What is a fan?

“According to Webster’s dictionary (1976) those who are “an enthusiastic devotee of a sport or diversion, usually as a spectator rather than a participant” are called fans as opposed to those who “exhibit excessive enthusiasm and intense uncritical devotion” are called fanatics.”

This might explain a lot, if in looking at those two, I am not a fan but I would have to classify myself as a fanatic. A term that carries a stigma with it in today’s culture.

“Why is it that the day after a “big win” everyone pulls out their old sweatshirts and tee shirts, that haven’t been worn since the team last won a game two years ago, and proudly displays their school colors or team logos? Or right after a team wins a championship the sales of their products sky rocket until another team wins the next year? This phenomena has been labeled by social psychologists as BIRGing and CORFing. BIRGing is an arconym for Basking in Reflected Glory and CORFing means Cutting Off Reflected Failure.

… The different levels of commitment that a fan might have towards a team dictate the degree to which he or she can distance him or herself from that team when failure occurs. If a fan is strongly allied, the social identity theory states that it will be hard for them to distance themselves, and therefore, to not threaten their self esteem, the fans must attribute the loss to external cues of the situation but not the team itself. If a person is not so closely linked they then engage in the phenomena of CORFing, which means cutting off reflected failure, done by distancing themselves as far as possible from the losing team.

…Fans CORF in a variety of different ways. For example one might change the language they use to describe the game after a defeat or after a win. For example a Knicks basketball fan might not even know the psychological defenses he or she is using when they say, “We won” when the Knicks won and “They lost” or “the Knicks lost” when the team suffered a defeat. Fans might also distance themselves from the team by not wearing any team affiliated clothing after a loss and not supporting the team until they win again. But as soon as the team is victorious, the individual will waste no time in associating with the team once again. Another way that fans can CORF is by “blasting”. Blasting is a form of indirect self enhancement used when when self esteem is threatened.”

I hope this brings a little light to the discussion on why I find those who are too critical to be just as annoying as they find me. I believe there is a fine line between honestly assigning blame where it is due and “blasting”, which is what I believe, is done by many.

Now to show I am not a total lost cause, I will explain where I believe the blame for RSL’s current situation belongs, and trust me there is plenty to go around:

RSL Ownership and Senior Management- Wow talk about doing just about everything wrong that can be done wrong, this group has broken records and relationships like few others in sports history. Apart from them establishing RSL and their efforts to bring incredible supplemental matches to the MLS season, there is little this group has done right. They have created a public relations nightmare out of getting a portion of funding from the local government (I understand why they would want to, it is done in most arena/stadium deals around the nation), but it was handled very poorly. This comes from getting in the middle of a battle between Rocky/Peter/Jon, which really is a battle between the City/County/State over who should decide what is best for the citizens, but most often is done with personal agendas taking top priority. They have also blown it as far as the GM and coach positions within the organization. I really like Steve P. but he was put into a position that he was not prepared for, and he struggled, he should have been the Asst. GM (with a focus on marketing and PR). John Ellinger, knows soccer and no one should underestimate his potential value, but he was not the best choice for a new franchise to be the head coach, he simply did not know how to build a team from professional players and how to adjust team tactics during the match. The solution to this issue will be for RSL to find a strong, knowledgeable GM for the club, someone who has been involved in running a soccer team in a league somewhere in the world outside of MLS. I think John Ellinger should be put in charge of the daily operations of the RSL/RM academy, I believe he could do well in this environment; he did well at the youth academy level.

Front Office Staff- OK, now I like a lot of the individuals in the front office but as an organization, they are lacking the skills and knowledge to run a world class organization. Many of the positions in the front office have been filled by a group of people who wonder around the MLS, performing various positions from team to team, they are my version of a travelling circus. It may appear entertaining for a while, but they lack depth or real abilities, they get by with some flash and diversions from real issues. Then there is the local group, most of whom are very qualified but often ignored by the management (who feel they know best), but many of them struggle to understand that RSL is not a church organization and sports fans often do not comply to the local religious standards. Hint, sports are never PG, in the best case they are PG-13, but most often they push the ratings system to “R” and trying to stifle that will only lead to failure and upset customers on both sides. This is a group who instead of leveraging last years RM match into a powerful marketing and retail opportunity, had to discount tickets at the last minute to sell out the event. Did they learn from this, nope they have failed horribly this year to leverage the potential of Everton and Boca Jrs. coming to town. No souvenirs, no t-shirts, nothing and it is less than 48 hours from the match. Information about the event has been slow to get to the public, there has been little hype created for these matches. The fact that tickets are still available in every price range, speaks volumes about their inability to do their jobs. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars have been left on the table because our FO can not do their jobs? That directly affects our ability to sign players, it also impacts fans in the stands and the image of the team in the local and national press.

Players – You can toss a lot of blame around to others but to be honest, most of the responsibility for the poor performance this season has to be given to the players on the field. We have seen players simply quit, throw temper tantrums, been too interested in getting laid, or simply under perform. We all have seen it; I don’t need to list names, everyone already knows. It seems amazing to me that guys who are getting paid to play a game, to do what they love, could do anything less than give 100 percent all the time. I understand that type of behavior from those of us who work in the daily grind, punch a clock, or are stuck in going nowhere career, but my god, how many of us would jump at the chance to be a professional soccer player if we had the talent and ability to do so? This is the saddest part of the season for me, I can handle bad owners (hell the Yankees have it much worse than we do), I can handle an office filled with lackeys and incompetence, I can even handle a coach that is in over his head. I can not understand what is going on with our players.

Coach Kreis- How many of us can say that in under 90 days on the job, had complete understanding of the job, and were as good as those who had performed the job for years? I think Jason can be a great coach in MLS, for a couple of reasons: He understand how MLS’s version of soccer is played, and he knows that if you work hard and give 100 percent that you can be successful, I would like for him to have had a season of being an assistant coach to begin to understand how the mechanics of the league works. Now, do I wish that the organization would have looked for a world class coach, sure, even more so since they did not have a person to fill the GM role. But honestly does anyone think Rafi, or Eriksson, or Alan Shearer, were coming to RSL? He has shown that he is willing to pull the trigger on benching players (Forko, Adu, Williams, Stewart), or trading start (Cunny, Klein, Medhi), in an effort to make the team better. I will give him a few more months before I call for his head on a platter, but expectations are high and he has a lot of work to do.

OFF MY SOAPBOX