People that love sports follow their team in various ways, and some may just follow a sport rather than following an individual team. You have several types of fans, loyal, die hard, and fair weather just to name a few, and each fans purpose is different as to how they follow their team. The New York Jets received a lot of media attention in the off season, and it continues at the start of the season. The media got on the Jets bandwagon because of their playoff run to the AFC Title game last season, and the attention increased when the Jets were selected for HBO’s Hard Knocks.
The Jets came into their week one matchup with the Ravens favored by three points, and lost a one point game 10 – 9. The Jets offense only managed six first downs, and looked incapable of mounting anything significant the entire night. After the Jets lost the game chaos broke out as all the bandwagon fans started to change their allegiance. Comments like “I am throwing away all of my Jets stuff and not watching this team anymore.” Were littered over internet message boards, and echoed in the media. In just 60 minutes of football the Jets had gone from media darlings to the team that is most likely to fail this year.
While the Jets defense played fantastic, the offense was the source of much of the criticism, especially quarterback Mark Sanchez. Sanchez had a pedestrian game playing it too conservative, and was the victim of over coaching. The Jets coaching staff beat into his head all off season he has to come down off of the 20+ interceptions he threw last season. The truth of the fact is that people are coming down hard on Sanchez like he is a Pro Bowl quarterback who had a bad game. The Jets offense was average last year, and no one ever said they were going to be juggernauts. So the “let down” some fans are displaying is odd, the Jets had the ball with 1:40 left in the game only needing a field goal to win.
On top of that for those who are coming down on the Jets offense, the Minnesota Vikings and Atlanta Falcons only scored nine points, The 49ers only scored six points, and Matt Cassel on the same night Sanchez had his bad game only threw for 68 yards. I believe it would be fair to say that Brett Favre and Matt Ryan are considered better quarterbacks than Mark Sanchez, so why is no one beating them up or jumping off the bandwagon? Alex Smith and Matt Cassel have several years more experience than Sanchez, and I don’t her near the same outrage and consternation for their performances.
People point to the fact that Jets were “talking trash”, give me a break. People forget football is entertainment, and as one of my female friends put it, “a soap opera for men based on sports.” All the Jets trash talking is purely for entertainment to hype the game, and it served it’s purpose. Everyone tuned in on Monday night, and when the Jets lost everyone was still talking about the game days later. Killing Mark Sanchez as if he was a proven commodity at quarterback, the Jets bandwagon is empty and they are still talking trash as confident as ever.
If players went around worrying about what fair weather or bandwagon fans thought they would never get anything done, these fans change allegiances almost on a weekly basis. So there is no satisfying these types of fans who do not realize football at the end is only entertainment, they get so caught up in cheering for the winner or hyped team they never get to really enjoy the sport for what it is. I do not even think you can call these individuals fans they do not know the history of the team, or how the team even got to the current point they are at. All these fans care about is being there when the team wins so they can say they were a part of it from the beginning. These fans are ruining sports as owner and corporations try to get their money into the stadiums.
