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The ten sports fan commandments

Christian religions are entering arguably the most important portion of their annual calendars: Lent is two weeks underway and Easter is just a month and a day away. In the coming weeks, millions of Americans will spend time reflecting about their spiritual lives.

It’s not just Christians that will celebrate during the important few weeks ahead of them, though. Plenty of big sports events are on their way, too. March Madness is rapidly approaching, and Opening Day for Major League Baseball is right on the horizon.

And so, perhaps it is time for sports fans to take time to reflect. After all, sports are spiritual in their own way, often predicated by bizarre and superstitious rituals. There’s no better time than today to meditate on what it takes to be a good sports fan, and whether we are following that ideology.

It is my pleasure to share the 10 Sports Fan commandments, passed down by several generations of Stalcups and still applicable today. I hope you’ll also enjoy my thoughts and anecdotes along the way.

I. Thou shalt have a favorite team, a favorite athlete and a favorite game.

How can you be a sports fan if you don’t know what you’re rooting for? Rather than a scattershot array of favorites, the best method is to honor a small few whom you raise on a very high pedestal.

For me, the team is the Washington Redskins, the athlete is Tara McKnight, 2008 alumna of the Virginia women’s basketball team, and the game is the Thomas Jefferson High School football game Sept. 29, 2003 at Falls Church High School.

That game started out as nothing special, and didn’t even pick up until the final minute of play. Jefferson’s Colonials, down 20-7 with only 0:52 left in the game, put in backup quarterback Matt Wong after the starter Shane Warren — a current University student, by the way — was injured.

Suddenly, in the waning ticks of the game, Wong became Joe Montana. He threw a quick touchdown but the kicker missed the extra point. Jefferson recovered the onside kick, and Wong immediately threw another touchdown pass as time was about to expire.

Still down 20-19, the Colonials then completed the unlikely comeback with a two-point conversion pass to give themselves a 21-20 victory.

II. Thou shalt own at least one jersey of thine favorite team.

One of the litmus tests between casual fandom and super hardcore fandom is whether you are willing to pay the big bucks necessary to buy the threads of your favorite team or player.

I actually broke this commandment up through my second year of college. For years, I knew I needed a Redskins jersey, but I never could pick one player whose name I wanted to wear on my back for the whole world to see.

One weekend in November 2007, I was watching the game with a few of my friends, and I brought up the question: Which jersey should I buy? After discussing it for a few minutes, we all agreed that a good pick was free safety Sean Taylor. At this point, he was an all-star, had already become a favorite Redskin of mine and had a nice long-term contract with the team.

That night, I went home and ordered Taylor’s jersey. By the time the jersey came in the mail a week later, Sean Taylor had been shot and killed in his Miami home.

There’s a special pathos in that No. 21 jersey. I wear it every Redskin Sunday. It doesn’t feel like a game day without it, and it has cemented Taylor’s status as one of my all-time favorite athletes.

III. Thou shalt keep holy the superstitious sports rituals.

Any reasonable level of logic will tell you that one fan’s set of strange traditions involved with watching sports won’t have an effect on the team playing, simply because thousands of fans have these rituals. There’s no way they could all control the game as so many believe they can. Furthermore, any level of scientific understanding reveals that silly stuff like “curses” and “luck” are flimsy, unprovable concepts at best.

And yet, these superstitions and rituals keep together the very fabric of the sports fan world. For example, the Giants win whenever my roommate wears his blue hat and lose when he doesn’t. Another common one is flipping your hat inside out — commonly called “rally cap” — which effectively triples your team’s chance at a comeback. Singing “Don’t Stop Believing” or “Living on a Prayer”, or pretending you’re John Belushi from Animal House (“When the going gets tough ... The tough get going!”) further doubles it from there.

Any true sports fan can tell you these silly little things actually work, nonsensical as they are. But there’s a very important key: they need to be done correctly, and treated with a certain level of sacredness.

Take, for example, The Boxer Incident of 2005. It started several years ago when I got a pair of FUBU boxers. I noticed something strange about this pair of underpants. Whenever I wore them, good things happened. I would ace tests, the sun would shine brightly and, most importantly, my favorite sports teams would win.

I knew not to abuse this, though. Remember the fable of the Goose that Laid Golden Eggs. I wore the boxers no more than once a week, of course washing them in between each time I slipped them on.

Fast forward to Oct. 15, 2005. Notre Dame, my favorite college football team at the time, was taking on No. 1 USC. I hate the Trojans. I wanted that win more than I wanted ... well, more than I wanted personal hygiene. I’m not proud to admit this, folks, but I pulled that pair of boxers out of the dirty laundry and wore them for the second time in less than week.

That night, I learned a valuable lesson: Don’t mess with the sanctity of luck or it will mess with you. I attempted to abuse the power of the lucky FUBUs, and it backfired. Notre Dame, despite being up 31-28 with no time left on the clock, stumbled. The refs gave the Trojans one more play, and they scored a touchdown. The boxers haven’t shown any sign of luck since.

IV. Thou shalt not leave a game until it is completely over.

I’ve always thought this to be a straightforward rule, but I’ve seen it broken enough that I see why it is necessary. Honor your favorite team’s efforts, even if the end result is a loss. Stay in the stands just to show them you’re there for them, that you eagerly anticipate their return to glory.

It saddens me to see fans filing out of a home Virginia basketball game if there’s even a hair of a chance for a comeback. Down seven with a minute left? Improbable, but not impossible. Everyone likes beating traffic, but stay there until the buzzer sounds.

V. If thine age be that of a college student or older, thou shalt, with exceptions, give free T-shirts or caught foul balls to nearby children.

This commandment applies not only to T-shirts tossed into the stands by event staff and foul balls, but any sort of novelty or trinket given out at random at sports events.

I’ve been stricken with a disease called “lust-for-free-stuff-itis” since birth, so I understand how easy it is to break this rule. You see something you can have related to a team you like, and you want it. It’s simple.

But little kids around you want it even more. Trust me. That’s just how kids are. Are you honestly going to use that little foam ball or cruddy, baggy T-shirt? Then why not let a little kid get some pleasure out of it? Give them a souvenir.

There are exceptions. Maybe the item has a great personal significance, perhaps as a memento from a road trip to watch your favorite team. It could be an item honoring your favorite player. Maybe it’s something given out to everyone, like the Sean Singletary T-shirts at the Clemson game. In any of these cases, feel free to keep it. Of course, if no kids are nearby, no harm done in taking it for yourself.

VI. If thine age be that of a college student or older, thou shalt not, with exceptions, try to get autographs from athletes.

Autographs are cool in a swooning, obsessive sort of way. A real professional athlete marked that piece of paper! It’s so easy to venerate it and hoard it.

Signing autographs gets old for athletes real fast. It takes great patience to sign more than a few. Don’t waste their time, or take autographs away from others. Let the kids get the autographs.

If you have a personal item with that athlete’s name on it, like a jersey or a card — or the now-autographed photo of Redskin legend Sonny Jurgensen sitting in my room — it can make the item more significant and meaningful to get it signed. It’s also completely reasonable to want an autograph from your most favorite athletes. But don’t go for an autograph just because some athlete you recognize is standing there with a Sharpie.

VII. Thou shalt blame the refs.

It is common knowledge that most any loss by your team is caused by stupid calls from stupid referees, umpires, judges, etc. Refs are bribed by opponents at least 95 percent of the time (joking...)

Just ask Arizona Cardinals fans. I mean, did you see the end of the Super Bowl? Why on earth did the refs not at least review that last fumble to check if it was an incomplete pass? Am I missing something? Ridiculous.

VIII. Thou shalt automatically be friends with any other fan of your favorite team.

Imagine you are walking down the street, and you see a sweaty, balding guy walking next to you. Maybe he smells a little funny, or perhaps something about his face just doesn’t look right. You take a few steps away from him just because he worries you and grosses you out a little.

Had you seen that very same guy wearing your favorite team’s colors at a sports bar as you watched a game with him, he wouldn’t be gross at all. He’d be awesome. You’d be high-fiving him whenever your team scored. Maybe even hugging him. That’s just how it works. The two of you would be automatic friends.

IX. Thou shalt not covet any of thy rival team’s players.

Sure, Brian Westbrook is a great running back for the Eagles. But I’ll be darned if I want him on the Redskins’ roster. Clinton Portis and Ladell Betts are all I need. Westbrook is the enemy, even if his numbers and adaptability surpass the running backs on my own team. He’s not wanted.

Don’t envy your opponents for having so-called “better” players. Be happy with the ones you have ... until free agency time or a trade goes through, of course.

X. Thou shalt have fun.

Easily the most important of the 10 Sports Fan commandments, the 10th reminds us of the whole purpose of being sports fans in the first place. It’s supposed to be an enjoyable, exciting experience!

Get up and cheer when your team wins, shrug and say “We’ll get ‘em next time,” when your team loses and have fun at every point in between. Sports are at their best when they’re an escape from the pressures of reality. Get into it, but don’t let it bring you down too much. Especially if you don’t have lucky boxers to right all your wrongs.

Bonus 11th commandment:

XI. Thou shalt not root for the Dallas Cowboys.

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