You know who you are. You are out there aimlessly watching a game, looking for another bandwagon to hitch on to.
You're passively following a hot team, waiting for the next one to come along. You are wearing your Marshall Faulk jersey, your Yankees hat and your Laker shorts.
You are the sports fan I hate.
You are the New Yorker who roots for the Yankees and the Mets. You root for the Jets and the Giants. And, now that your Knicks have bit it, you suddenly root for the team across the river — the New Jersey Nets.
You are that guy who spits out a stat he saw on SportsCenter a half hour ago, even though you really have no clue what you're talking about.
You are the empty seat that is suddenly filled when "your team" starts winning.
You are the one who is afraid to go on enemy ground wearing team colors.
You are the whipped guy sitting one row down, on your cell phone, telling the wife what a great time you and the kids are having. You are shouting into the mouthpiece and repeating this at least five or six times, all at crucial points of the game, before leaving early because she said the kids needed to come home.
You are the guy who always leaves early to "beat traffic."
You are the guy in the suit, eating sushi and not paying attention to the game, even though you are two rows off the field, court or ice.
You are the guy in the luxury box who is still behind the glass with two minutes left in a close game.
You are the idiot who talks about a title when your team is five games out of the playoff picture with a month left in the season.
You are the jerk who calls every 6-foot-6 shooting guard with athleticism and a jump shot the "Next Michael Jordan."
You are the Yankee fan in Toledo, the Laker fan in Baltimore and the Miami Hurricane fan in Milwaukee.
You are the guy who wears a Ricky Williams jersey to a Cowboy-Redskin game.
You are the bozo who passes himself off as expert, saying five or six incoming freshmen will start, when the most you've seen of any of them is their headshot on a Web site.
You are the one who constantly whines like a 12-year-old who got his bike stolen about your team being "underrated" and getting "no respect." And, when the games are actually being played, you compound that flaw by getting all hot-and-bothered, saying your team is getting "screwed" on every call.
You talk National Championship after your team rolls over Praire View A & M, The Citadel and Capital. You talk World Championship after your team beats the Devil Rays, Tigers and Royals.
You are the guy who calls the local sports radio station and suggests the trade that will never happen – "Uh, yeah, I think we should trade those three guys down in Sarasota for Roger Clemens."
You are the 18-year-old who is pretending to be drunk at a game, and thinks he's impressing people (there is nothing wrong, by the way, with being the guy who actually is drunk).
You are the girlfriend who tries to get her boyfriend to leave a playoff game after a half hour there. And you are also the boyfriend who allows himself to be castrated by giving in.
You are the redneck fan who is more life-and-death about a college team, playing for a school you never attended, than any student or alumnus. You are the same guy who swears the sport in question is not played at the same level beyond the state line, which, coincidentally, is a border you have never crossed.
You are the kid who wore the Bulls jacket in middle school, only to be all grown up with a closet full of Laker apparel now.
You are the father at the high school game, telling everyone who will listen that his 5-foot-7 son is going to be a linebacker at Syracuse, when all he got from them is a brochure for summer football camp.
You are the cheerleader who starts the "We're No. 1" chant when your team is losing 42-21, possibly the worst thing a high school football player ever has to listen to.
You are what is wrong with going to a game.
And, yet, you are everywhere. A little bit of you has infected all of us at one time or another.
People who don't know sports don't bother me at a game, as long as they're trying to understand what's going on. But then you have those people who like to play make believe, living in a dream world of fake knowledge.
To those people — stop pretending to be a fan. And don't come back until you do.
Albert Breer is a senior in journalism from Sudbury, Mass. He can reached by email at Breer.1@osu.edu.
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