Mike Ditka won legions of fans because he comes across as such a common man, a kick-ass-and-take-names guy, even though he owns restaurants and appears in TV and print ads for myriad products. He still exudes a blue-collar, down-to-earth persona that people can relate to; they feel like they're a friend of his.

We revere people who can make $43-million in six years for throwing a football. Many men and boys would like to be like that.

Kids especially need heroes. If they latch on to a Lawrence Taylor or Phil Simms, when those guys perform well, the kid feels like a million bucks. It's a way of borrowing some identity from an athlete who is performing well. If a boy wears a jersey with Taylor's number on his back there is a part of the child that feels he is sharing in L.T.'s performance.

There's a downside to forming such attachments, too. Careers don't last forever. And winning streaks are usually followed by losing streaks.

"Our players are our heroes as long as they do well," Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum says, "but when they start to falter, when they decline, they hear it loud and clear from the fans. The fans are expressing the disappointment that their heroes are not playing up to par because not only does it affect what happens to the team but it affects how I feel about myself. If I'm identifying with you as a star player and I need to connect with you, I need to have you do well so I feel good about me."

Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie helped with a 1984 Miller Lite study of fans in America. Some of the conclusions chilled him.

"I think it is scary when you think how important heroes can be," the San Jose State University professor of psychology says. "But when fans were asked for the most important role models for their children, boys and girls, they said athletic heroes. That, to me, as a clinical psychologist, makes an eloquent statement about our society and its values and the sort of noble heroes we reinforce. I was really saddened that these were the primary models for youth."

Ogilvie's own heroes represented a different era, external to sports -- Mahatma Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt, for example. Figures of great sociological significance.

"When I was young," he says, "I thought I might head toward medicine. I was astounded that sports fans had an entirely different orientation. I was genuinely saddened. I thought it made a statement about something that was going on in our society. But I said, 'Who in the hell am I to judge?' People find their heroes wherever they can. Perhaps I was being a little bit idealistic. I was hoping they would mention some figures out of history."

Is it better to have football heroes than no heroes at all?

"Yes, of course," Ogilvie says. "We all have to be standing on our toes reaching for something beyond ourselves or we don't achieve. We don't move forward and unfortunately we don't contribute in any way. I think you have to reach."

* * *

Hero worship is weird for the players, too. Some don't know how to deal with the adulation and attention. Many deflect the imposition of responsibility that society saddles them with as "role models" for our youth. We want our heroes to be perfect in every way, but we also want to know that they are human and that they have frailties and flaws like us. It's a crazy relationship.

"It bends the player's perception of reality," Dr. Gregory B. Collins says. "How important they are, how they fit into things and a total team organizational concept. It can really distort their perspective about relationships, money and self-importance. It can be so rewarding in the short run that they really don't look at anything beyond it. There is a lot of desire not to have the party end. People just don't plan for when it will."

It's not that these guys don't deserve our worship but that they are human beings just like we are. Earning a million bucks for smashing quarterbacks doesn't make a college junior into a sensitive and loving role model. But somehow we elevate them into positions that are difficult, if not impossible, for them to maintain. There's a terrific amount of pressure for high-profile, elite athletes to sustain their image in the public but the gods have clay feet. They are human beings and we forget that. Their troubles -- and it seems all runners eventually stumble -- satisfy some kind of desire that people have to see their heroes fail.

Men look for models, people they can hold in high esteem. A lot of us go to an extreme, putting our heroes in a box where they are doomed to fail. There are very few heroes who can live up to our extraordinary expectations.

"Even a person like Larry Bird," Dr. John M. Silva says. "Boston had as much of a love affair with him as anybody and he still got booed. The expectations are so high and people want them to be met. It's part of an opportunity to have something as close to perfection as possible, as if this person never makes mistakes. 'This person always hits the big shot for us. This is something I can depend on. There aren't many things in life I can depend on but I can depend on Larry.' "

It just doesn't last. Larry Byrd misses shots. Wade Boggs fools around. Art Schlichter gambles. Len Bias snorts coke. Dexter Manley tests positive for pot four times. Michael Jordan lays odds on his golf game.

Of course, we're no more reliable than our heroes. We fair-weather fans abandon our team if it looks like they won't make the playoffs and choose an alternative team. And when we turn on favorite players and teams, look out.

"The fans who keep their loyalties to the players the longest really turn with vindictiveness," Silva says. "We saw it in 1992 with the New Orleans Saints. The fans were 500 percent behind them during the season. Sellout, frenzied crowds that loved their team all the way up to the playoffs. Then the team lost for the second year in a row in the first game of the playoffs. The fans were ready to hang Bobby Ebert. He had a rough game and he made some decisions that contributed to the team's loss, but he was singled out and taken to task quite heavily. The talk shows there were relentless, lambasting Ebert."

Fans will stay loyal the longest to players, choosing to point the fickle finger of blame at officials, owners and coaches, in that order. Once we do turn on the players, we attack . It's a way of trying to resolve our dissidence. "I rooted so hard for this team! I told so many people how great they were and I bought all this stuff!" How do you reconcile that? How do you balance that psychic investment? Am I going to have to blame officiating or coaching? Am I going to blame the players?

I certainly am not going to take the blame.

Might as well knock yesterday's hero off his pedestal. He was precariously perched, anyhow.

"Fans scratch away at the clay feet to expose the ordinary man," Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie says. "These people gain not security but an artificial form of self-assurance -- 'Oh, well, even the heroes are not that great,' and so on. These people shift their loyalties just as quickly as you can snap your finger."

Ogilvie says people who can transfer their allegiances so quickly, who won't hesitate to turn last week's hero into this week's goat, have some real problems of their own.

"There would have to be some serious inadequacies in people who derive their satisfaction out of seeing heroes fall," he says, "whether they are their own or other fans' heroes. It's like the people who seem to get a vicarious charge out of seeing someone hurt. The quarterback gets knocked out of the game and they are enraptured by this. It borders on sadism. A psychological sadism. They are tickled to death, shouting, 'Bring in the meat wagon!'" 

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 14. Odds 'n' Sods

by Bob Andelman

"I pride myself on being a trivia expert. I challenge my friends. If they can beat me, I'll take them to lunch. I know basically every number for every Bears player. The most obscure the player, the more I remember. I guess it helped me get my job and I guess it helps me do my job better. It's weird because I don't otherwise have a good memory. My sister remembers things from childhood. I don't."

Larry Mayer
Managing editor
Chicago Bear Report

If there's one thing sure to drive a non-football fan batty it's the ever increasing treasure trove of statistics. Thanks to computers and new information gathering techniques, fans of numbers can track virtually any aspect of the game.

Under the category of passing alone, we follow attempts, completions, completion percentage, yards, touchdowns, touchdown percentage, longest touchdown pass, interceptions, interception percentage, average gain and overall rating.

What about kicking? For punting alone there's number of kicks, total yards, longest kick, gross average, touchbacks, kicks inside the 20-yard-line, blocked kicks, number of kicks returned by opposing teams and the total and average returns. Field-goal accuracy typically breaks down into distance: 1-19 yards, 20-29 yards, 30-39 yards, 40-49 yards and the very thinly populated 50 yards or more.

Let's assume the point is made and skip defensive examples.

"I love sports because of the numbers and the statistics," financial accountant Larry Selvin says. "As I grew up, I won arithmetic contests. I have like a photographic memory for numbers and dates. I can tell you every Super Bowl off the top of my head -- who was in it, what was the score, who won the MVP, where they played the game."



Stats are a way of dealing with one's mastery of the game and not just as a passive participant. Keeping statistics -- on paper, in our heads -- is a form of activity.

 
It's a form of competitiveness -- knowing more stats than the next person. Sometimes obsessive behavior becomes a way to deal with affective emotions. Sometimes it's a way for an underachiever to finally become an overachiever. Maybe part of the person fears that if they don't do statistics they might get too excited over the game. They understand what is going on. It's their way of being active and showing that they are really part of the game.

Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie calls it exhibitionism, legitimized by what comes into our living rooms via the TV.

"I think that would be a terribly neurotic thing to do," he says, "to quest for some exaggerated attention. 'Hey, look at me, dad!' It's an incredible need to become involved in something that has some meaning for them, that has some influence in the way they feel about themselves and sometimes the way they feel about the world. These are spectators to life. All they get is whatever they can abstract from what is going on out there. That becomes living for them. That goes to such extremes when you talk about the couch potato. What a termination of life."

"Pathetic, isn't it?" Dr. Daniel Begel scoffs. "Hanging out through the TV with football or anything else."





Sometimes people do things unconsciously. Deep down they may believe the more they memorize Thurman Thomas's stats, the more they know him. The more some guys know about Thomas, the more they can identify with him or enjoy what he does on the field.

There are so many facets of football. A guy can be master in one segment but not the other. Some people, their whole life is tailgate parties. They drink champagne, they crank up the car tunes. Some of them don't even go in until the game has started and even then they follow the action on portable TVs.

Trivia buffs create games within games. They envision themselves as part of the game because they are game historians. They remember the details.

"Some people like that. Kind of an obsessive-compulsive behavior," Dr. Thomas A. Tutko says. "There is a place for those individuals as well. The memories that come up provide an emotional charge in some way. Good play. The great hit. All of it gets relived because it fulfills a need inside them."

Bill Price teaches statistics at Niagara University but he, for one, has had enough of the growing statistical obsession among fans, sportscasters and the NFL itself.

"I think they're overdone," Price says. "I've seen players get good numbers but they play lousy."

William J. Winslow, president of the Institute of Athletic Motivation, blames stat-mania on ego-involvement. "I've often said to myself that if these people could put the same attention to their careers as they do to memorizing football numbers, they'd be more successful. They spend evenings gathering stats and reading newspapers instead of reading journals.

"Take kids," he says. "They remember batting averages but can't put 2 + 2 together in school. You get minority athletes who can't get passing grades in school but memorize whole playbooks. If you're memorizing something you like, it's no longer a chore, it's something you like."

That's it, exactly.



Players stats are something that a guy can easily consume with a modicum of interest because in a man's life, he knows sports trivia or trivia dressed up as information will always pass for conversation with other men. It's something we can relate to others and groups who share our same interest. That serves our self-esteem.

The more knowledgeable we supposedly are about this game -- it doesn't matter whatever else we do. The knowledge is ego-boosting and self-esteem boosting. Men know what their guys did and how they played. It's another twist on basking in reflected glory phenomena. We can boost our ego and self-esteem not by performance itself but by being knowledgeable about it.

* * *

Aaron Vaughn, a copy editor at the Valley Daily News in Kent, Washington, didn't pay much attention to football until his late teens. Then he couldn't get enough: he needed NFL, college, even high school games to slake his thirst.

As the years went by and he neared his 30th birthday, Vaughn's interest deepened. He stopped going to pro games in person because he didn't care for the Seattle Seahawks and all he ever got were lousy seats. But at work, he started hanging around sportswriters and editors who honed his technical understanding of football.

Now he's more interested in the annual college draft than the game itself.

"Every year, I buy three draft guides," he says. "I study players and who the teams need. It's something I find fascinating, how they make their decisions. I really am a behind-the-scenes guy."



The first player Vaughn followed was University of Oregon quarterback Chris Miller, researching his background and plotting his prospects. He became an Atlanta Falcons fan when they drafted his man. After that, Vaughn was hooked. He conducts his own mock drafts. He videotapes the draft on ESPN, watching it over and over again, comparing and critiquing his selections for the NFL teams with their actual choices.

"I try not to hold it against teams that don't pick a guy," Vaughn says. "It's technical and boring to a lot of my friends. But it's a lot of fun."

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 17. Two Tickets to Paradise

by Bob Andelman

"I don't go to sporting events unless I get good seats. It's a waste of money if you don't. If you're an avid fan, it's worth the money."

Larry Selvin
Financial accountant
West Roxbury, Massachusetts

Jerry DeForest Jr. is a superfan.

The 1992-93 season marked his fourth consecutive year of traveling from city to city with his cherished New York Giants. Wherever they go, he goes.

"It's my hobby," he says. "I love seeing other cities."

Understand that DeForest, who played football at New York's Niagara University, also journeys to the Kentucky Derby, NCAA Final Four and World Series. (He doesn't miss Niagara games, home or away, either.)

His mega-devotion began innocently in 1981 when a Giants-Jets clash wasn't broadcast in Buffalo so DeForest and a college classmate hitchhiked to Schenectady. One year he road-tripped to Dallas and his picture appeared in the Dallas Morning News. Seems he painted his head to resemble a Giants helmet. In 1986, he and a pal flew to Pasadena and dropped $325 apiece on game day for Super Bowl tickets.

His special football fixation centers on the pre-game festivities. "I love to tailgate," DeForest says. For a 1 p.m. game, he'll be in the stadium parking lot at 8:30 a.m. He can always be counted on to organize and cater the tailgate parties, endearing him to 80 friends and family members each week. His legendary tailgate parties attract the families of Giants players as well as the beat reporters who cover the Giants for New York metro area newspapers.

DeForest loves to tailgate so much, he name his Staten Island bar "The Tailgate." The bar's red, white and blue decor doubles as a shrine to the Giants.

And he doesn't just tailgate the easy way, during Giants home games at the New Jersey Meadowlands. Noooooo. DeForest organizes moveable feasts. On Saturday nights before away games, he organizes out-of-town cocktail parties which always draw a handful of Giants players.

"I just love football. Everything about football," he says. "Even when the Giants were conservative, that didn't bother me. Running is the same as throwing to me. I'm more of a Giants fan than a football fan. When I'm at a Giants game, I don't care that I'm missing nine hours of football on TV. All I care about is the Giants. The rest of the NFL -- I could care less."

Don't get the idea that Jerry DeForest Jr.'s devotion to the Giants comes at the expense of other things in his life that might fall on the same Sunday the Giants are playing.

Why, one Thanksgiving, when the Giants were scheduled to play the Cowboys in Dallas, DeForest stayed home in Staten Island, closed The Tailgate to the public and feted his family to a holiday dinner -- while watching the game on a 60-inch TV.

And he actually missed one away game in recent years because it conflicted with his cousin's wedding.

Well, to be honest, he didn't really miss that game.

The wedding ceremony was scheduled for 3:30 p.m.; the game started at 4. Obviously, DeForest couldn't be in Los Angeles for the kickoff, but he couldn't face missing the game, either. He compromised by skipping the ceremony and catching up with the bride and groom at their reception -- just after 7 p.m.

"Unless I'm in the wedding party, I'm not missing the game," he says. "My family knows how I am. By not going to L.A., they took it as a sacrifice."

* * *
It costs a lot of money to see a pro football game in person. Tickets start at $25 in most cities. If you're a really big fan, it's not worth buying single game tickets because the best seats go to season ticketholders. Now the cost is up to a couple hundred bucks to reserve a seat for all eight home games.

But you don't go alone, do you?

Taking a son, a wife, a daughter or a buddy doubles the admission cost. Maybe the company will pay for the seats, though, and occasionally you'll take a client to legitimize it as a business expense.

Parking costs $5 to $10 per game. And food. Gotta eat. Consume mass quantities. Can't bring your own. League rules. Once inside, it wouldn't be football without beer, chili dogs and nachos, would it?

If you've gone this far, might as well go the rest of the way: team sweatshirts and hats for chilly days, neon ponchos for rainy days, and a team license plate or plate holder for the car so everyone knows your team.


 

Then there's the time factor. You could stay home, watch the game on TV and keep your commitment to a mere three hours. But as Atlanta Falcons fan Mark von Dwingelo says, "It's a pain in the neck to watch TV because there's so many commercials."

von Dwingelo obviously never invested the time, money and self-esteem to see the Tampa Bay Bucs play a 1 p.m. game at sweltering Tampa Stadium. Only a real (desperate) man can bear that.

Allowing 45 minutes to traverse either crosstown or bridge traffic, plus stadium gridlock, won't you need at least 90 minutes to two hours before kickoff to properly tailgate? And because beer is only borrowed and there are no trees to duck behind for relief in the parking lot, you'll have to be in the stadium to queue up at the rest rooms at least 20 minutes before 1 p.m.

What about the weather? By November, it sucks in most every NFL city save those in Florida and Southern California.

The game itself will be over by 4 p.m. If you've invested this much time and money already, you must also expect your team could win, something that keeps you in your seat until the last tick of the game clock. If they win, everybody else will stick around, so it'll be impossible to leave the parking lot in a hurry and who would want to? There's a few light beers and a stale bag of open chips in the car, let's celebrate victory for a few hours alongside a couple thousand of our closest pals!




Some people would find all this enough reason to stay home and watch football in front of a TV, just a few paces off the kitchen and toilet. But to many men being there is everything.

"Here in the San Francisco Bay area, with the 49ers," William J. Winslow says, "anybody who goes to the game, everybody else is going to know about it the next day. Tickets are hard to get. It's not so much who they're going to rub elbows with but that they were there. Where the action is. That elevates them."

In cities like San Francisco and Denver or New Jersey's Meadowlands the situation is static. Season ticketholders rule the stadiums, making a fan's presence an issue of status, not cross-strata camaraderie.

"It is a status symbol," Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum says. "Any time there is a waiting list to get tickets for anything, once you get to be on the top of that list, you are getting something that a lot of people are not getting. The status is not often spelled out but there is that feeling of, 'Hey, I went to the game!' and that may count for something in office conversation.

"I have season tickets to both the Giants and the Jets games," he says. "They are sold out so a lot of people watch the games on TV by default. They would love to go to the stadium but they don't have tickets and they can't get them. There is a long waiting list. I don't know what it is like in other cities where there may not be sell-outs. Here, people generally love to go the games. I think for most guys it is more exhilarating to be out there and feel closer to the field and closer to the action and you tend to get into it more."

• "We tailgate with a group of 17 people, or we go out to breakfast before the game and back to someone's house afterward," Dave Schwarzmueller says. "But their season tickets are all under my name. They say, 'Don't die, Dave!' but I took care of that. I gave my older daughter the names of the people who have the right to a ticket. She's the executor of my estate. She and my lawyer will make sure everybody continues to get their tickets. The teams are really strict about these things. The tickets will still come to me, in my name. All we have to do is a change of address."

• "I don't care where I sit; I sit in the end zone," Bill Price says. "I like to get there at least 90 minutes ahead of the game, watch them practice, soak up the whole thing. It's electric. There's nothing like being there. You can't get that on television."

* * *
New York Giants fan Jim Luttrell journeyed to Pasadena in 1987 for Super Bowl XXI. It was a quick trip; he flew out Saturday morning, watched his Giants stomp the Denver Broncos 39-20 and left on Monday morning.

Image via Wikipedia

"That was a big moment," Luttrell recalls. "And having them win made it more special. But just being there was one of my biggest highlights as a sports fan. We had champagne in the parking lot afterward. That was when we found out that the trunk of a Cutlass Cierra holds water. We didn't have a cooler; Some store owner gave us a cardboard box of ice."

Here's another almost priceless Super Bowl story:

Christmas, 1992. Bill Price visits his daughter in the West Indies, where she's a Peace Corps volunteer. Wading into the ocean, a wave abruptly flips Price over and lands him on his head, breaking several vertebrae. The accident puts him in an upper-body cast for months.

As fate would have it, Price's beloved Buffalo Bills earn an invitation to Super Bowl XXVII a month after his accident and Price acquires two tickets. He tells his doctor that he has to take a plane trip and needs some extra medication; he just doesn't tell him where. Despite the body cast, he and his son go to Pasadena and sit in the Rose Bowl.

"I said to my son, 'Even though we lost, I'm glad to be here,' " Price recalls. "I think this tells you I am a loyal Bills fan: I would do it again."

Buying a $30 football game ticket apparently gives some of us license to have out-of-body experiences.

All week long, men are expected to report to work, be on time, keep our mouths shut and produce, produce, produce. At the stadium, we get to turn that around. Buy a ticket and rearrange the order of the universe. Now the workers bark the demands. And sometimes we can be pretty demanding. Especially standing elbow-to-elbow, brews flowing, hands cupped to mouths and screaming together for what we want: blood.




"It's an ego need," Dr. William J. Beausay says. "The need to be powerful, to be successful, to achieve, to be the king, even if for one week or one day or one hour. These people work every day. They have to answer to a boss. They have to answer to a wife. They have to get the job done. They have bills to pay and everybody is on their ass, so to speak, so for one moment for one day they can buy a ticket and suddenly, they are in charge. They are the coach, the owner and that's why you have the right to get mad and swear and threaten and get mad at the referees too. When you buy that ticket you buy the right to be angry at your team and demand changes and this and that."

It goes back to group crowd psychology. Our ego becomes submerged into the group ego and it's a different set of rules that we go by. Much more aggressiveness is tolerated than would be individually. Many more demands. "I want what I want and if I don't get it, by God, I'm going to let you know!"

There are few restraints upon crowds. With less restraint, fans can do more damage. They can tear down goalposts, throw bottles, get into fights. In crowds, more interpersonal stimulation develops. When people go to a football game they almost have to talk to the person next to them. They rally and encourage each other and the people all around them, railing against a common foe.

"What will happen," Beausay says, "is if the direction of the emotional tone is positive, the fans go sky high. But if the direction of the emotional tone is negative, it can get ugly and very destructive in very short order. Crowd psychology is a peculiar, interesting phenomenon."

Alone, in the stands, most men would be quiet and restrained. But in the company of our friends and family, we become much more vocal.

It's a social experience where we pick up cues from the people we're with. Human beings in a crowd pick up cues as to what is appropriate. To stand up and cheer -- you wouldn't do that at a church service or a poetry reading but at a football game, the norms say it is okay to do certain things, to scream and swear or whatever you wouldn't ordinarily do. When we're alone we wouldn't get up and swear but if we're with somebody we might because it's expected. The other person does it and it seems normal.

The people who go to the games might even be a little bit different than the people who are at home. They have taken the extra effort to go. They dress in special ways that identify them with their team colors. A "psyching" action takes place. They may have been drinking for a while, which also changes the scope of things.

"A friend of mine from Chicago said it is really an experience to go to a hockey game there," Dr. D. Stanley Eitzen says. "For one thing, the social class is different. These tend to be more working class people than what you would find at a Chicago Bears football game. The women that go to the Blackhawks games are differently dressed. In fact, many of them are called 'hockey whores.' They are not whores but they dress in cheap, garish ways. It is part of the culture that has arisen out of hockey. If people go to the game expecting that people are going to be this way, expecting people to behave in these ways, expecting violent things to occur on the field, they are ready at a psychological level that they wouldn't be at home. At home they turn the clicker on and they haven't gone through all of the kind of levels of preparedness that you would going to a game."

What the fan sees before him on the field or around him in the stands -- fights, verbal aggression, spilled beer and thrown food -- make him tense, angry, ready. That doesn't happen in his living room.

Some people would argue that it's a release of pent-up emotions. But Eitzen refutes that.

"The research actually shows that when you leave these games, no matter whether your team won or lost, your level of aggression is higher than when you entered the stadium," the sociologist says. "It is not like you were released of these pent-up emotions. It actually builds these emotions. I think what is happening, and one of the attractions, is we live, for the most part, in kind of a boring world, routine, hum-drum, day-to-day, and we look forward to these things because they bring excitement to an otherwise unexciting life."

* * *
Football games promote social interaction. NFL Sundays mean celebration, food and good times.

The atmosphere and the energy generated in the middle of a stadium, bar or living room crowded with fans is stimulating. It spills over. There is hardly any way men can sit still or be impartial, whether our team is winning or losing, because of the incessant overload and overcharge of energy that is coming from around us. It's almost physical. We can feel it. If you put electrodes on the entire audience the feedback it would be incredible. They're the ones winning and losing, experiencing the thrill.

Dr. William J. Beausay, in his sport psychology research, found that for adults, the amount of stimulation and projection onto football teams is greater in an enclosed arena than in an open stadium. Fewer brawls break out in an open arena. That suggests one reason hockey fans are notorious: They scrunch together in small arenas, literally on top of each other and the players. Their interaction skyrockets, especially in games where there is a lot of personal body contact.

"There is a factor in hockey called 'continuous process,' " Beausay says. "Football is a 'fragmented process' because you run a play and everybody quits and rests and relaxes, then you run another play. Of course there will be brawls and breakouts between plays, but they are the exception to the rule. However, in games like hockey or auto racing the action is continuous. In soccer it keeps going and the soccer fans are known for their violence. When you go and sit for an hour, enduring the constant pressure of the ball going back and forth without a rest, it builds up a tremendous amount of energy. In the end, if their team loses, the fans destroy the stadium or kill people on the other side. That happens all the time."

Former Chicago Bears offensive tackle Dan Jiggetts recalls leaving Soldier Field after games and seeing fans more frenzied than his teammates. "Some people, that's their outlet for the week. They're satisfied. Other people are jacked up, looking for trouble. But the guys leaving the locker rooms are worn out," he says.




Knowing this, more restrained fans may wonder why stadiums don't increase security to reign in the rowdies.

"There has been the question of what happens when there is obviously the presence of a show of force," Beausay says. "For example, at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, they actually brought horsemen in from the Philadelphia Police Department. The question is, does that antagonize or arouse? We did some research on that and found that the presence of force makes people feel a little more secure but if the officers have helmets on or have horses or officers stand around with a police dog, it will actually antagonize fans."

Somehow the presence of peace officers ties in to the natural anger and hostility we have for our opponent. We see security as part of the opponent and it creates trouble. Security tries to blend in as best a person with a gun can, not wanting to trigger or incite the mindset that has been created all week long in rabid fans who come to conquer, not to be vanquished. Any little thing could trigger or tip us off.

* * *
Stadiums establish another sociological curiosity: for three shining hours, they put all men on the same level. People at a lower social strata in the business world get to rub shoulders with people they wouldn't otherwise meet. (Really rich -- or lucky -- folks in secluded, luxury skyboxes are exempt from this phenomenon.)

"You are relating indirectly to 70,000 other people who are cheering and booing and ooohing and aaahing along with you," Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum says. "Even though you don't even know them you are in some very strange, vague way connecting with them through this common interest."

The stands offer a cross-representation of American culture in most cities, although as ticket prices rise ahead of the rate of inflation, lower-income fans are being squeezed out. The average family of four cannot afford season tickets. One game a season is a special treat as today's outrageous ticket prices and attendant costs keep the wealthy in the stands and the rest of America on the couch.

"When I first became active in the early 1960s, it was very much a blue-collar fan group that was at the games," Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie says. "Within a decade it became sort of an elitist fan group, stylish, and I'm sure industry reinforced that by making sections of seats available and buying booths and so on. Football gained increasingly more status in terms of the attendees."

When we go to the game in person we likely will not know the guy/jerk we sit next to. It could be anyone. But because we probably root for the same gang on the field, we could connect with somebody that we'd otherwise never meet.

Sometimes we find ourselves seated beside the enemy, or deep in enemy territory. Going out of town to cheer your team on foreign turf is akin to wearing a "Kick Me" sign. No book of etiquette governs these forays. Nobody wants to act as your host. Stick to the rules of the jungle: Scorn or be scorn. Kill or be killed.

Sitting next to someone who is cheering for the other team tests men in ways that cliff divers and rock climbers understand. Each word, each gesture begs confrontation, verbally or physically. A man can't be expected to sit idly by while his boys are attacked. It's an opportunity to get out your teasing, bantering, hostile side.

For instance, a Buc fan visiting Joe Robbie Stadium might say this to a Dolphin supporter:

"Piss off, you low-life, blowfish-worshipping boatlift refugee!"

To which the Dolphin might answer:

"Loser!"

At which point the Buc fan would shrug, buy another beer and pout about being so effectively dissed with a single word.

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!