Rules Fro Being A Boston Sports Fan

So You Want To Be A Boston Sports Fan

Welcome to Boston, college student. Time to start pretending you're a lifelong Red Sox fan.

Born and bred Boston sports fans have a long held love-hate relationship with the legions of transplanted undergrads who are yelling "Yankees Suck" 20 minutes after unloading the U-Haul. On the love side of the relationship, the college students are the illegal aliens of the Boston sports scene. You do all the dirty work that the rest of us Boston sports fans with wives, children and probation officers can't. The born and bred Boston sports fan knows that he can expect the college kid in his shiny new Red Sox shirt to do all the things that no native fan will deign or dare to do.  

A born and bred Boston fan doesn't have to worry about rioting after a big win. We know that the college kids are going to take care of it. A native Bostonian doesn't have to worry about causing a scene in the bleachers and getting tossed; he can mutter hate crime-quality obscenities at opposing fans, teenage girls flashing some midriff and chubby little kids in too tight Little League t-shirts, confident that some college student is going to cause a more public scene, drawing attention away from the native fan's criminal behavior. A native Boston fan can go to a college sporting event and behave as if he's entered a bizarro world where the laws of this country don't apply because, really, do you think anyone other than college students care if campus police tells them stop having freshman chicks do naked keg stands? If transplanted college students didn't become Boston fans, who would do all the dirty work? You can't outsource debauchery to Bangladesh.

But on the other hand, there are plenty of native Boston sports fans who despise the 100,000 college students who invade the city every fall and take all the seats at the bar. Being a Boston sports fan is a very different experience than being a sports fan in most other parts of the country. Maybe if you're from Philadelphia or Chicago or New York, you understand how the Boston sports fan thinks. Being a Boston sports fan is all about intensity and passion and there are times when that intensity and passion becomes a little too intense and passionate for the average sports fan.

If you're from some hick backwater town like Miami or some cultural wasteland like Los Angeles, chances are that you haven't really learned what it means to be a sports fan. If you're the type of sports fan who literally "picks" his favorite sports team each year, you're going to struggle to understand what makes a Boston sports fan tick. No one born in Eastern Massachusetts "picks" his favorite teams. His allegiances have been picked long before he can form the words to call ARod an "overpaid douchebag."

That's where Barstool Sports comes in. We want Boston's college students to have a good time while they're here. Because it's a fact of nature that happy college students lead directly to girls taking their tops off for candy necklaces. And that's a very good thing.

So, you've unpacked your stuff. Your parents are back home, probably having freaky sex because they have the place to themselves for once and now no one will hear your dad scream when Mom really works him over with the cat o' nine tails. You've hidden your drugs, booze, bb guns, fireworks, porn, roofies, RU-486, sex toys, rosary beads and Ramen Noodles. The only things missing are friends, a sex life and a sports team to support. You'll find friends eventually no matter how revolting you are. And you'll have sex eventually too no matter how revolting you are. But you're confused about how to be a Boston sports fan without getting bottled by some guy in a stained Conner Henry jersey. Not anymore. Here's what the naïve college student needs to know if he wants to safely root for Big Papi or Tedy Bruschi.

1. Walk before you run. It takes years to learn when it's the appropriate moment to unleash a string of obscenities at the television during a Red Sox game or what Bruins' game you should pick to watch that season. You've been on campus for a few weeks now. If you've already bought a Sox hat, slashed the tires on a car with New York plates and masturbated to a Bill Simmons' column, you're moving too fast. You're not going to graduate in a year, are you? No. You're going to waste as much of your parents' money for as long as possible. And you're not going to morph into a Boston sports fan in a year either. Give it time. The paranoia and irrationality will come.
2. You need to commit. I don't understand the concept of "picking" a favorite team but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're serious about your decision to be a Boston sports fan. I was at a bar outside Wrigley Field in a Pats' jersey when some random dude tried to explain to me that he was a Pats' fan and a Red Sox fan when he wasn't rooting for the White Sox and Bears. He might as well have been speaking Navajo. I was lost. In what crazy, namby-pamby, testicleless world, can you possibly root for two teams in the same sport? You want to be a Boston sports fan; you have to commit to the whole package. No split allegiances.
3. Be original. There is nothing more annoying than to hear a sports fan regurgitate the article he's just read in the Globe or Herald. Actually, there is something more annoying. Fans who breathlessly regurgitate Bill Simmons' articles as if they memorized the bit about Larry Bird and Teen Wolf in some Wahhabi madrasa in Pakistan. The problem isn't that you're reading Simmons or Bob Ryan or Dan Shaughnessy or Steve Buckley or Peter Gammons or any other sportswriter. The problem is that you're acting like those guys are sitting in your dorm room, playing Madden and talking about last night's game. We all read the same stuff. Plagiarize your schoolwork, not your sports talk.
4. It's a pro sports town. Congrats. You just bedazzled your first Superfan t-shirt. Your football team is undefeated and Sean Williams has a baby hook shot. And no one in Boston cares. College sports just don't register in Boston and there's no reason to think that our pro sports favoritism is going to end anytime soon. This isn't a problem if you go to BU, Northeastern, UMass, Harvard, Suffolk, Emerson, Tufts or any other school in Boston not named Boston College. At least, BC students have legitimate teams to root for. The rest of you? Not so much. Don't expect the native born Boston sports fan to care that your college has one of the finest DIII badminton teams in the Northeast.
5. Bring something to the table. You're a college student. You're exempt from the normal rules of civility. Moderation is dirty word. Let your deans worry about liability and DEA raids. You have more important things to worry about. Like entertaining me. You want to come to Fenway, you want to cheer for Tom Brady, you want to drool over the silky smooth moves of Kevin Pittsnogle? Bring something to the table. I don't want some college kid to sit in Fenway and wax nostalgic about Jim Longborg. I want you, and the three hot chicks you've brought, to get hammered and do something stupid. I don't want a bunch of college students to sit in a sports bar and quietly watch the Patriots' game. I want you, and the five hot chicks you've brought, to be organizing an impromptu wet t-shirt contest by the end of the first quarter. You get to be a Boston sports fan and we get to take cell phone pictures of college chicks acting out their fathers' worst nightmares. Seems like a fair trade to me.