January 23, 2019: Fan Index

I was thinking… I know scary… about my overall happiness… as a Chicago sports fan.  In my lifetime, I’ve experienced the highest of highs for all of my teams.  Just saying that right there, puts me ahead of a ton of sports fans out there.  There may be some folks in some cities who have not experienced that for any of their teams.  Then I think about the fact that just because you’re living in a city, doesn’t mean you support all of the teams playing there.  I would say that’s foreign to me, but what about the Sox?  The Sox winning their title in 2005 did not bring me any personal happiness; they do play in my city.  Yet, I do have one team in each major sport, and that one team resides in my city.  But there are some folks who may only like 1 of the 4 teams let’s say.  Maybe there are some folks who don’t even follow or care about the other sports.  But for the people that do like all sports, and their teams are not all from their cities, how the heck did that happen?  Were you bandwagon riding?  Did you live in multiple locations and keep one of your hometown teams and adopted others from your new city?  Maybe your favorite player was on another team and you rooted for them?  When I see people post their teams like Cowboys, Yankees, Lakers, and Penguins, I think it’s a total crock of shit.  Total front runners, grabbing those teams that win the most.  They’re not true fans, but who am I to say who is a true fan?  I’d say I am in a heartbeat, yet am I the most die hard fan?  I’d have to say no, because my love is spread across the 4 teams.  Some folks may ONLY like the Cubs, so they’re all in on them 365/24/7.  I think the fairest assessment is that I am a die hard Chicago sports fan…. minus the White Sox.  But you already knew that… but how do we factor that in?

Anyways, back to thinking… there’s got to be a way to measure happiness across the board, when it comes to the sports teams, like some sort of fan index; maybe somebody has already done this?  We’d have to start off by making some assumptions, like you support all the teams from the city you reside in; I don’t know, can it be split out?  Probably… anything can be done.  You’d have to start with the championships won in each city; you’d have to factor in your age too… so you’re only personally concerned with the ones that happened in your lifetime, but can you compare a title when you were 1 year old vs 21 years old?  Again, probably another assumption.  You’d have to look at the devastating losses too.  What about the seasons that your team didn’t even make the playoffs vs the seasons where they did but came up short?  How does it all factor in?  Oh, and what about those cities that don’t have teams in each major sport?  So there are less opportunities for them to be happy. 

I don’t know… now that I’ve blabbed on… this all seems like a bit much.  The whole point was trying to make myself feel better about the current state of the Bulls & Blackhawks, as well as, helping me move past the latest devastating loss that the Bears endured.  After all, if you think about what we just saw as Cubs fans a little more than 2 years ago, how can we complain about anything?  Well, I’m going to start somewhere… with my teams… in my lifetime, and how that stacks up to others.  It will be my personal fan index, which can be used for anyone who is a fan of the Cubs, Bears, Bulls, and Blackhawks.  Let’s see where it goes.