Dan's View On The World

« An Exciting New Career As A Male Stripper? | Main | Diet Disbelief »

October 27, 2004

The 10 Worst Bandwagon Teams In Sports History

It's that time of the year when the same, old bandwagon fans tend to creep out of the woodwork and piss people off to no end. The baseball playoffs are the biggest time of the year for bandwagon fandom, since the same four or five teams tend to be favored every year. Also, the NFL season is beginning to sort itself out, so all of the bandwagon Cowboys, Packers and Raiders fans know whether to don their gear or go into "stealth mode." In commemoration of this annual disgrace, I've assembled for your consideration and deliberation my list of the Top 10 Worst Bandwagon Teams In Sports History:

Colorado Avalanche
Hockey's "feel good" team of the 2000/01 season. The 'Lanche went around the league collecting sob stories. Ray Bourque never won a title in Boston? People don't respect Patrick Roy in Montreal any more? Come to Colorado and be part of the Cinderella story! Who cares that nobody ever gave a rat's ass about the Quebec Nordiques. Let's all get together and have a giant bandwagon party!

Chicago Bears
The on-field defensive juggernaut of the 1986 Chicago Bears was matched only by their off-the-field marketing offensive. Who can forget the Super Bowl Shuffle? Millions of bandwagon Bears fans spent January of 1987 stepping awkwardly to the most embarrassing sports fad since The Wave. Combine that with thousands of office comedians aping Saturday Night Live's Bill Swerski's Super Fans bit, and you practically had bandwagon culture. In a twist of irony, Super Fans was probably the most accurate parody in the history of comedy.

Chicago Bulls
Everybody loves a winner, so it stands to reason that the team that won three consecutive titles twice in the same decade will build a massive bandwagon following. One thing that makes the Bulls stand out is the extent of their media bandwagon. The election of Scotty Pippen to the NBA's "50 Greatest Players" team was fan boy-ism of the highest caliber, and surgeons remain uncertain as to whether they will ever be able to remove Ahmad Rashad's lips from Michael Jordan's ass. Most bandwagon Bulls fans followed Phil Jackson to the Lakers without ever missing a beat.

Oakland Los Angeles Oakland Raiders
Ever since the explosion of west coast rap music in the late 1980's, Raider gear has been the centerpiece of the "ghetto chic" look. As is the case with all things hip-hop, pretty soon white, suburban teenagers across the land were sporting Raider gear. Real Raider fans wear Darth Vader helmets and have lengthy criminal records. Everyone else is a bandwagon poser.

North Carolina Tarheels
Dean Smith's dynasty at North Carolina won numerous admirers and innumerable bandwagon fans for the Tarheel basketball program. A veritable "Duke without the grades," UNC was a perennial tournament favorite for more than a decade. Dozens of players made the leap to the NBA, most without graduating, and one putting up distinguished career numbers for another famous bandwagon team.

Green Bay Packers
The Packers are the NFL's answer to velvet Elvis. The team is chock full of rags-to-riches success stories, blue-collar work ethics and old-fashioned family values. At least until you look beyond the pre-game fluff pieces and get to the hall of fame quarterback's drug problems, the star tight end's adventures with underage baby sitters and the present that their first round draft pick left in a young coed's dorm room closet. Riding the Packer bandwagon has the side benefit of being a good excuse to be a fat, drunken slob.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish
No school in college sports inspires the sort of shameless bandwagoneering as Notre Dame. Whether they're Irish or Catholic or just wish they were, people feel an inexplicable connection that leads to irrational acts such as rooting for Rick Mirer to win the Heisman Trophy. NBC jumped on the bandwagon in 1991 and signed an exclusive deal to televise Notre Dame home football games. After considering the millions of dollars lost on the deal, NBC recently extended it through 2010 and announced their plans to "make it all up on volume."

New York Yankees
Little more needs to be said about a team whose vainglorious owner and fat payroll have led their fans to expect nothing short of a World Series title each and every season. With their own cable television network and massive marketing machine, the Bronx Bombers have unprecedented marketing reach to fan-boys and fan-girls the world over. Fun fact: The Yankees are the professional sports team most widely associated with Americans by people in other countries. Related fun fact: Most people in other countries hate Americans.

Boston Red Sox
Just as yin needs yang, every great sports bandwagon requires a competing bandwagon to maintain balance in the universe of lame sports fans. Every fall, the Red Sox bandwagon fills with baseball pseudo-fans who don't have a real reason to like the Red Sox any more than they have a real reason to hate the Yankees. Travel around the country and you'll find Sox hats adorning the heads of people who think of Boston as a freezing, crowded cesspool full of tree-huggers and Kennedys. In fact, if you could invent a way for people to travel to Fenway Park and back without ever having to set foot in the rest of New England, you could call the company "Bandwagon Tours" and make a fortune.

Dallas Cowboys
"America's Team" leads the NFL in all-time bandwagon fandom. Hoards of faux-Texans who "bled blue" for Staubach, White, Dorsett, Troy, Emmitt and Michael "The Coke Machine" Irvin probably can't even spell "Pelleur" or "Hogeboom." From their ubiquitous star to their Barbie-doll cheerleaders, the Cowboys were as much a fashion statement as a football team throughout the late 70's and early 90's. The return of Bill Parcells to coaching has reinvigorated the bandwagon, but there should be ample space available if the team fails to finish better than 8-8.

Posted by Dan at October 27, 2004 04:14 PM

Comments

Post a comment