Ten Annoying Personas That Football Fans Should Love To Hate

Unfortunately the football season has come and gone. Therefore, all we are left with for source material are draft projections and lists/rankings.

I won’t pretend to know enough about the college game to make projections about players I have seen play once or twice.

I will, however, provide numerous lists and rankings during the offseason because that is the type of person I am.

Rather than ranking and listing the people on the field, I have chosen to critique the type of people that cheer for these players instead.

I’m not talking about the guys who you can have enjoyable football conversations with. You know who I am talking about.

The fan that can never shut up about his team and how great it is.

The girl that suddenly is as big of a fan as you are.

The guy who is so much smarter than you are

Yes, I am talking about those annoying fans. The fans that you are almost sure to run into at a game or while watching a game. The type of people that you cannot help but notice because they draw attention to themselves.

Without further ado, I present to you, in no particular order, the 10 most annoying types of football fans.

The Homer

Everybody and there mom knows what a “homer” is. It’s a person that takes the lyric “root, root, root for the home team” way too far. They root for the home team so hard that their level of football intelligence can be likened to Homer Simpson’s general intelligence.

Honestly, there shouldn’t be anybody out there who advocates being a homer as a good thing becasue it detracts from intelligent football conversation.

When you converse with the homer no good can come out of it.

Their team always has the best players at every position in the league. When their team fails to win the Super Bowl, let alone make it to the postseason, it isn’t because of the talent on the team. It is always because of some omnipresent external force. A common one is that the refs continually screwed over the team or the 53rd man on the roster was injured.

It doesn’t matter what logic you hit a homer with to convince them that their team is not the best. They will dance around your argument with semantics in order to be correct.

The Know-It-All

It’s a good thing to know your football. In fact, it is so much better than being ignorant. Unfortunately, this type of fan makes the list because of the general abrasiveness of their personality. The know-it-all fan lives for confrontation.

The know-it-all fan thinks that they…well…know it all. As a result they could be considered the homer at a league-wide level. They may hold an allegiance to a team, but they usually show their understanding of the game by talking about numerous teams.

Sure, you may know a lot about football, but that’s nothing compared to the know-it-all fan, and they’ll remind you every chance they get. You could make a simple statement such as “that player is a beast” and the know-it-all fan will tell you about that player and 30 other guys like him.

You may know your football and can hold your own in a debate, and you may vehemently believe you are right. That doesn’t matter though because the know-it-all fan has forgotten that there is no technically correct way to rate and rank players. As a result how they judge and feel about players is “fact” and anything else is wrong.

All the aforementioned may be annoying, but the worst know-it-all fan trait is that they feel as if they know more than the players or coaches.

You are almost sure to find the know-it-all fan yelling at the TV, telling the coach to run a certain play. Sure the know-it-all may actually be right, that said play is usually successful given the situation, but most NFL coaches know what they’re doing slick.

The Ignorant

The ignorant fan might just be the fan on this list that annoys me the most.

Why?

Well because the ignorant fan usually thinks that they are the know-it-all. They believe that they know a lot, but in a stroke of irony, they pretty much know nothing about the game.

The ignorant fan will tell you how Peyton Manning is a great quarterback, how Adrian Peterson is a great halfback, and how DeMarcus Ware is the best at what he does. They will tell you all of this because ESPN or some other national media outlet has told them this information.

Unfortunately with all of the “knowledge” bestowed to them by ESPN, they are unaware of players like Drew Brees, Chris Johnson or James Harrison—players that are arguably as good, if not superior. Usually when confronted with the existence of players like this by another fan, they usually have no response or simply respond with regurgitated national media drivel.

The ignorant fan is the type of person that participated in every single popular fad, not because they wanted to, but because it just felt right. They never question why a player is an All-Pro or Pro Bowler. They merely go along with it because the “experts”—which usually includes themselves—chose it.

The Bandwagoner/Frontrunner

If the ignorant fan annoys me the most, the3n bandwagoners and front runners are a very close second.

While not everybody may know a type of fan that is listed here, everyone knows a bandwagoner or front runner. This is possibly because they are so prominent. Everybody wants to be associated with a winner.

The bandwagon fan or frontrunner is the person that constantly informs you that they are the team’s biggest fan. If you question their fandom, then you are an explicative and “know nothing”. This is usually because they are trying to avoid having to answer any question that will actually prove their ignorance in regards to the team that they “know” so much about.

The ever-present companion to the bandwagoner is the frontrunner. These guys are at least “good” enough fans to stick to one team. Unfortunately, the only time you hear them rooting for their team is when they’re in contention. These guys, like their bandwagon companions, will tell you how they’ve always been around and might even be informed on the team, but the reality is that they only care because the team is currently doing well.

The "Never Was"

The “never was” is a football fan that feels as if their time spent playing high school football somehow warrants their understanding of football at an NFL level.

I could understand if the guy made it to a division one program and got playing time at some point in his life, but that is usually not the case.

No, the “never was” usually played about one year of varsity in high school because he didn’t stand out from any of the other average players. Additionally, he usually played for a team that is on the lower tier of classes in the state. If the “never was” made it into college to play football then it was usually a Division III program.

None of these facts ever stops the “never was” from reliving that “great” game they had on senior night.

My personal favorite “never was” story is the guy that had a player from their high school go on to reach a big Division I program. Usually when this happens, the “never was” tells you they were an integral part of that individual’s success and without them that person wouldn’t have played college ball.

These guys somehow equate it in their mind that because they were an all-division player for one week that they somehow can relate to an All-Pro in the National Football League. I’m sure that Jared Allen wants to know your rip move variation that made you a high school “superstar”.

Anybody care to tell me how limited high school experience outweighs watching hundreds of games and viewing hundreds of stats?

The Ocassionalist

The occasionalist isn’t so much a “bad” fan as much as he isn’t really that big of a fan. This guy occasionally watches football when he can find time or when there’s a party or something going on. Because the occasionalist doesn’t live and die with their team, you may find them coming off as ignorant or annoying if you do.

The occasionalist can sometimes be a girlfriend or a daughter that is trying to relate to the man in their life. What most of them do not realize, however, is that while the man appreciates their effort in trying to learn, they don't appreciate stupid questions which would otherwise be answered by the game’s announcer and should be held to a minimum.

In reality, the occasionalist only has one truly “bad” quality, and that is expecting to be rewarded for the minimal knowledge. The occasionalist expects to be reinforced with positive comments when they point out a little known player or when they know what the correct terminology is.

The Floozy

Dear god do I hate these girls.

I hate them because they are often attractive.

I hate them because they can be likened to a explicative usually used for a female dog.

I hate them because they’re usually in attendance with guys who act like idiots.

But most of all, I hate them because of their illegitimate “like” for the team that they are rooting for.

These girls aren’t here because they have a genuine care for the team. These girls don’t care if the team wins or loses. No these girls are here for the shallowest of reasons.

The floozy shows up in hopes of getting on television. A prime example of this is “Heather” who ended up on television and in Maxim for sporting a t-shirt that so eloquently stated “F*ck Da Eagles” during the 2006 Divisional Round.

If they aren’t there in hope of being on television, then they are there in order to impress a guy who is usually a fan of the team. In order to impress the guy, the girl is usually seen yelling and screaming despite not really knowing what is going on unless they grew up as an occasionalist that would ask their father questions as a teen. In addition to all of this, she usually wears a brand new form-fitting ladies jersey to highlight her body in order to attract the guy.

Usually you can find an adult beverage in these young ladies’ hands if they are between the ages of 18 and 24, which perhaps results in their annoying and neurotic behavior.

The "Old Schooler"

This guy, like the occasionalist, isn’t really a “bad” fan. In fact, he might be the most knowledgeable of all fans described within this article. Unfortunately, most of that knowledge comes from the time which he considers the heyday of the NFL.

Probably your grandfather or somebody like that, this guy likes to ramble on about players like Don Hutson and Johnny Unitas and refuses to give this era’s players their due.

“Peyton Manning will never hold a candle to Johhny Unitas because he plays in a pass happy era.”

“Deion Sanders could never compare to Mel Blount because Blount forced a rule change”

The “old schooler” refuses to acknowledge the accomplishments of present day players until they become players of yesteryear. There is always somebody from the past that compares favorably to a present day counterpart, and they are always “better”.

The "Bestest Fan"

This fan is called the “bestest fan” because that is what they purport to be; the “best” fan of the franchise. The key concept here, however, is that they try to be the team’s biggest fan rather than actually be a fan.

The “bestest fan” has at least four jerseys for the team.

They have the giant foam “No. 1” finger.

They have road signs hung up in their room.

They have an autographed picture of the team’s quarterback.

They have season tickets.

Heck, they probably even have a FatHead strung up somewhere in their house.

All of this merchandise that they have is all part of a ploy to prove to you that they are a better fan of their team than you are of your team. They love to throw all of this in your face to prove how great of a fan they are. In reality, they probably also fall into the same persona as the “ignorant” fan. Sure they can rattle off statistics that they looked up, but they know nothing about the stats themselves.

This person has all these things that are a testament to how “great” of a fan they are, but they cannot tell you the important things like who are the five guys you playing this week along the offensive line.

The Guaranteer/Welcher

Everybody knows this guy. He exists well beyond the spectrum of football fans. He is in every sport.

This is the guy that routinely guarantees that their team will win the division, conference, or Super Bowl. Usually their team falls short of expectations, and the guy finds a way to get around their guarantee. He makes claims such as “Had we won one more game, we would have achieved our goal,” or “We’re gonna do it next year, so who cares about what happened this year.”

This fan's level of annoyance is not simply limited to their team. No, it can also extend to their thoughts in regards to players.

The guaranteer can call a player elite or top 10 because of one season’s worth of success. However, if the player’s season turns out to be a fluke, then said guaranteer becomes a welcher that claims they never said such a thing. This also works in the opposite manner when a guy refuses to acknowledge a player as top 10 and then turns around and says they never did such a thing.

So there you have it…10 football personas that absolutely drive me up the wall. I’m sure that you can find part of yourself in there. If you can’t than you are kidding yourself because everybody, including the author himself, should be able to find a little bit of themselves in these archetypes.

Let me know what you think or let me know if I might have forgotten a persona.