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Booing a Bad Play is Okay
Blake Marshall
As an athlete, I compete for a variety of reasons. I compete because I am competitive in nature. I compete because winning is exhilarating, but I also compete because I like giving the fans a show. I feed off the energy of a crowd. I live for the cheers. But at the same time, I dread playing poorly and disappointing fans. Personally, I have never performed so poorly that I’ve been booed, but if I ever did, I would expect the fans to let me know their displeasure.
Booing is a natural response when a fan sees bad play on the field. While booing is generally reserved for opposing teams, there are those rare occasions where your own fan base will boo you. This is perfectly acceptable for a number of reasons. The reasons are different for each fan, and some fans may argue that you should always root for the home team, but here are my reasons that booing your home team is okay.
Fans invest time. This may not seem like a big deal, especially to athletes. We understand that you spend a lot of time in training, traveling, school and game day, but fans invest a lot of time as well. We wake up early to tailgate on game day. We track your publicity in the newspaper, on the radio, national and local news, and on the internet. We stand in the freezing cold, the sweltering heat and all types of weather in between to watch you perform. If I, as a fan, am willing to invest that kind of time and energy, you better believe that I will let you know if you are performing below expectations or that you have given up.
Fans invest money. As the rivalry game approached, I contemplated selling my tickets. Not that I didn’t want to go to the game and watch the Utes beat the team down south, but I watched as prices crept up, week by week, until they skyrocketed to $400-500 per TICKET. I have two tickets, and if I sold them both, I could almost eat for the rest of the semester.
My point is, fans hold their teams in such high regard that they are willing to put themselves through temporary financial hardship in order to support their team. As I am typing, I am looking at my closet and at least 12 pieces of clothing have the Drum and Feather or the Block U on them. Most of those pieces were bought at The Red Zone, which helps support Utah Athletics. I have Dish Network because I need the Pac 12 Network just in case the game is not on ESPN or Fox.
So yes, when the decision was made in the BYU game to not go for it on fourth and inches and play to win instead of play not to lose, the emotional fan in me was mad, and I may have booed the decision. If they had rolled over and died against USC (thank heavens they didn’t) I probably would have booed.
Sports are an escape from regular life. When school, my own athletic performance, my responsibilities as a father and husband, or work get me down I flock to the game for a pick-up. Is this unfair to the athletes? Maybe. But I invest my time, energy, money and emotion into these teams. Sure, win or lose, the world will keep spinning, but if I know as a fan and as a fellow athlete, that my team could have put more effort in and didn’t, I will boo. I will boo as hard and as loud as I would if I were cheering for a winning team.
To be clear, I do not condone booing for any old thing. Just cause must always be considered when electing to give the boo. A loss is not always a booing offense. Lack of effort, lack of coaching and dumb decisions are worth booing. Choose to boo, but choose wisely.
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Fans Should Show Support
Jared Walch
No matter who we are or what we do, sports seem to have the power to bring us all together; people from all kinds of backgrounds. When we cheer for our teams, we are united as one in our belief that our team is the best. It is the cheers and adulation from the fans that often give athletes the energy and the drive to succeed. After all, what they do is for us more than anything. Without the fans, sports would mean nothing.
All of that energy that we give — the yelling and screaming, the jumping up and down, the taunting of the other team — is a great thing. Because we get so fully invested, our players make the crucial plays they need to win. The right calls are made.
But on occasion, the plays called or made don’t deliver like we want them to. Our passion and energy boil over and some of us have a tendency to boo our teams. That isn’t right.
The athletes go out and give 100 percent every single game. They spend countless hours training, practicing, watching film and otherwise preparing for game day. They live and die on the field, or the court, or wherever else. In the end, what they do is for the fans.
So it isn’t right to boo the team. We sometimes tend to think of our sports heroes as larger than life. We think of them as being “more than [men] but less than gods, like Hercules.” (A personal note, the Sandlot is one of the greatest sports films of all time, and I couldn’t help but to add a quote.)
It’s not right to boo our teams for a few reasons. It doesn’t make the team any better and cheering for the team can undoubtedly give them the energy they need, and it can make them raise their game to a higher level. Staying positive helps the team stay positive. Staying positive and cheering for our athletes makes them happier and more carefree, and it makes the margin of error less. Athletes play better when they are happier, and it is nearly impossible to do so when their fans aren’t happy with the way they are playing.
Booing can actually make the team play worse. The athletes on the field understand what is happening during the game. They realize when they aren’t playing up to standards. They understand the challenges against them. When they are trailing a team or are playing poorly, they know what’s going on. Booing them only makes them dwell on what has gone wrong rather than what has gone right. So much of sports is mental, and when that edge is lost, it is hard to get back.
We need to remember that above all, sports are just something we enjoy for fun. The people playing are doing so for our entertainment and joy, but they are human. Quite often, they are just kids, still learning and growing. They make mistakes. Sometimes they drop a catch or miss a receiver. They turn the ball over. It happens.
That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be passionate and get fully invested in our sports — by all means we should. But we shouldn’t be fair-weather fans either. We should stick with our team through thick and thin. Sure, sometimes losses and bad plays are frustrating. But in the bigger scheme of things, it is better to cheer on our team all the time, instead of just when times are easy.
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