Fandom

The quarterback of my favorite football team was suspended six games the other day. Suspended 3/8 of a season. Suspended, essentially, for being a disrespectful, slightly sociopathic asshole.
You could argue all you want over whether this punishment was just (and, at my instigation, my friends and I have been doing just that the last couple days), but I'm not here to do that.
I'm more interested now in what it means to be a fan of a team. Jerry Seinfeld had a joke where he said that rooting for sports teams is like rooting for laundry. Of course he's got a good point. Another team's villain could tomorrow very easily become your team's hero, and your opinion of him would change accordingly. I've heard many people hope for scandalous events to befall the star player of a rival team, not so much so that the player would be distracted and then perhaps fail, but to give the fan a more tangible reason to dislike him. The cliche of a player who is hated by seemingly everyone except fans of his own team is well-known.
I think a lot of this is made possible by the simple fact that football is a team sport, and fans can have loyalty not just to a specific player or a specific team, but to a more inanimate franchise, which is of course usually tied to the fan's hometown.
A lot of Pittsburgh fans have been upset in the last few years because the team's offense has been skewed toward passing. This is because Pittsburgh has a history of being a rushing team, and its fans identify not just with say the 2008 version of the team, but with the whole history of the franchise. It doesn't matter to them that their line can't run-block, or that their top running back is no good, or that the personnel dictates passing to be a good idea, because the team they root for usually runs the ball.
Even though I think this way of thinking is completely stupid, I do have sympathy with the idea. If you don't have something tangible in your team's identity to latch onto, then you really are basically just rooting for laundry.
Back to the main point, though--the suspended quarterback (who'll be referred to as as "Fathead" henceforth).
A Pittsburgh fan such as myself has two recent championship seasons, and Fathead was instrumental to both. Thus, for the most part, Fathead is/was rather beloved by the team's fans. No surprise there. As a player, he has his flaws, but they have almost always been overcome. As a person, he also has his flaws, but they have been kept innocuous enough so as to disregard. Not anymore. In light of his recent sexual assault accusation, lots of negatives stories have filtered out about the man, so much so that even though man of these are unfounded anonymous rumors and he's never been officially charged with anything, the breadth and the consistency of them paints a pretty clear picture of an genuine asshole (if not a criminal). So much of an asshole, in fact, that unless I'm mistaken, he's the first athlete to be suspended for substantial length without charge or conviction, and without doing anything to specifically harm his team, just sorta to besmirch the league itself.(1) So, we're talking about a real prick.
How am I supposed to feel about the prospect of rooting for this man? Should I support his return, because he wears the right color laundry? Should I support him because of the good experiences he provided me with during those two championship seasons? Should I support him because I've been supporting him for 6-7 years now? Should I hate him because he got suspended and therefore hurt the team? Or should I jeer him because he's an asshole? Does it make me a hypocrite, or worse, if I don't?
I think it's those last two questions that are the most interesting. Relating only to personal judgment and not the games themselves, is there really an arbitrary line over which an athlete can pass to cause a fan base to turn on him? Of there must be, but for cases which don't include a criminal conviction, it's hard to define. If a player were exposed as a blatant racist,(2) would that do it? What if a hidden camera followed him around and found out that he never recycled, always left his lights and AC on, and constantly spit on sidwalks? What if he never reciprocated with his friends and bought a round? What if he privately sold a car or something else expensive that he knew to be a lemon? What if all of the above?
Football is intrinsically a team sport. It isn't like baseball, where you can boo the first baseman who abused his pregnant wife, while still cheering for everyone else. If you boo the quarterback during a game, you're essentially booing the whole offense. (I suppose you could do the fantasy-football thing and hope for him to have a terrible game while the team still wins.)
Ultimately, none of this matters, of course. The team will succeed or fail on their own; your support will mean almost nothing. Most of the players are mature individuals who will handle this bit of sociological justice effectively. I think as a fan, the best thing for me is to let the players sort it out. If they come to the defense of the Fathead and want to move forward as a complete unit, then who am I argue.(3) Presumably, the aspirations of the players are the same as me: to win. If you are rooting for a team for a reason other than to hope for it to win, then you're really wasting your time. If it's only about the pageantry, don't pick a side. If it's mostly about feeling good morally and ethically, don't get invested in sports. Sports at its best is a perfect capitalist structure, a perfect meritocracy. Don't be a socialist when it comes to being a fan. Most importantly, don't delude yourself into thinking you care about much of anything other than winning.

(Now, if you'd like to hear my current, personal opinion on the Fathead matter: I'm willing to forgive and to root him to help my team win, but that's only because I don't really believe that he "raped" that girl. If I did, then this would be more of a black-and-white case, and I'd want the team to get rid of him, pronto.)


1. The best comparison I can think of is Milton Bradley, the baseball player, or Terrel Owens, both of whom were suspended just for being assholes. In their cases, though, their behavior was directly disruptive to their teams, and in fact it was their teams that did the suspending, not the league. Fathead's case is closer to a steroid suspension really, because it incites the league to act and to punish to maintain a show of decorum and justice for the public. But then there is still the issue of steroids being an offense against the integrity of the game, while Fathead's actions were just an offense against human judgment.
2. John Rocker is a perfect example here. I can't remember exactly, maybe a Braves fan can refresh me. I know they were ultimately glad to see him go.