I'm a Big Fan

Yes, what is a fan? There are so many definitions depending on the myriad opinions kicking around. Let's start with the technical one. It’s short for fanatic: (n.) a person with extreme enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion, politics, etc. After that, the definition becomes subjective in relation to how we choose to throw the term around. The word “fan” is cropping up a lot on my little Facebook page for a couple of big reasons. Allow me to be brutally obvious and say them YET another mind-numbing time, because we just haven’t heard enough on these two topics! First, Whitney. Kaboom, sorry, just set off the overkill bomb. Please don’t stop reading! I’ll try to say something 30,000 people haven’t already said. I said try. Second, (breathe in, breathe out, remember that all your friends will still love you) a certain two nearby universities locked into an epic battle, MU vs. KU (cue the ESPN graphic animation of two helmets bumping then crashing together with dramatic pre-game music). So let’s apply a few considerations of what being a “fan” is in regard to these two examples.

We start with dear departed Whitney. Plenty of undeniable facts here. She hit the scene with that super powerhouse voice and owned the pop charts for years on end. Whether you were a fan or not, you knew exactly who she was and what she did. All this made her a sought after celebrity, and in came the gossip mags. When you hit it that big, everyone wants to know everything, and there is much money to be made by dumping famous people into the gossip mill. And don’t lie, we all want the dirt. As much as we know we should rise above it, we still want to see that even the talented, famous, rich people have as many (or more) problems than we do. In a sick way it makes us feel better that we’re not them. Although we still secretly wish we could live that life. So the ultimate golden voiced sweet girl meets the ultimate bad boy at the time, Mr. My Prerogative himself, Bobby Brown (now is the moment when you imagine that sound bite of Whit yelling “Bobbeh!”). Somewhere in there, drugs started to get the best of her. We all have our weaknesses, no matter how strong we may be in other parts of our lives. It all comes down to how we handle and/or conquer those weaknesses. Sometimes it gets the best of us, and can even kill us. Now don’t go blaming everyone else, Whit had her own decisions to make, regardless of what kind of pressures and paparazzi were there to blow it all up and make her life more difficult. So as her star began to fade, the jokes started up. While she was alive, everyone laughed along. And now that she’s gone, some folks (though not all) stopped laughing.

Then it started. Suddenly, at least a dozen or so of your friends starting raving on and on about how they were HUGE Whitney fans, when you KNOW you had NEVER heard them even say her name once until now. Do you remember the same thing happening with Michael Jackson? We loved him for a few years, then hated him and joked about him, then he died and suddenly everyone was his biggest fan again. It’s truly sad that their deaths served as a reminder of the good parts of their lives. We couldn’t seem to keep appreciating it while they were alive. Both stars were working on comebacks, too. Sadly, their deaths became their ultimate “comebacks”. Much in the same fashion as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain and any other dead famous person, their aura in death manages to outsell anything that happened while they were alive, and the attention they got while alive was considerable to start with. It just helped create the myth. And we made them into angels, after so ingloriously trashing them up until their times of death.

One of my favorite Hunter S. Thompson articles that Rolling Stone printed was about Nixon right after he died. It was titled, “He Was a Crook” and the subject line directly below it said, “The death of Richard Nixon: notes on the passing of an American monster.... He was a liar and a quitter, and he should have been buried at sea.... But he was, after all, the president.” (In standard Dr. Gonzo fashion, it is absolutely worth the read at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/8699/). Thompson didn’t turn all rosy like most who eulogize, but stayed true to his opinion of the man, while at least paying respect to the fact that it was the end of a former president’s life. So this is me calling for honesty. If you loved the music of Whitney and Michael, go ahead and tell the world, but step up and say you were a closet fan until they died and it was socially okay to say you’re a fan again. Although I have to say I did have one or two friends who were unabashed and very open about being fans of both artists. Stand by your fandom, people. Stop being afraid what others think. Do you realize how many people laugh at my love of Abba? Don’t know, don’t care anymore.

Next…(bom, bom, bom)…SPORTS FANS! Again, what makes a fan? I have seen countless, tireless, relentless arguments about this on Our Holy Facebook. What should be the deciding factors on which team you choose to cheer on? Are you only allowed to cheer for one team? Are you only allowed to cheer for a school that you attended? Should it have anything to do with where you live, where you grew up, who your parents told you to like, the cool logos and uniforms? Who’s a true blue fan, who’s a fair weathered fan? AAAARGH! TOO MANY IFS!

I’ll start by sharing my story and work my way out. I was born in Kansas City, 4 weeks and 6 days before they won their one and only big show, Super Bowl IV. Number 16 Lenny Dawson led the boys in red on to defeat the Minnesota Vikings, poor guys in purple had a heck of a time back then, making it to the show but never quite finishing it all off. Those two sentences should tell you a great deal about what kind of fan I am. First, the city of my birth is close to my heart, to which I attach “my” team. Then I spent the next 18 years of my life about 25 minutes away from Arrowhead Stadium. Again, proximity. Plus, I love the history and pop culture that the NFL holds. There are so many great stories from years past, all told in John Facenda’s dramatic , powerful NFL Films voice. (You can hear it in your head right now, can’t you?) So why am I not yapping on and on about The Royals? The Kings? The Comets? Heck, The Blues? Because football was my thing. In my opinion, it was the most fun to watch. And Dad watched more football than any other sport. So, opinion. And family influence. Now make no mistake, I LIKED all those other KC teams, but I LOVED the Chiefs, still do. Even when they lose, even when they win, even when they get to the AFC Championship with Joe freakin' Montana and Marcus freakin' Allen only to lose to…The Bills ☹. (I could get into how KC didn’t take Len Dawson’s number 16 out of retirement for Joe Cool, but eh, I’d never heard of Frank Tripucka either so…number 18 is all yours Peyton!) I even stuck with the Chiefs during the Blackledge years. (And so did my sister, she still can’t shut up about the time Gary Spani WINKED at her! EEEEE!) So, true blue…well, red I mean. I still sing “and the home of the…CHIEFS” at the end of the national anthem wherever I am, even if I just say it into the ear of the friend next to me and smile.

Now, I have friends who are fans of the Raiders, the Broncos, the Cowboys, the Patriots, and many of them live here in Missouri with me. Everyone has a story behind why they back those teams, such as, that’s where they were born, where they grew up, the team their parents liked…sound familiar? They moved but didn’t change loyalty. I think I’d be the same way. Although there is one friend who chose his team because he LOVED the team’s colors and uniforms when he saw them on TV in his childhood years. And who’s to say he can’t? Before the internet, it was television that opened up our worlds. Suddenly we could dream in Technicolor of all the places we’d like to go, things we’d like to see, teams we’d prefer to root for. And what’s to say a person can’t pick their team that way? It’s unexpected, unusual, and some would argue rather flippant, but as long as that’s the team they have a PASSION for, for whatever reason, who are we to stop them?

But what about college teams? Again, let’s start with me and work our way out. Until I was 18, there was no chosen team in my house. Dad preferred NFL to NCAA any day, so not much college game watching of any sport in my home. Neither parent was an alumnus of any college, so there was no real “home team” for me, at least in the collegiate sphere. Then I chose Northwest Missouri State University. Go Bearcats! Go Green! Finally, I had a college home…with a truly dreadful football record ☹. So we in the Bearcat Marching Band made our own fun, with one of our favorite cheers, “Up The Middle!” since that seemed to be the play our coach called. Every. Damn. Time. Of course years later, they built themselves into a Division II powerhouse with some undefeated streaks and championships, and we were all happy to stay on the bandwagon. Somewhere in there I made a discovery. (Cue dramatic music) Big 8 Teams! Here I was living smack in the center of this great conference filled with great stories and rivalries and mascots and marching bands! Time to go to some BIG games! My husband at the time was a die-hard Iowa State fan of every sport, and so off to Big 8 football games we went. I fell in love with everything about the live game experience, the game, the sounds, the smells and tastes of the food, the cool in the wind, the sun in the sky, the colors, the bands, the cheerleaders and the fans. I can still smell the Runza stands in Nebraska, see Truman being silly in a sea of MU gold and black, listen to Iowa State’s band blow everyone’s hair back, you get the idea. We made it to five different Big 8 stadiums over the years, missing only Colorado, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State, but we at least got to see them as visiting teams, fans, cheerleaders and bands.

Then came the Big 12. Flippin' Texas. Yeah, I get it, it would help keep the conference afloat, bring in fresh money, lots more national TV coverage, I know, I know. But that was the death of it for me. I’ve been mourning the loss of the Big 8 ever since and missing it badly. These days, all the old Big 8 teams are jumping ship. Here we go. Bumpy ride. This is where fans get pissed. All the rivalries, all the history, everything seems torn apart. Every time a team leaves, I’m pretty bored. It all died for me back when the Big 8 became the Big 12 and now whatever Big fill in the number it’s going to become. So now we leave the place for the Okies and Texans to clean up and turn out the light, and Kansas is understandably pissed. I didn’t want anyone to leave. I also didn’t want Texas to come in. So I’m a grouch who doesn’t want anything to change. Personally, I’d love to see the old Big 8 teams just start the old conference back up again. I know, them’s fightin’ words, enough to make everyone on every side mad, Yay Big 12! Yay SEC! I just want to keep my teams around, playing each other. No harm in that. But it’s not my choice, is it?

So some would call me a fair-weathered fan, just because I don’t hate on the rivals, the villains I’m supposed to spit on. Don’t care. It’s my passion, and I’ll show it how I want. Some would say I grew up just a couple of miles closer to Lawrence, Kansas than Columbia, Missouri, so I should be a KU fan. I prefer Mizzou. Some people choose on proximity, some on which side of the state line they’re on, some by the school they went to. None of that really matters. What matters is the PASSION!

So you know what? LOVE your teams! LOVE your famous people! Whatever you are a fan of, for whatever reason, STAND UP AND CHEER! And don’t let anyone else tell you that you can’t! Boo-ya!