The Internet and its ignorant fans
Ajitpaul Mangat, Staff
The age of the Internet has given the sports fan many things to cherish: an improved ability to play fantasy sports, immediate access to statistics, greater availability and sources of news, the ability to interact with other fans from across the globe, and highlights galore of any team and any player from any sport. These Internet-created rewards have seemingly created a utopia in which the voracious sports fan can better appease his or her hunger for continual stats, news and highlights than ever before. No longer do fans have to wait a whole evening to read the next day’s paper with its convenient box scores and news or the few hours for the well-prepared highlights on that evening’s SportsCentre. No, in this age of entitlement everything needs to be at one’s fingertips.
However, this instantaneous gratification has created a sports fan more ignorant of the sports he or she apparently loves than ever before. Whereas fans once actually watched whole games, many are now content with viewing extended highlights or shortened airings and assuming they can still appreciate the nuances and ebb-and-flow that play out over the course of a whole game. Even worse, many sports fans — represented by an increasing number of empty seats at arenas, stadium and ballparks — are content to follow their teams over the Internet rather than by actually attending games. Not only does this further depreciate their understanding of the sport, it also reduces their team’s home field advantage and the exciting communal experience of attending a game.
This unawareness is further solidified through fantasy sports, a creation of the Internet age, which truly is a fantasy for the ignorant sports fan. No longer are athletes appreciated for their heroics on the court and the intangibles they bring to their team. Instead, a player is now solely judged on his or her statistics because that player is only worthwhile if she or he helps fans win their fantasy leagues. Even Tom Brady, New England Patriots quarterback, was often ridiculed in the past for not being a great player because his statistics were sub-par. Many fans failed to see that his greatness — evidenced by three Super Bowl rings and two Super Bowl Most Valuable Player awards — arose from non-measurable characteristics like leadership, poise and an ability to make his teammates better. Things changed last year when he set amazing statistical passing records, which won many fantasy players their leagues. Only then was his worth appreciated. If it takes the average sports fan that long to understand the greatness of a sure-fire Hall of Famer like Brady, one can only imagine how uninformed they are of the worth of non-star athletes.
The sports blogosphere, another creation of the Internet, has done nothing to slow this increased ignorance. Average sports fans with no journalism experience, playing experience, or inside sources with leagues or franchises have been given free reign to spew uninformed, biased opinions and start completely untrue rumours. Take for instance the always-frenzied start to the NFL’s free-agency period. Fans await breaking news about which players their teams have signed or traded for and for how much money and compensation, respectively. There are a few websites with connections to the league office that can actually break stories because they have inside information. However, these connections are very limited. But that did not stop numerous blogs this year from posting untrue, made-up information about which players were signing with which team. In a time period when fans want news quickly, but even more important, accurately, the blogosphere does nothing but harm the sports fan.
For all the talk about how the Internet has made life easier and better for the sports fan because it makes them better informed about the players, teams and leagues they love, there are many reasons to believe it makes them more uninformed. In what should be an age of enlightenment, we seem to be experiencing an age of Internet-fuelled ignorance.
